‘Book 1’: Bookbinder’s daughter uncovers records predating Everett

EVERETT — The handwritten tome could have been lost if Susan DuPont had not gone digging through her deceased parents’ belongings during the pandemic.

Marked as “Book 1” of the Snohomish County deed records, the book is a bound volume of local property transactions from 1872 to 1876. It is technically the third book of records created after the county’s founding in 1861 — books “A” and “B” predate the volume — and it belongs to a collection of hundreds more housed in state archives.

Delicate cursive outlines property boundaries. Some pages show plat diagrams with perfectly straight lines drawn in by the auditor’s staff, with legends in the margins.

“… I, Jacob Livingston, hereby donate to the public for the use of the Public the streets and alleys as shown on this map,” reads one comment from 1872, above a plat on the first page at what’s now Harborview Park.

DuPont hand-delivered the book to the county. She said she knew as soon as she found it that she needed to take it back to its “actual home,” because “this is significant history.”

She recalled telling her husband: “I don’t just want to put it in the hands of anyone who is not going to know where or what to do with it.”

DuPont’s father, Roy Gerrard, ran a book bindery that often worked with the county to repair old books like this one. It appears he never got around to this particular project, and the manuscript was tucked away and hidden in a box of his things.

Snohomish County Auditor Garth Fell said his office “wasn’t necessarily missing this book,” because the records have been transferred to microfilm and a digital hard drive. Those copies are usually what his office use when they need to reference old records. The other books in the series were sent to the state archive a few decades back and are no longer in the county’s direct possession.

Still, getting the original copy back is a treat, he said.

“I think it was a wonderful reminder of our public records and the way we preserve history,” Fell said. “We do play a vital role in preserving the history of our county and the history of our families through the public record process.”

Lisa Labovitch, history specialist with the Everett Public Library, said it is important for record keepers to have the original copy of documents like this. Even though the files are available in digital copies that protect the book from wear and tear from use, the original acts as a vital backup if digital copies fail.

There is also value in working with an original copy for researchers, she said. Originals might be easier to read than a digital screen. And they contain physical traces that add context.

“You see fingerprints and you know somebody 100 years ago touched this and wrote in it,” Labovitch said. “It’s a cool experience to work with that type of thing.”

Clifton Harty, the county’s licensing and records manager, said he immediately recognized the plat diagram of “Western New York,” a phantom townsite planned by Jacob Livingston in the 19th century between modern-day downtown Everett and Mukilteo.

“It was nice to see this book since I’ve worked with the images so much. It kind of brought it home,” Harty said. “You can look at it and see that it was really handwritten. The people that have used it over the years, you can see their fingerprints on it.”

The book comes from an era when the auditor and their staff “had to be specialists in handwriting and drawing,” because they recorded the deeds, plat proposals and property sales themselves. These days, Fell, Harty and other staff just review drawings — usually printed copies of digital documents — submitted by land surveyors or title companies, then approve them for the record with an official seal.

Neither Fell nor DuPont knew exactly when DuPont’s father received the book or why. Fell guesses it probably changed hands in the 1970s or ’80s to be rebound ahead of its transfer to the state archive, sometime after the county made microfilm copies.

Why DuPont’s father never repaired or returned the book also remains a mystery. She knows her dad worked on several similar record books for the county and she remembers helping.

“My job was to put pages in and clue where things were loose,” she said. “It wasn’t a speedy job, because you just couldn’t help but read. When you see 1872 or you see the name Ulysses S. Grant, it’s like you go, ‘Oh my gosh.’”

She thinks that he probably never fixed it because, as his health began to decline, he lost the strength in his hands and wrists required to work on large books. But when she thinks about why he didn’t just return this book, DuPont comes up blank.

“Now I’m going to probably get going through boxes searching for and hoping to find that answer, but I don’t know that I will,” she said.

What matters most is that the book is back with its rightful owner, DuPont said. The county plans to send the book to the state archives, so it is reunited with the rest of the collection.

About the bookbinder

Roy Gerrard’s life revolved around book repair. He met his wife as an apprentice in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he raised his kids at Gerrards’ Bindery, the private business the couple opened in Everett in 1971. He dedicated four decades of his life to the trade, working on personal projects for friends and family long after he closed his shop.

“I wouldn’t say (he worked) until he died, but it was pretty darn close,” DuPont said.

Gerrard died in 2016. His craft carries on in the memories of his children and grandchildren, who learned from him. The family still has the “antique” tools he used, DuPont said.

“The rack for sewing sections together, people would probably look at it and not even know what it is,” DuPont said. “I think it would be a shame to lose that totally. But there’s enough family that have a little bit of knowledge.”

Organizing that equipment, looking through old photos of her dad and even finding misplaced volumes of Snohomish County records reminds DuPont of how much work it used to take to make paper and books. It speaks to a past generation’s care for craftsmanship, she said, and it reminds her to be grateful for the conveniences of the modern day.

Mallory Gruben is a Report for America corps member who writes about education for The Daily Herald.

Mallory Gruben: 425-339-3035; mallory.gruben@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @MalloryGruben.