(soft music) - [David] The Isle of Wight County was one of the first of eight original shires here in Virginia.

When the citizens of Jamestown started moving out, they needed to put some governmental structures in place, its location to the Pagan River, and made it easy accessible for waterways.

- Elizabeth Bennett Young was the wife of the Deputy Clerk of Courts at the time.

His name was Nathaniel Young.

- Her husband was from Brunswick's County, and they married and moved here because she had inherited about a thousand acres here in the county.

So they built a home called Oak Level.

They made their life here for a number of years.

- It's a lovely home.

It was a plantation.

He was a farmer and he as Deputy Clerk of Courts, he was responsible for all of the records of the time.

He served in the militia.

Most able-bodied men served in the militia as well.

And so he actually joined the Continental Army and was away for a couple of years when he was off fighting for the patriots.

(drums banging) - During the Revolutionary War, I think it was about June of 1781, Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton was going from Hampton Roads to Charlottesville and gonna pass through Smithfield.

- Banastre Tarleton, who has a very nasty reputation.

There was kind of a precedent that had been set.

There's a long military history of the enemy going in and destroying records.

So you really destroy the day-to-day operations of people.

Knowing who owns what land, who's married to whom, that kind of thing.

But also, you know, it's definitely a place of civic pride and leadership.

You know, the place where your records are, your courthouse.

Elizabeth takes on that role to gather up those records and protect them from Banastre Tarleton.

(dramatic music) - She came into the courthouse, she gathered up all the records from the clerk's office, and she placed them in a trunk, and she took the trunk to an undisclosed location in the county, and she buried the records to protect them from the enemy.

And when it was all over with, she went back to that location and she dug them up, and brought 'em back to the courthouse.

Pretty much the majority of them survived.

If they were damaged in any way, they were water damaged or insect damaged, but most of them were saved.

And today you can go out to Isle of Wight County Courthouse here in the county and you can actually look at the records and have access to them.

(soft music) When our visitors come to the courthouse, we always tell them the story about saving of the records because not only do they give us important family information, but they also gives us information about the structure of the court system from 1750 to 1800.

It gives us a lot of information.

- Isle of Wight County is so lucky to still have these records.

A lot of places don't, a lot of counties have significant gaps in their records, and a lot of cities as well, some of them are referred to as burned counties basically, it's kind of the generic term historians use when there is a big gap in records.

And so Isle of Wight County is very lucky to have so many of them.

She did a wonderful thing that is still remembered today.

And so I think it's a great story that we can tell.

A hundred years later, by the time the Civil War rolls around, there's a similar situation, and one of the young enslaved individuals, a man by the name of Randall Booth, he kind of performs the same service.

Those records are gathered up and he buries them out in two different counties.

And so that's where those records wait out the remainder of the war until it's safe to return.

So there's this, you know, dual tradition of those records being protected here in Isle of Wight County.

But today, the Clerk's Office, the record room, is named for Randall Booth.

- [Narrator] This has been "Revolution 250: "Stories From the First Shore."

To learn more about this and other events of the Revolutionary Age of America, visit WHRO.org/usa250.