Latah County, Idaho records
Scope and Contents
The records of Latah County span the years 1888 to 1959 with the bulk of the material covering the years 1888 to 1930
Included are records of the auditor in his/her several capacities (i.e. auditor, recorder, clerk of the court, and clerk of the county commission), records of the treasurer, and the assessor.
As the following inventory indicates, not all series of records are complete. In some instances record books are lacking volumes, reports may be lacking several years, numbers of recorded deeds may be missing, and some volumes of tax statements are also lacking..
Dates
- Creation: 1888-1959
Language of Materials
English
Biographical / Historical
The present Latah County was originally part of Nez Perce County, Idaho Territory. In 1887 Congressman Fred Dubois of Blackfoot introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress creating the county of Latah from the northern part of Nez Perce County. The bill met with little opposition and was signed by President Cleveland on May 14, 1888; thus making Latah County the only county in the United States created by an act of Congress.
County Officials
Auditor: The auditor is the chief accounting officer of the county and is responsible for keeping records of revenues, expenditures, and balances in county funds, and for making certain that county agencies do not overspend their budgets. The auditor reviews all bills presented to county agencies, sees there are funds to pay them, presents the bills to the county commissioners for their approval, and writes checks, called warrants, to pay the bills. The auditor also prepares financial reports, computes property taxes due, and accounts for licenses. In the capacity of recorder the auditor is responsible for recording, filing and indexing a large number of legal documents, including deeds, marriage licenses, leases, certificates of sales, mining claims, and wills admitted to probate. The auditor also serves as clerk of the district court, and plays a role in selection of juries, collects fees, and provides clerical assistance to the court. As county clerk he or she has important responsibilities in election administration, such as supervising local election officials, helping to register voters, publishing notices of election and preparing and printing ballots. The auditor also serves as clerk of the county commission, recording all proceedings, resolutions, and votes.
Treasurer: The county treasurer is responsible for receiving money belonging to the county, accounting for and safely keeping the funds. The treasurer deposits the money in bank accounts or invests the funds temporarily in United States certificates of deposit or other securities. Serving as tax collector, the treasurer sends out property tax notices, collects personal and property taxes and issues warrants to collect delinquent taxes.
Assessor: The main function of the county assessor is to set a fair value on property for tax purposes. To do this the assessor keeps an accurate map of each parcel of property in the county and visits the property to determine its value. The assessor sends each property owner a statement showing the market value of property for assessment purposes and hears the objections of taxpayers who are protesting this amount. The assessor is also responsible for registering motor vehicles, selling license plates, and handling titles for motor vehicles.
Extent
87 linear feet
Abstract
Records of the auditor (as auditor, recorder, clerk of the court, and clerk of the county commission), treasurer, and assessor of Latah County, Idaho.
Arrangement
These records were moved to different storage areas within the library several times prior to processing, therefore any original order was destroyed. Following the description of duties of county officials outlined by Sydney Duncombe in his Handbook for County Officials in Idaho (10th edition, University of Idaho Bureau of Public Affairs Research, 1991) the records were organized by office.
The records of the auditor were divided into several sub-series, since the auditor also serves as clerk of the court, recorder, and clerk of the county commissioners. Included in the auditor's records are license records, bonds, reports, certificates of nomination, and forest protection charge lists. The bonds were originally bundled and their received order was not altered; during processing it was discovered that dates occasionally overlapped, and some small sections were interspersed among larger sections.
The clerk of the court records contain a district court fee book, a record of cases in Nez Perce County from 1883 to 1890 which appears to have been hand copied from the original books, district court calendars, and court stenographers shorthand notebooks for cases from 1893 to 1939. The stenographers' notebooks were divided into series by type of book used, which is also a chronological arrangement. In many cases the books were numbered, and this numerical arrangement was retained; unnumbered books are at the end of each series. Series I-III are in small notebooks, while the shorthand notes in series IV are on 8 1/2 x 14" sheets of paper which have been foldered by year. Some of the books are water damaged, and numbers in each series are lacking.
As recorder the auditor's records include 9 volumes of Land department abstracts which lists land by legal description and records details of any sales, chattel and crop mortgages, and estray notices which are handwritten notifications of livestock found on private property and requesting the owner to claim the animal(s).
The clerk of the county commission records include a jailers report of prisoners, bonds and election returns for road overseers, and road district inventories.
The second series contains the treasurer's records. These include 12 volumes of warrant registers, from 1888 to 1939, name indexes to the registers, quarterly statements and monthly reports, trial balance books, fish and game licenses issued, tax sale certificates which are also called delinquency certificates (the tax sale certificates, 1884-1912, are individual sheets of paper, the delinquency certificates, 1913-1917, are bound in volumes), and volumes titled Indexes to delinquent taxes which are indexes to the tax sale certificates. The series also includes six volumes of special property road tax records, 1902-1908 (1906 lacking). The final items in the series are miscellaneous papers which were discovered among the bank statements.
The final series contains the records of the assessor. Included are plat maps of Moscow arranged by addition, plat maps of small Latah county towns, lists of property belonging to Potlatch Lumber Company, John Vollmer, Edward Rutledge Timber Company, Northern Pacific Railway, and the Forest Development Company which was subject to assessment, taxpayer statement for property taxes, and a book of motor vehicle license fees collected.
In 1987 permission was received from the state archivist to discard approximately 20 cubic feet of redeemed warrants. Many remaining items were set aside for discard during processing. Included were records recording internal transactions between departments (e.g. auditors' requisitions to the treasurer), certified list of warrants to be issued, warrants, redeemed warrants, receipts, check registers bank deposit slips, bank statements and paid checks, duplicates of treasurer's reports, detail sheets of tax collector's reports, tax payer statements for property taxes except for 0 and 5 numbered years (Oregon State Archives record retention schedule recommendation), assessors rubber stamps, and several unused volumes of printed forms. This reduced the records by an additional 125 cubic feet.
Permission to discard the above material was requested from the state archivist. Following receipt of the permission the discard list will be sent to the Latah County Historical Society in case there are any items they feel would be useful for either research or exhibit purposes.
Records of the Kendrick State Bank which were deposited with the Clerk of the Court during dissolution hearings were removed and accessioned separately; these will become MG 384.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The records of Latah County were transferred to the University of Idaho Library by the county prior to 1980.
- Title
- Guide to the Latah County, Idaho Records 1888-1959
- Author
- Finding aid prepared by Judith Nielsen
- Date
- ©1997
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Finding aid is in English
- Sponsor
- Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Repository Details
Part of the University of Idaho Library, Special Collections and Archives Repository