These three photographs show how the huge ledgers that were used to record legal transactions in 19th and early 20th century Liberty are stored.  Most are very unwieldy and small wheels help to roll the ledgers onto the shelves (this is standard equipment in many law libraries).  The county clerk would handwrite into the books a copy of every legal document pertinent to a given case into these books.  The Administration books--the large white-covered books prominently featured here--contained copies of paperwork pertaining to probate court and the orphans' court.   The dark green organizers on top of the ledger-shelves contain the actual paperwork of each probate and orphan's court case.  There are over 200 files stacked in four sections and housed in two different rooms in the courthouse.  These big files date to before the turn of this century and are rather rusty as well as being high off the floor.  Each of those files has a number and a handle that pulls the metal file holder out.  Inside each of these metal pull-out files are ten to twenty case files that are wrapped in manila envelopes and tied with a ribbon--most of these enveloped files were organized as part of a WPA project in the 1930s.   While the files are loosely organized in alphabetical order, I rely on the listing of the contents of these probate files in Volume III of Casey & Otken's History of Amite County.  Unfortunately for the modern researcher, some of the files indexed in History of Amite County III are either missing or terribly out of order.
 

The picture below shows the south-facing side of the room where bound issues of area newspapers from the 19th and early 20th century are kept.

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