The Gloucester County Museum of History has completed the digitization of Gloucester County survey books.

Museums Coordinator Robert Kelly and museum volunteer William Lawrence digitized all of Gloucester’s survey books from 1733 to 1920, a total of 948 files.

The goal of the project was to make the records more accessible to the public and to further preserve the documents, said Kelly. The new high-resolution records of the books took the pair almost a hundred-man hours spread across several weeks to scan. The books contain detail surveys of county land from 24 different county surveyors.

Of the surveys, those conducted by Henry Hughes caught the eye of Kelly and Lawrence. Lawrence said surveys by him were works of art because of the incredible detail which he drew. Hughes conducted surveys between 1831 and 1853.

In the more detailed surveys, like those by Hughes, Kelly said they’re able to find structures of which they previously were unaware. He said the high-resolution...