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Since she took office in 2018, Cumberland Clerk of Circuit Court Deidre Martin has wanted to get all of the land records digitized. There was just one problem. It’s not cheap. 

“That is a super expensive thing to do,” she told supervisors during their Tuesday, Feb. 25 budget workshop, adding that to date, she’s spent more than $100,000 and three years on the project. The part Martin was most excited about, however, is that it cost the county absolutely zero dollars to make this happen. It wasn’t done through grants or anything like that. Instead, she found a way for the project to pay for itself. 

“We have what’s called non reverting funds and it’s land record specific,” Martin told supervisors. “People pay to have online access to my land records, like title searchers, attorneys, they pay $50 a month. That money just adds up and each time I get $40,000 or $50,000 we do back scanning, and so we did it in sections.”

As a result, everything from 1749 until now is online and accessible now in Cumberland. That includes both the land records and the old indexes. With that project successfully finished, next Martin and her staff will work to get all wills and marriage licenses in county history up online. 

“We’re going to keep going until everything is (online),” Martin told the board.