WOMAN WORKS TO PRESERVE THE PAST

Margaret Beggs, left, of Jackson, and fellow Missouri records archivist Joan Feezor demonstrate proper document teaching techniques during a seminar at the Stoddard County Courthouse in Bloomfield.

Margaret Beggs of Jackson is in the record business.

Her job doesn't allow her to meet rock stars or famous musicians but as a records analyst for the state, she might run across the marriage license of a rock star's great grandparents.

Since 1990, the Jackson native has worked in the state's Local Records Program, a division administered by the Missouri secretary of state's office. She travels throughout Southeast Missouri assisting counties and other governing bodies in properly archiving and retaining records required by the state. Her unique job also allows her to help local historical and genealogical societies in preserving important historical records for future generations.

She says the job gives her a rare opportunity in life. She's able to get up every day and do what she loves to do for a living.

"It really gives you a lot of personal satisfaction to know that you are doing things to save permanent historical records," Beggs said of her job.

A historic preservation major at Southeast Missouri State University, Beggs graduated and worked for a time as a graduate assistant in the university's archives, primarily dealing with the papers of area historical figure, attorney and railroad builder Louis Houck.

"When my youngest daughter started the third grade, I just decided that I wanted to go back to college," she said. "It wasn't until I began taking classes that I realized that there was such a thing as historic preservation but when I learned about it I thought, 'This is my thing.'"

A fellow student had graduated early in 1990 and begun work with the Local Records Program on a part-time basis. When the program was expanded to full-time several months later, Beggs' friend encouraged her to apply. She did and was hired for a full time position in 1990.

Since that time, Beggs has worked in many of Missouri's southeastern counties. Her duties include compiling an inventory of the records of counties or other governing bodies, helping the bodies determine which of those records need to be kept and which may be destroyed under state law, and helping provide appropriate filing and storage for the remaining records.

Many of the documents seen by records analysts such as Beggs are so old that they are no longer needed or required by law to be kept. However, these same records -- of such events as births, deaths, sales and civil cases -- are of significant historical interest and may provide a unique insight into the workings of a county and its people. They are also important to those researching their family history.

"The bulk of the records we deal with are records of civil cases," Beggs explained. "You might think that those would be boring but if there is testimony in those cases, the testimony is often full of information about people, places and events."

Rather than throw these away, Beggs and other state archivists often work with local historical societies and other such organizations to help organize, archive, restore and preserve these historical records for the future. The records are sometimes donated to the historical societies. Members of the societies often help to clean and organize the older records, many of which suffer from rot, fading and other ravages of time and must be cleaned or require further restoration work.

The Local Records Program is funded through user fees placed on documents filed in Missouri's 114 counties. It employs about 15 archivists across the state and six support staff members based in Jefferson City.

Beggs said the job requires her to do a variety of tasks. She may be found in one county one day dressed in a suit dress for a meeting with a county clerk and in a sweatshirt and grubby jeans combing through dusty ledgers in a county basement 100 miles away on the next day. It is this variety that makes the job so interesting.

"Every day the job is different and you travel all around meeting a lot of different people -- county officials and local historical people -- all over Southeast Missouri," she said.

Currently, Beggs is working in St. Genevieve County helping to organize and create a computer inventory for that county's records. Once work in St. Genevieve is completed, she and others with the state program will move on to the city of Park Hills, a recently-chartered community which comprises the former city of Flat River and smaller surrounding communities.

"[Park Hills] has certain permanent records that they are required to keep from the individual cities and I'll be compiling a computer library of those," she explained.

Beggs will also be doing work in Van Buren to compile a list of records which may now be destroyed.

In the past, she and other members of the state records program have worked on projects in Cape and Stoddard County and completed work for the St. Louis Board of Aldermen.

She and other members of the Local Records Program are now assisting members of the Mormon Church in microfilming documents from the archives of various Missouri counties.

Beggs said she has encountered a number of interesting documents in the four years she's been involved in the Local Records Preservation Program.

Among the most interesting are what she calls territorial records, or records of the time between 1804 and 1821 when Missouri was a territory.

As an example, Beggs cited an 1816 document which outlines the murder of an Indian at the mouth of Apple Creek in Ste. Genevieve County.

"Also in Ste. Genevieve, there are records of people paying back borrowed money or notes will all kinds of things like salt, furs, lead or other items," said Beggs. "One women owed a debt and she was paying it back with loaves of bread."

Work in Cape Girardeau County yielded several important discoveries, including a map showing the location of the home of prominent Cape Girardeau County citizen George Frederick Bollinger, who constructed and operated the Bollinger Mill at Burfordville.

Typically such items are given to agencies or groups which will use the documents to further historical understanding.

"When we found the map showing Bollinger's home, I contacted Jack Smoot, the state site administrator at Bollinger Mill," she said. "He looked over the map and said that as far as anyone knows, it is the only map showing Bollinger's home."

A combination of historical interest and enjoyable work are what keep Beggs coming to work each day.

"I think the older you get, the more you enjoy history but in this project, you're not just working with old records but also with records that were created yesterday," she said. "I just find the work interesting, even if it's making a list of records that can be disposed of."