Descending Upon Town Hall

It was about 11:30 AM when we entered the historic Clarendon Town Hall. Not a human in sight, our voices echoed off the black and white tile floor. We knew this building was inhabited because there was a large Christmas Tree gracing the center hallway. As we began peering in one office after another, we got the distinct feeling people were slipping past us, and exiting...

We caught one person in her office still seated, who looked at the clock when she saw Dad (Roger Kelley) file folders, maps, and camera in hand, "We're doing some research on my family, the Witherspoons, and we're looking for tax records, birth and death records, deeds..." Deeds had just left for lunch, birth and death notices were housed in Little Rock, where we had just traveled from, and tax records were on the 3rd floor.


Off to the 3rd floor we trooped. Tax records were handwritten in the 10's and 20's in large ledgers, and organized by the letter of the last name. "Wi" did not necessarily follow "Wa," so all the W's for each year needed to be reviewed.



It occurred to me after several years of records, with no listings for WH Witherspoon, that this family of 13 may not have been a household with much taxable property outside of real estate, which was not included in these records. Two records, were located for Weatherspoon, however. More sophisticated researchers would have noted these, we did not. We've since learned that spelling errors such as this were common, and on the next trip, we'll look into those a bit more.

When no one was looking, I slipped away. The Deed office was now opened, and everyone was smiling in that office, so that's where I moved. After a brief lesson on how the books worked, I began looking from 1927 earlier. Eureka! A reference for 1925. This record indicates a lot that was sold in 1925, which later completely confused us. Dad was off to secure the address from the Tax Assessor's office. For a larger image of this image click here.

According to the Tax Assessor, this piece of property was currently, ">709 Walls St.