Officer makes historic discovery, more than 70 ledgers found in safe dating back to the 1860s

FRANKLIN, Wis. (CBS 58) -- What once was thought to be lost was actually misplaced for years at the Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center (CRC).

"This is over 100 years of history from Milwaukee County that has been resurrected from the dead," said David Rugaber, the assistant superintendent in charge of operations at the CRC.

Rugaber has been working at the CRC for 25 years.

Formerly known as the House of Corrections, the incarceration facility offers resources to inmates who may be given a second chance.

"That could be housing, that could be education, if they have a drug addiction, we have a medical assisted treatment program over here and everybody who walks into the CRC, and is in custody over here, has access to tools that will make them better when they are released," he said.

Back in 2009 when Rugaber was a lieutenant, he said he came across some old books.

"Periodically, some old ledgers would appear, didn't know where they came from, did not know where they were stored and then they would disappear," he recalled.

Since assuming his new role, he's made it a mission to find them again. And in June of 2023, inside a walk-in safe within the old north building (built in the 1940s), he found a piece of history that was thought to have been lost forever.

"It's hard to get to, there's only one key that opens up that door and that key is in another safe that is housed in the administration area where only two people have access to that key; so that's the superintendent and that's the executive assistant to the superintendent," he explained.

Lead archivist at the Milwaukee Historical Society, Steve Schaffer said this discovery is quite remarkable.

"We jumped at it and one of the reasons I was particularly excited about this is because we were told these no longer existed and the lure has been that they were thrown out in one of the construction phases," Schaffer said. "We were overwhelmed, frankly, when we first emailed we thought, 'oh 10 books that'll be great!'"

Rugaber found more than 70 books inside abandoned laundry bins.

"All in great shape, I have to admit, for books that were, you know, 160 years old, some of them, they were in remarkable shape," added Schaffer.

The ledgers contain information from inmates that date as far back as 1866 and as recent as 1975.

Michael Barera is Schaffer's assistant archivist who's helping digitize every single hand-written page.

"To me, the demographic information is fascinating," he said. "So, on the one hand, you have intake registers, you have lists of individual people that are really useful for genealogists, people working on family history."

Barera said these books will also help fill a gap in some of the county records.

"Offenses by type, offenders by age, by religion, by occupation-- that sort of data is really interesting," he added.

Schaffer also noted that race/ethnicity was also on the first things listed, complexity even and then it went on to specify gender.

"They go into education level, ethnicity, you know marital status...height, weight, things like that," Schaffer said.

Rugaber told CBS 58 Sunday Morning he also noticed that some entries specified where inmates were born.

"It really mirrors the immigration status of Milwaukee at that time, where they were a city of immigrants," he said. "So there's a lot of German, there's a lot of Poles, there's a lot of Scotsmen, there's a lot of Scandinavians that were here, which exactly mirrored the individuals that were building the city at that time."

A unique piece of local history that goes beyond corrections. It offers a peek into the past.

"There are a few people in the book that have been pardoned by the President of the United States and this would've been, you know, Ulysses S. Grant at the time, there's people that were pardoned by governors," Schaffer said. "One of the entries was a 12-year-old boy who was was arrested for vagrancy and then sent, you know, to an adult institution, he was pardoned by the governor."

Schaffer also said there are some crimes that aren't even recognizable anymore like homelessness and begging, but others have stayed the same throughout the course of history.

"A lot of the things are still the same, it's the same old thing, it's larceny, it's you know, prostitution... murder, it's theft, there just isn't as much gun violence, there's knife violence though and there's a lot of drunkenness," he added.

Rugaber went on to say that it also sheds light into how their internal system has adapted over time.

"Currently, now, we have an exact date of birth obviously, right? We have addresses, we have family members, we have information on individuals who come to visit them, we have previous incarceration information over here as well," he said.

So far, the Milwaukee County Historical Society has only been able to go through one of the ledgers. Schaffer said it will take at least a year to digitize it all.

"Our goal is to get the first couple indexed and scanned, and then we're going to return some of them because I understand the CRC wants to use them for educational purposes and display," Schaffer said.