History of Mount Airy, N. C. Commissioners' Meetings 1896 to 1903

One can read these ancient minutes, some quite informal and sprinkledwith legal terms of that day. All of the original notes were written inlong hand and each writer put his personality into the shapes of letters,spelling, and use of English grammar. Names of citizens were oftenspelled by sound, or the way the person himself chose to spell his name,not necessarily correct. When transcribing these documents, I used theoriginal spellings from the handwritten transcripts. Some of theadditions of financial reports are not correct; I cannot explain that,unless some items were omitted. In addition to the age of the hundred year old papers, some weredamaged by a hundred year flood in 1979 that left the pages ragged andcrumbly. I have tried to indicate with an author's note those damages. In all but a few cases, no facts or stories have been lost.