NC State Dept of Archives destroys priceless documents

This is absolutely criminal and completely senseless. Full story at the link but here's the short version:

- This summer a new Clerk of Court in Franklin County discovered a trove (an entire roomful) of documents, some dating back to 1840, in a previously sealed room in the Franklin County, North Carolina Court House.

- The Local historical group enthusiastically poured themselves into the project, mobilizing volunteers and the whole community – securing space to work, materials, and finances – in order to catalog and preserve the bounty of record books, photographs, deeds, chattel records, land grants, deeds, wills, personal correspondence, and countless other materials from a wide variety of government departments throughout the county. (This room had apparently become the “graveyard” for old records, and no one bothered to investigate it for many, many decades.)

They were doing fine until they decided they needed help in valuing the documents and asked the North Carolina Department of Archives to assist. The State ordered them to do nothing until:

Then, on Friday, December 6, 2013, at 6:00 in the evening (after all the county workers had left, and with no notice to the local historical group involved in the project), a team from the North Carolina Archives swept in and confiscated ALL the materials – with the cover of Law Enforcement! They took the documents to the County Incinerator, and methodically burned EVERYTHING. They did this while a few locals stood by, not understanding why or precisely what was happening.

Every book, deed, will – every photograph – every piece of paper in that room was incinerated that night. No explanation has been given, and no media attention has asked any questions.

The State Dept of Archives is supposed to be in the business of preserving historical records, so why did they incinerate these irreplacable documents? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

My suspicion is that in and amongst all those now destroyed records, was a paper trail associated with one or more now-prominent, politically connected NC families that found its wealth and success through theft, intimidation, and outrageous corruption.

This would date back to the Civil War and carpetbaggers and such when many of these families made their fortunes. Difficult to think of any other reason. Somebody should have to answer for this.