North Texas History Center Alleges "Thousands" of Historic Docs Damaged in Storage Unit Flood

I've spent the better part of the last hour trying to upload some historical documents to Scribd, which is down at the moment. So while we wait out that rain delay, this related item of note: Courthouse News just posted a lawsuit filed last week in Collin County pitting the...

By Robert Wilonsky

June 11, 2010

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I've spent the better part of the last hour trying to upload some historical documents to Scribd, which is down at the moment. So while we wait out that rain delay, this related item of note: Courthouse News just posted a lawsuit filed last week in Collin County pitting the North Texas History Center, located in historic downtown McKinney, against Advantage Self Storage. Says the suit, last March Bryan Lean -- the senior archivist at the former Collin County Historical Society, as it was called upon its opening in '57 -- contracted with Advantage to store "thousands of historical documents and artifacts" acquired by the history center over the years.

So far so good till December 14, at which point, says the suit, Advantage called the NTHC to say water had gotten into the units it had leased. At which point the history center dashed out to the storage unit to find, says the suit, "thousands of historic documents damaged by standing water in its units." It doesn't say in the suit what those docs are -- there's no inventory. I've called the NTHC for comment, and exec director Vicki Day's out at the moment. A message has been left for her, as well as for Rick Jones, Advantage's president. Should anyone call back, expect an update.

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