ARCHIVE CENTER TO RESTORE OLD MAP

JACKSON, Mo. - The large, framed map of Cape Girardeau County is rusty brown and yellow from age. It's stained from water damage and bug droppings.

But archivists Jane Randol Jackson and Mike Davenport view the map, which may date back to the 1860s, as a window on county history. It pinpoints the cities, railroads and rural schools of its day. It also shows tracts of rural land and who owned them.

Jackson directs the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson where the map has been housed since the small brick building opened last fall. Davenport is assistant director.

They have obtained a state grant to have the map cleaned by a Kansas City firm that specializes in restoring paper documents. The restoration work should make the map easier to read, Jackson said. The map will be covered in Mylar to better preserve it.

The restoration project will cost $3,081. The state grant will pay $2,177 of the cost. The county is picking up the rest of the expense.

Once the map is restored, Jackson believes her office will be able to date it by checking property records with the names of landowners listed on the document.

School sites

The map will help the archive center in its ongoing research of the county's rural schools, Jackson said. The map also will be available for public use.

The archive center has copies of older maps, but Jackson said this map is the oldest original map housed there.

The map is on loan from John Clifton of Cape Girardeau. Clifton said he originally lent the map for display in Jackson's historic Oliver House in 1981.

Bernard Schaper, a Jackson resident and former curator of the Oliver House, gave the map to the archive center last fall. Schaper said his records showed Clifton had donated the map to the OIiver House.

But Clifton said that isn't so.

"I just put it on loan," said Clifton, who admits he might want the map back one day.

But for now, Clifton's content to have the archive center hold onto the map and restore it.

Schaper's glad the map is being restored.

"It is practically illegible," he said. "We had no place really to display it in the Oliver House and no one could read it anyway."