One thing about America that a lot of folks don't understand is that - even if you have paid off your property debts - you don't actually own that property until the title has been cleared and transferred to you.
EVEN IF you have paid your mortgage in full, in many cases, there will not be clear title to the property - and thus, you cannot legally own the property.
Title Insurance companies know this, as do most banks. This is why there is a ~$70 "Title Clearance and/or Reconveyance Fee" that has to be paid at the end of the mortgage - by the borrower - to the Title Insurance company.
America has a huge backlog of uncleared title. In some counties, there are 2 or 3 or even up to 12 generations of title to get cleared - from the earliest title transfer, to the very latest - before someone can have clear title to their property.
So, like the original author of this article, I suspect that there was some Title Lineage evidence in all that stack of documents, which someone didn't want to have discovered .. for some reason.
The lesson learned: ALWAYS CLEAR TITLE ON PROPERTY YOU INTEND TO PURCHASE.
Which says the records were burned because they were full of mold, a health hazard, and had already been designated for destruction in 1964.
This wasn't a nifty little storage room full of rare old materials, it was pile of boxes in a basement with a leaky pipe.
It's sad for sure that a few really cool documents were lost, but they needed to be destroyed to remove the mold threat -- I doubt it was economically feasible to clean or restore the lot of them, and it'd have been dangerous to have folks rummage through them to find things worth restoration (can you remove mold from a ledger book?).
In the US, ownership of real property tends to be more complex than that, and that's what really drives the need for clear title.
The conveyance of real property is further complicated because it is regulated primarily at the state level and there are many and varied laws among the states.
In general, due to their heritage in English Common Law and origin at a time when land was granted by the sovereign, real property is conveyed with all previous restrictions on its use and disposal intact [except in such cases where the restrictions are illegal, such as prohibitions on the sale of the property to persons of particular races, religions, etc.].
This means that a violation of a particular covenant [deed restriction] gives the person conveying title [or their heirs or assigns] the right to take back the title. It is misleading to think of the ownership of real property as consistent with Lockian notions of private property. Restrictions on digital media and software licenses are probably better analogies, and it may be worth noting that these restrictions are not unprecedented in so far as real-property law provides precedent.
Ultimately, the title to real property is never clear - you can't prove that no claims exist only that none have been found.
And that's what's motivating the purported goings on in Franklin County. For all the years they were locked up, those records were not included in any title search. The existence and use of such records would undoubtedly slow the sale of real property in the area. Furthermore, the likelihood that claims against title could be brought forth against current title holders increases significantly.
Given that the records date from the antebellum period, the 800 pound gorilla is not so much the descendants of former slaves as Native Americans. North Carolina was only a generation or so off the frontier and less than that from the Trail of Tears, and while the heirs and assigns of individual former slaves are fragmented, the heirs and assigns of the various Native American nations such as the Cherokee are organized and have legal standing under Federal law to challenge property title. [1]
[1] In the 1980's the Seminole Tribe acquired a reservation that was subsequently developed into Tampa's Hard Rock Casino in exchange for giving up a claim upon land in Tampa's Central Business District where a Native American gravesite was unearthed. http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-commentary/from-graves-to-o...
This is not the case in states where a mortgage is simply a lien on the property. You receive a warranty deed, which includes a title search, and you own the property (fee simple in legal parlance). If you have a mortgage on the property, the mortgage company has a lien that can be foreclosed.
In title theory states, when you mortgage the property, the mortgagee holds title until the mortgage is paid off.
If someone has allodial title to their property then government cannot tax it. They can only tax property they own and rent out, which is almost all land in the U.S. that hasn't been purchased or confiscated from land owners.
If record of that allodial title is destroyed or lost, then you will have a difficult/impossible time proving you own your land.
In many jurisdictions in the US, won't adverse possession make much of those old title problems moot or at least make current title fixable without having to sort out the past mess?
Hi, I'm the genealogy geek who first posted to HN about this story three days ago, just before the HN downtime, in the thread about Canada's similarly horrible records destruction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7010885
Since then, the story has gone viral on Twitter and is now back on HN as a post in its own right. And yet there were people like me who knew (and tweeted!) about the impending records destruction through the genealogy grapevine before the burning -- but we felt powerless to do anything about it.
If ever there were an example of how important it is for us genealogy/archives folks to break out of our little world and interface more with the general public more often, this would be it. I'm so glad people here, and on Twitter, seem to really grasp what a big deal stories like this are, and how shameful it is to have destroyed records.
Now, pull up a chair and let me explain to you all about the worrying trend of privatization and commercialization of public archives and public data, or the saga of the SSDI closure...
Another, of course speculative, motivation may have been that the destroyed records could have thrown existing land ownership into legal doubt.
EDIT: The article speculates a cover-up. I'm speculating a make-this-messy-problem-go-away action, perhaps by someone who'd have to deal with the mess as opposed to someone who'd be embarrassed by it. On the other hand, I'm not denying that it's a cover-up.
> Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
I love it.
Personally I believe these records showed that the Union had assistance from their extra-terrestrial masters and held the documentation of a coverup after the Civil War.
Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
–All things being equal, the simpler explanation tends to be the true–
There exist a big culture and history of land theft in the Americas by the white upper class from the 16th century until present time. Now there exist no evidence of extra-terrestrials.
So I personally belief the post's explanation over yours.
Saying that books have mold on them is like saying that dogs have fleas on them. Condemning them for that reason is like throwing a pack of stray dogs into the incinerator for having fleas. After all, fleas are a hazard to human health -- the bubonic plague was spread by fleas.
It is indeed possible that the cost to restore these books may have been prohibitive, far out of proportion to their historical value, but the cost to preserve them was certainly not. All they would need to do is freeze them. It deactivates the mold, and prevents continuing harm. The books could sit there, not hurting anyone, until someone cared enough to restore them.
Without going into the actual issue of destroying the documents, I find the preservation process slightly disappointing. From the timeline:
* Late May, early June, 2013 – Work began, using a few volunteers,...
* August 5, 2013 ... A request was made to The United Way to supply the Society with computers and Steve Trubilla donated a scanner/copier.
They had months while they could (even just to make the reviews easier) simply scan everything. Page by page while going through the boxes. They didn't have to retype, OCR, describe or do anything else to the documents. Just copy and preserve.
Now they're caught in a disaster situation without a backup. (I'm not disappointed with people doing this, I'm sure they did what they could / thought was important at the time. Just the whole situation is depressing. It's like almost every single "we lost all our data" story out there.)
Franklin County North Carolina has 60,000 people. Typically, rural historical societies are neither staffed nor equipped to handle significant archival tasks - often they are a mix of younger reinactors and artisans, and older folk interested in curating. That they did not own a scanner suggests the sophistication of the organization.
From the article, it sounds as if they were trying to follow sound archival practices - e.g. contacting the State Bureau. There was no reason for them to know they were in a race against the clock, and it is absurd to propose that they should have acted in such a way or to violated sound archival practice.
> They had months while they could (even just to make the reviews easier) simply scan everything. Page by page while going through the boxes. They didn't have to retype, OCR, describe or do anything else to the documents. Just copy and preserve.
They were probably worried about damaging the books or pages. They had no idea of what was coming, so why would they damage their newfound discovery just to make a bad copy?
(Usually, backup stories are good morality plays because the only cost of backup are time and money; but if you had a 0.01% chance of corrupting both copies of a file every time you copied it over to the backup drive...)
I think its more likely the documents were the original street plans and guides which, when viewed from sufficient distance above, spell out the name of the last remaining descendant of Jesus and was designed by Da Vinci himself.
Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
Could a lawyer (preferably from NC) chime in about real estate law and if there's something like a "statute of limitations"? Would adverse possession (or something like it) in effect wipe away any crime committed in coming to possess a piece of land?
Although the state was in fact responsible for preserving the documents in the first place. In fact, for requiring documentation of transfers. I think the message is: someone in North Carolina needs to go to jail.
[+] [-] fit2rule|12 years ago|reply
EVEN IF you have paid your mortgage in full, in many cases, there will not be clear title to the property - and thus, you cannot legally own the property.
Title Insurance companies know this, as do most banks. This is why there is a ~$70 "Title Clearance and/or Reconveyance Fee" that has to be paid at the end of the mortgage - by the borrower - to the Title Insurance company.
America has a huge backlog of uncleared title. In some counties, there are 2 or 3 or even up to 12 generations of title to get cleared - from the earliest title transfer, to the very latest - before someone can have clear title to their property.
So, like the original author of this article, I suspect that there was some Title Lineage evidence in all that stack of documents, which someone didn't want to have discovered .. for some reason.
The lesson learned: ALWAYS CLEAR TITLE ON PROPERTY YOU INTEND TO PURCHASE.
[+] [-] mattlutze|12 years ago|reply
Which says the records were burned because they were full of mold, a health hazard, and had already been designated for destruction in 1964.
This wasn't a nifty little storage room full of rare old materials, it was pile of boxes in a basement with a leaky pipe.
It's sad for sure that a few really cool documents were lost, but they needed to be destroyed to remove the mold threat -- I doubt it was economically feasible to clean or restore the lot of them, and it'd have been dangerous to have folks rummage through them to find things worth restoration (can you remove mold from a ledger book?).
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
In the US, ownership of real property tends to be more complex than that, and that's what really drives the need for clear title.
The conveyance of real property is further complicated because it is regulated primarily at the state level and there are many and varied laws among the states.
In general, due to their heritage in English Common Law and origin at a time when land was granted by the sovereign, real property is conveyed with all previous restrictions on its use and disposal intact [except in such cases where the restrictions are illegal, such as prohibitions on the sale of the property to persons of particular races, religions, etc.].
This means that a violation of a particular covenant [deed restriction] gives the person conveying title [or their heirs or assigns] the right to take back the title. It is misleading to think of the ownership of real property as consistent with Lockian notions of private property. Restrictions on digital media and software licenses are probably better analogies, and it may be worth noting that these restrictions are not unprecedented in so far as real-property law provides precedent.
Ultimately, the title to real property is never clear - you can't prove that no claims exist only that none have been found.
And that's what's motivating the purported goings on in Franklin County. For all the years they were locked up, those records were not included in any title search. The existence and use of such records would undoubtedly slow the sale of real property in the area. Furthermore, the likelihood that claims against title could be brought forth against current title holders increases significantly.
Given that the records date from the antebellum period, the 800 pound gorilla is not so much the descendants of former slaves as Native Americans. North Carolina was only a generation or so off the frontier and less than that from the Trail of Tears, and while the heirs and assigns of individual former slaves are fragmented, the heirs and assigns of the various Native American nations such as the Cherokee are organized and have legal standing under Federal law to challenge property title. [1]
[1] In the 1980's the Seminole Tribe acquired a reservation that was subsequently developed into Tampa's Hard Rock Casino in exchange for giving up a claim upon land in Tampa's Central Business District where a Native American gravesite was unearthed. http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-commentary/from-graves-to-o...
[+] [-] jstalin|12 years ago|reply
In title theory states, when you mortgage the property, the mortgagee holds title until the mortgage is paid off.
[+] [-] n3rdy|12 years ago|reply
If record of that allodial title is destroyed or lost, then you will have a difficult/impossible time proving you own your land.
[+] [-] tzs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Asparagirl|12 years ago|reply
Since then, the story has gone viral on Twitter and is now back on HN as a post in its own right. And yet there were people like me who knew (and tweeted!) about the impending records destruction through the genealogy grapevine before the burning -- but we felt powerless to do anything about it.
If ever there were an example of how important it is for us genealogy/archives folks to break out of our little world and interface more with the general public more often, this would be it. I'm so glad people here, and on Twitter, seem to really grasp what a big deal stories like this are, and how shameful it is to have destroyed records.
Now, pull up a chair and let me explain to you all about the worrying trend of privatization and commercialization of public archives and public data, or the saga of the SSDI closure...
[+] [-] throwaway_yy2Di|12 years ago|reply
Not exactly the "full story" when it omits the facts that support differing conclusions. That's sort of the opposite of "full story".
Some moderating details:
* Documents were damaged by a mold that is hazardous to health
* State archivist claims the documents were of "low historical value"
* Archivist claims some were confidential, and couldn't be legally released to 3rd party
http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of-frankli...
[+] [-] minikites|12 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017891
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7018441
[+] [-] bonemachine|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dded|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: The article speculates a cover-up. I'm speculating a make-this-messy-problem-go-away action, perhaps by someone who'd have to deal with the mess as opposed to someone who'd be embarrassed by it. On the other hand, I'm not denying that it's a cover-up.
[+] [-] Major_Grooves|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] username42|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhurron|12 years ago|reply
I love it.
Personally I believe these records showed that the Union had assistance from their extra-terrestrial masters and held the documentation of a coverup after the Civil War.
Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
[+] [-] runarberg|12 years ago|reply
There exist a big culture and history of land theft in the Americas by the white upper class from the 16th century until present time. Now there exist no evidence of extra-terrestrials.
So I personally belief the post's explanation over yours.
[+] [-] jusben1369|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|12 years ago|reply
Which is exactly what should happen to those people.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
More information, please. Otherwise this isn't much more than a rumor from a backyard gossip.
[+] [-] minikites|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saalweachter|12 years ago|reply
It is indeed possible that the cost to restore these books may have been prohibitive, far out of proportion to their historical value, but the cost to preserve them was certainly not. All they would need to do is freeze them. It deactivates the mold, and prevents continuing harm. The books could sit there, not hurting anyone, until someone cared enough to restore them.
[+] [-] viraptor|12 years ago|reply
* Late May, early June, 2013 – Work began, using a few volunteers,...
* August 5, 2013 ... A request was made to The United Way to supply the Society with computers and Steve Trubilla donated a scanner/copier.
They had months while they could (even just to make the reviews easier) simply scan everything. Page by page while going through the boxes. They didn't have to retype, OCR, describe or do anything else to the documents. Just copy and preserve.
Now they're caught in a disaster situation without a backup. (I'm not disappointed with people doing this, I'm sure they did what they could / thought was important at the time. Just the whole situation is depressing. It's like almost every single "we lost all our data" story out there.)
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
From the article, it sounds as if they were trying to follow sound archival practices - e.g. contacting the State Bureau. There was no reason for them to know they were in a race against the clock, and it is absurd to propose that they should have acted in such a way or to violated sound archival practice.
[+] [-] gwern|12 years ago|reply
They were probably worried about damaging the books or pages. They had no idea of what was coming, so why would they damage their newfound discovery just to make a bad copy?
(Usually, backup stories are good morality plays because the only cost of backup are time and money; but if you had a 0.01% chance of corrupting both copies of a file every time you copied it over to the backup drive...)
[+] [-] dded|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|12 years ago|reply
Even if they don't legally stand up, the photos would cause plenty of publicity issues.
[+] [-] jspc|12 years ago|reply
Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
[+] [-] bbllee|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
They are two separate legal issues: responsibility for a criminal offense and rightful title to a particular piece of real property.
One way of thinking about the difference is that one can be inherited and the other can't [currently]. In legal parlance, criminal v civil tort.
[+] [-] speedyrev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindslight|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattlutze|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] malka|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salgernon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoopism|12 years ago|reply
Prove me wrong. You can't. They destroyed the documents.
[+] [-] workbench|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blazespin|12 years ago|reply