The Perryville Rotary Club and Perry County Historical Society are continuing their efforts to preserve the history of Perry County. The two organizations combined in funding a project to digitize the daily account book from Levi Block’s mercantile which was the first, and for many years, the only mercantile in Perryville. In addition, volumes one and two of the Perry County Court records were also digitized in order to preserve these volumes and prevent further deterioration.
“As we are doing research we are always grabbing the book, which is from 1821 in the case of the Perry County Court records,” Perry County Historical Society Director Bill Hart said. “Then you look down and you see a bunch of chips on the floor from the book. When you access these books a little bit more falls on the floor. We want to be able to research these older records without destroying the original documents.”
Levi Block’s mercantile was located on the Downtown Square in what is to believed to be the oldest building on the square, right across what is now Roziers. That building is thought to be from the 1820s. The ledger is in the same kind of shape as the Perry County Court records and lists everything that everyone in the county bought from the business and how much they paid for it.
The original Perry County court record books were put in acid free boxes as well as scanned and digitized for any further research, the same with the Levi Block mercantile ledger.
“You can only do that so many times before these books fall apart,” Hart said.
