Southampton offers historians digital treasures

In 1658, when English settler Lion Gardiner purchased most of Southampton from the Montauketts for "a considerable sum of money and goods" and 25 shillings a year in rent, the deal was dutifully recorded in the original deed of sale.

The contract - spelled out in oddly delicate pen strokes on rag paper from England that still has traces of its red wax seal - stipulated the Indians would retain the right to cut bulrushes to make mats and got to keep any whales that washed ashore.

Now, those tiny nuggets of historic lore and other centuries-old official records that document the life of Southampton are being made available on the town's website.

Sundy A. Schermeyer, the town clerk, has been transferring Lion Gardiner's contract to buy the town - and most of Southampton's other historic records - online and expects to be finished in the next two or three months.

For historians, it is the promise of a digital treasure.

"There is a tremendous research potential there," said Wallace Broege, director of the not-for-profit Suffolk County Historical Society. "It will make it a lot easier to access records without having to traipse to town hall . . . and the delicate papers will not have to be handled."

The project also excites John Eilertsen, director of the Bridgehampton Historical Society. "One of the difficulties a lot of historic societies face is accessibility and retrievability . . . computers make it so much easier," he said.

"Now schoolchildren and teachers and community scholars and the general public will suddenly have access to all this great information without going through fragile records or traveling out of their armchair."

He said that an online database of records would be like creating a jigsaw puzzle of the past, using pieces from different boxes to fill in for any parts that may be missing.

The Town Clerk's office has already printed six books of historic records, most made by scanning copies of the original papers, which were transcribed starting in the decade after the end of the Civil War.

Because those records are printed, not handwritten, the town was able to scan them directly, saving years of labor transcribing difficult-to-read handwriting on delicate and discolored documents.