Register of Deeds department in process of digitally cataloguing its inventory, making records available online

CONCORD - The Cabarrus County Register of Deeds department is doing more than maintaining public records. It’s preserving history.

The department is in the midst of digitally cataloguing its land and human records - the former of which date back to the county’s birth in 1792 - and will be made available online. The move is one of preservation and disaster protection, Director Linda McAbee said.

“If something were to happen to this building, we would still have everything,” McAbee said.

But putting them online also means that some of the more fragile land records from the 1790s will not have to be handled by human hands often, making for less wear and tear.

All the department’s land records will be made available for free online. Land records dating back to the 1980s are already online.

While other records such as birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licenses and military discharges will be digitally recorded, they will not be available on the Register of Deeds Web site.

“They are not now, and I don’t think I will (put them online),” McAbee said. “There’s too much fraud out there today. If somebody wants to do something wrong (with this information), I’m going to make it hard of them.”

That’s OK with Roger Mullis, 68, a Concord private investigator, who was matching birth and death records at the Deeds office Tuesday.

“I like to get it online, but I like to see it written down on paper,” Mullis said. “When you can see it in these old books, you know it’s right.”

Peggy Faggart, 74, of Concord, is often in the Register of Deeds office doing genealogy research on her family.

“It’s in the blood,” Faggart said of the itch she’s gotten for family research. “It’s been surprising how many sets of twins I’ve found.”

The Register of Deeds is a fee-based department. And the contract with cataloguing company Logan Systems for up to $184,000 is being paid with the N.C. General Assembly-approved  Automation Enhancement and Preservation Fund.

It’s made up of 10 percent of the fees collected annually by the department. Last year, McAbee said the department collected about $5 million in fees.

“When I came into the office, I wanted to preserve all the land records,” McAbee said. “We saved our money for the big projects. I’m just excited to get it all done.”

The entire department, McAbee said, should be digitally catalogued by June 2008.

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