The first institution I worked at was established in 1965 as “a home for wayward and delinquent” boys, but it also functioned as the State orphanage into the twenties: the astonishing thing was that all the original handwritten ledger books , twelve large volumes,identifying who entered and who was released had been preserved as well as all the classification/court records, the

social worker correspondence with families and the released individuals had been about 80% successfully preserved. We had an active State Archives department I was working with in the early nineties to preserve the original ledgers (used until some time around WW I) and the best examples of all the other records that had accumulated) when the State Archivist office was eliminated, and I had no legal power to do do anything with them; and now I bet none of them exist.