Processing & Poultry

You may be wondering what archival processing and poultry have in common, and to be honest, we were also a little puzzled when we kept running across the word poultry. Archives Specialist, Tori Roberts, has been working diligently on processing our historic Clerk of Courts State Cases over the past several years. This project has always been filled with interesting examples of crimes that have taken place here in Warren County. The actual processing project has consisted of unpackaging, flattening, organizing, rehousing into archival safe folders and boxes, and creating an index for the original court documents. These cases consist of criminal offenses within Warren County dating back to 1805.

For the first 200 plus years the crimes committed were consistent in nature with a handful of exceptions here and there. Things took a quick turn during May Term of 1930, with the introduction of crimes such as “unlawfully entering premises of the personal property of … for the purpose of carrying away poultry,” or “larceny of three chickens.” Theft of farm animals was not new for the county but theft of poultry specifically at the scale we were encountering was. The first nine cases for October Term, 1931, were related to the theft of poultry. Upon further investigation, Tori was able to determine that this crime was not isolated to Warren County, Ohio, but seems to have been an issue that plagued the country.

Consistency of crimes committed following the start of the Great Depression become apparent very quickly. Connecting Warren County citizens to larger historic events has always interested us while processing our records. This has been one of the most obvious examples of how local citizens were struggling along with the nation. Instances of robbery, breaking & entering, and theft took a severe uptick in their frequency starting in the 1930’s. As we wrap up this processing project, we hope that you will take the time to browse through the index we have created, along with numerous other resources available on our website: https://www.co.warren.oh.us/recordscenter/Indexes/Default.aspx