Preserving Harris County’s Historical Records

By CHARLES BACARISSE

You may have seen the boxes in some of the halls of the Civil Courthouse: Long enough to handle legal-size paper and about 10 inches wide. Now imagine many thousands of those boxes placed side by side – not end to end – on one shelf. That shelf would stretch more than 27 miles, from the courthouse to Katy. And it grows by almost a mile a year.
If you can imagine that, you have a glimpse of the paper records the Harris County District Clerk’s Office manages. Not just stores, but manages. We have to know what is where because customers flock in daily wanting to see old and new records and get copies, and we hate to make them wait. Frequently, they are amazed they can get what they want so quickly, that finding a parking space in this construction-deconstructed part of downtown took longer than getting their copies.
Our vision is that in a few years they won’t even have to come downtown. We are trying to take the courthouse to the people in a way that will be historic itself. We are on the brink of a change that in effect will bring Katy closer, making access to records nearly instant, improving security and slashing those miles of paper records. In the digital age, lawyers and other customers will find themselves in a “paper on demand” environment.
The attorneys, judges and clerks using quill pens and gall ink to draft lawsuits and orders and index documents in huge ledgers could not have imagined our immediate future. But appreciating the future requires a glance backwards.
The work of the District Clerk in Harris County – then known as Harrisburg County – began in 1836 with the founding of the Republic of Texas. We have files and minute books from those days. There was only one district court hearing both criminal and civil matters until 1891, when a Criminal District Court was added and the existing court began hearing only civil matters. A second Civil District Court was added in 1895.
Harris County was always part of that district. At various times, the district included Brazoria, Fort Bend, Grimes, Jackson, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery and Walker Counties.
In our files, one can find documents signed by Sam Houston and Mirabeau B. Lamar, cases about cotton and computers, about slaves and the Ship Channel, the Houston Electric Street Railway Company and space. Houston and Harris County’s history is in those files.
Today, the district consists only of Harris County. The District Clerk’s Office supports 25 civil district courts, 22 criminal district courts, nine family district courts and three juvenile district courts, 15 county criminal courts at law, four courts hearing paternity matters and one court that operates 24 hours a day conducting probable cause hearings and hearing applications for emergency protective orders.
Although the geographic scope of the district has shrunk a great deal, the workload and the number of records the District Clerk’s Office manages has grown even more dramatically. Over the decades, the typewriter did nothing to staunch the flow of paper. If anything, word processors encouraged more and thicker case files. Very soon, scanners and electronic filing will change document management in our office forever. The step from quill pens to word processors is not as big as the step from word processors to scanners, which convert paper documents to electronic documents. Scanning, also known as imaging, is a front door of electronic data management. Another front door will be opened soon; that’s electronic filing.
The Harris County Commissioners Court recently decided my office should be the prototype for the county in electronic document management. The plan builds on what the District Clerk’s Office has done for the past few years. In less than five years, my office has imaged more than 5.7 million pages. We already are doing electronic document management on an enormous scale. Right now, we have about 350 million pages to image. They will be imaged and indexed to a degree that will make our system very user friendly.
I am excited that the Com-missioners Court has shown such confidence in what we’ve done and in our ability to do even more in the next few years. We will be good stewards of the resources the county will provide. In fact, after a few years of spending money to control, then shrink the paper monster, our model of electronic document management will save enormous amounts of space, time and money.
The crucial first step is converting a few floors of the old jail at 1301 Franklin for our use as a file conversion center, where we image paper documents, turning them into electronic documents. The cell bars will be removed, but there will be no other renovations or remodeling of the floors since the plan is for us to use part of 1301 Franklin for five years, fiscal 2004-05 to fiscal 2009-10. Reports on our progress will be evaluated by the Commission-ers Court, which will decide prior to FY 2009-10 whether the old jail will continue to be used or be demolished so a new county facility can be built there.
In November, we launched a model of the conversion project in the Hogan-Allnoch Building with one team of workers assigned to test the process of imaging back files. In January, we will begin moving files of completed cases from six records storage areas to 1301 Franklin. Those areas are the Coffee Pot Building at 102 San Jacinto (site of our Records Library), Hogan-Allnoch Building at 1319 Texas, part of two floors in the Criminal Justice Center, part of the first floor at 712 Bastrop, part of the fourth floor in the Civil Courts Building, and part of the first floor at 4625 Crites. As we empty them, the storage areas will be available for the county to reassign, reuse, or, if feasible, put up for sale.
We plan to move all back files to 1301 Franklin between January and October 2004. Nine teams of employees, including the team from the Hogan-Allnoch model, will start work on imaging those back files in October 2004.
We will establish “point-forward” imaging of current criminal case files beginning March 1, 2004, and point-forward imaging of civil case files beginning July 1. In August, we intend to begin digital filing of all current cases, civil and criminal.
The county’s Management Services Department, Information Technology Center and 2010 Technology Commit-tee will support my office in this huge endeavor. The program will be evaluated thoroughly for its use in other county functions. The county’s 2010 Task Force will make recommendations with plans and timetables.
So, in a few years, we will have scanned everything and shredded all the paper and moved totally into the electronic age, locking the door on our past, right? No. For one thing, that would be illegal. By law, we have to keep everything dated 1875 and earlier. By rule, we have to do what we can to preserve records from 1876-1925.
For another thing, shredding historic files might – should – get us haunted by ghosts of Sam Houston, William Marsh Rice and many other famous people whose names – and lives – enliven our files.
Instead, we are expending enormous effort, and money as we find it, to preserve more and more of our historic documents. Over the years, we have poured thousands and thousands of dollars into the preservation of the documents in bulk, fighting flooding and getting storage spaces air conditioned. Dedicated employees with a passion for history have taken many steps to save documents.
More recently, we have gotten some of our oldest records preserved by professionals. They had to humidify the folded paper so it could be flattened, then remove the acid from the paper to stop deterioration, mend many tears and put the pages in polyester-based sleeves, which then were bound into hard-cover books. The documents preserved in this fashion are expected to last 200 more years. We are working on a way for the public to contribute to these preservation efforts, which are not cheap.
Another initiative is research and brainstorming to identify post-1925 cases that should be preserved in their original form – paper – because they are historic. Or important. Or notorious. Preservation is science. Picking what to preserve among our millions of files is partly art.
We do plan to scan everything possible, skipping only those things that are oversized or too badly damaged to work with. Historians who want to see the actual documents of Sam Houston’s lawsuit against Mirabeau Lamar, his successor as president of the Republic of Texas, will be able to see the actual documents. Those with a more casual interest will be able to read the documents online.
So, here we are at this unique and wonderful moment, preserving the history of Texas, Harris County, Houston and you, while flinging open the doors to the future. We’re making the doors to the courthouse and those miles and miles of files and files as close as your computer. It is an exciting time!

Charles Bacarisse is the Harris County District Clerk.




District Clerk, Bar Foundation Partner
to Preserve Historic Records

The Houston Bar Foundation and Harris County District Clerk Charles Bacarisse have announced a drive to raise funds for restoring some of the historic records maintained by the District Clerk’s Office.
“Having the Bar Foundation as a partner in this effort will greatly accelerate the pace of the preservation and restoration,” said Bacarisse. “We were losing the race until now, despite spending a lot of resources and money preserving records.”
On November 20, Bacarisse and Houston Bar Foundation Chair Frank Jones held a news conference to announce the partnership. The public may now make donations to records preservation through the Houston Bar Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and receive a tax deduction.
“Some of the most valuable records have been restored and preserved in a way that will keep them for 200 years, but many others need lots of work,” Bacarisse said. “Because the Bar Foundation is a qualified organization, interested persons can help preserve Texas history - your history, our history - and get a deduction.”
Contributions may be made payable to Houston Bar Foundation Records Preservation and sent to Houston Bar Foundation Records Preservation, P.O. Box 3552, Houston, TX 77253.

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