Dwight Wallis wrote:  Personally, I think recording sections could both profit and really provide a needed service if they went back to the more expansive recording they did up until the 1960's, shifting the focus back to impartiality and trusted repository (ie, if you pay the fee, we will record it), as well as supporting property transactions."

I have a great deal of sympathy for that position.  In my years exploring the records of Texas Courthouses I have found many a strange and wonderful thing filed for record.  My favorite was a case of wine filed for record in Brazos County by an old settlers association.  They withdrew a bottle periodically to drink in memory of those who had died since their last meeting until all were gone.

The most remarkable, however, was a covenant filed in Bosque County designating the filer as Patriarch.  The grantor was God and witnesses included Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost.  I would have loved to have inspected the original document but the Patriarch had retrieved the original document so all that was left was the copy transcribed into the record book.

In the last analysis, however, I cannot support Dwight's position because it is open to abuse.  For example, in the 1970's or early 1980's there was a group that believed that private citizens had the right to establish courts independent of the Constitution and laws of the State of Texas.  One of their "courts" rendered the "judgment" against a local federal official and tried to file a lien against his property. Although a literal interpretation of the statutes seemed to require that the County Clerk accept and record the document, the late County Clerk Anita Rodeheaver noted that the instrument stated that gold was the only real money so she demanded her recording fee in specie.  As gold was not forthcoming the instrument remained unfiled.  Subsequently the law has been clarified so that only authorized documents may be filed.

Alas, inappropriate actions of the cynical and bewildered cost us another fine tradition.

Paul R. Scott, CA, CRM
Records Management Officer
Harris County, TX

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