I joined the Department of History and Geography at Utah State University in Logan in 1970. One of the first questions I asked during the job interview was whether the microfilm of records that I had used from the Virginia State Library in researching my dissertation, film that had been produced by the Utah Genealogical Society, was available to non-Mormon researchers at the Society’s library. To have access to the massive collection of filmed local records, including many Virginia sources, would make a position at USU that much more attractive. What has since become the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, eighty miles to the south, was a lot closer than the collections at the subsequently re-named Library of Virginia in Richmond and other archives, a couple of thousand miles to the east. Today, accessibility of those records is less a concern. Microfilm and film readers are being replaced through digitization of the microfilm and records can now be read online on a home computer. Indeed, most of the microfilmed records of Accomack County, Virginia, examined for my recent JER article on the enforcement of a law to expel free people of color, were read in Smithfield, Utah.

Some of this effort is being driven by the physical deterioration of the microfilm, much of it created well over a half century ago. Greg Crawford, Virginia State Archivist, says the vinegary smell that emerges when opening a drawer of a cabinet of microfilm is a sure sign of the film’s increasing fragility and approaching demise. The interest in family genealogy and history is also pushing this transition from film to digital image. FamilySearch, “a service provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” gives free online access to many of the digitized images of the microfilmed records at its FamilySearch Library. What can’t be viewed from home or office because of restrictions placed by the holders of the original record can often be read online at local FamilySearch centers.

Along with these efforts, archives and libraries are digitizing records that were never filmed or are providing color images that will quickly replace existing microfilm. For example, the staff of Virginia Untold, a project at the Library of Virginia under the leadership of Lydia Neuroth, has been gathering and digitizing manuscripts in its collections touching on the history of African Americans in Virginia. In 2019 the Unknown No Longer project at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture provided images from its holdings that have been integrated into this effort. Professionals and volunteers at the LVA are also creating typescripts and indices of digitized documents making them more searchable. Moreover, the spectacular color images they are creating and putting online, some of which had been microfilmed, greatly enhances their readability. These images are very nearly the same as having the manuscript in hand.

Jim: Commonwealth Cause, 1824. From Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative Digital Collection, Library of Virginia.

Other entities are also making important sources more accessible through digitization. Law makers aim to shape human behavior, but their legislation also gives form to the records their laws subsequently create. Hence a knowledge of the law greatly enhances one’s understanding and use of the local records that are the core of many of the sources available on FamilySearch. Happily, the valuable HathiTrust website provides numerous images pertaining to legal and legislative history. Digital copies of the journals and the laws adopted at many of the individual sessions of the General Assembly of Virginia are among many other records that can be examined there. Additional journals and laws can be read on Google Books or found in the Evans Early American Imprint Series. As older scholars can attest, the digitization of this collection is a very welcome alternative to its original micro-cards. In short, research now has become much easier with many sources more readable and accessible. At the same time, while the volume of digitized sources has exploded and continues to grow, there is danger in assuming that all sources are now online. Quite clearly, archivists and archives will remain essential for our research beyond creating electronic images of their manuscripts as will our colleagues in interlibrary loan departments.

My JER essay relies on several kinds of the digital records now available through FamilySearch, Virginia Untold and other digital compilations. It examines the context surrounding the enforcement and a subsequent modification of a law passed in 1806 by the Virginia General Assembly. The statute allowed the seizing and sale into slavery of individuals freed after May 1, 1806. who did not leave the state within a year of their emancipation. Some readers may find this measure by Virginia legislators to restrict the growth of the state’s free Black population to be a precursor to the treatment of freed people of color after emancipation. Others may see these efforts as foreshadowing the attempts to expel immigrant populations in our more recent past and present. I hope the essay will encourage deeper research in the local sources that digitization is making more available, whether for enriching local studies or for exploring the impacts of larger events on the lives of ordinary people.