Three centuries of history reside in the Beaufort County Courthouse. Walk into the building and it’s not evident — built between 1968 and 1971, the courthouse may have a Georgian-influenced exterior, but the interior reflects the era in which it was built. But tucked away in the County Clerk’s office and downstairs in the basement are records upon records: arrest records, competency hearing records, estate records that date back to the early 1700s.

The earliest ones — originals — were scooped up by state historians in the 1950s.

“Seems like when I first started practicing, about 1953, it was about that period of time — that’s when they were attempting to preserve these records,” said Beaufort County Attorney Billy Mayo. “They came down from Raleigh and took them to put them in one central location, making sure they were protected from fire and flood.”

By then, copies of the estate books were used for research, as the original wills had long been too fragile for constant handling. The copies are handwritten in beautiful script, bound in large books. No one is sure what year the copies were made and by whom. The assumption is they were painstakingly copied in the early 20^th century by an employee in the clerk’s office.

But they too were becoming too fragile for constant handling.

This summer, an intern with the Clerk’s Office, an ECU ROTC cadet named John Vallery, embarked on the 21^st century version of copying — painstakingly taking each oversized sheet in the book: photocopying, resizing, printing on archival paper and binding each estate document.

“He spent weeks doing this. I can’t even tell you how many hours,” said Clerk of Court Marty Paramore. “He basically duplicated all of our books.”

Paramore said the idea to update the records came from visitors seeking genealogical information.

“These ladies came in and were doing family research and saw the condition of these books. They asked ‘Who’s responsible for these books?’” Paramore said. “Well, I’m responsible for them. … After that happened, we started trying to find a way to restore our books.”

Paramore found it by asking the state to donate the paper and binders, and utilizing Vallery’s unpaid internship, rather than asking the county for the funds.

“For me, what it means is we preserve part of our history. It’s not an issue for many counties, but our county is very old. Not many have records that go back to the 1700s,” Paramore said. “The archival paper will stand the test of time. And (the records are) available to the public.”