A part of our collective history—marriage licenses, deeds and other brittle, aging documents—will be saved for future generations, thanks to funding from the Library of Virginia.

Circuit court clerks in Gloucester, Mathews and Middlesex counties were all recently awarded grants from the library’s Circuit Court Records Preservation program to preserve and digitize local records.

In Mathews

Angela Ingram, clerk of Mathews, received a total of $26,412.50 to conserve Fee Book 1799; Fee Book 1823; Marriage Licenses 1878-1883; Marriage Licenses 1884-1888; Marriage Licenses 1889-1894; Personal Property Tax Book and Land Tax, 1841; and Personal Property Tax Book and Land Tax, 1844.

Kofile Technologies, a company which digitizes and restores documents for local governments, will preserve the physical record books as well as digitize the records.

“We’d like to retire the books,” said Ingram. She would eventually like all the records digitized so people can just use the comput...