The clerk touched his pen to the ledger in 1861, his graceful handwriting cataloging daily life in what is now Cherry Hill Township.

Nearly 150 years later, his script is no longer read on worn, crumbling pages, but on a flat computer screen where faded writing can be darkened, printed, even e-mailed.

Municipal workers and private contractors have quietly reduced the township's mountain of paperwork over the last four years. One by one, historic 19th-century documents, current police records, birth records, death certificates, marriage licenses, ordinances, resolutions, and the minutes of meetings have been electronically scanned.

The result? The township has reduced the space it needs for document storage while creating a searchable database that someday will be open to residents, history buffs, and genealogists.

It also has shared its storage system with Gloucester Township and Merchantville.

"We used to have to page through a whole book to find a record," said Robert Schuenemann, Cherry Hill's coordinator of public records.

Searches now are done "in a fraction of the time - seconds instead of days," said Ari Messinger, the township's operations manager.

Since 2005, New Jersey's 21 counties and many municipalities have received more than $100 million from the state's Public Archives and Records Infrastructure (PARIS) grant program for preserving documents.

Cherry Hill's scanning efforts got a boost last month from a state grant of nearly $300,000. The town previously had received more than $200,000 in grant money.

A similar initiative is under way in Camden, where officials have helped 11 smaller Camden County towns digitize their documents.

The city - which has received more than $500,000 from the state over four years, including $182,800 last month - has provided space on its computer servers to back up the documents.

This year, the largest PARIS grant, $1.1 million, went to Monmouth County.

"It ensures continuity of government," said Sean Curry, administrator of the grants program. "If a natural disaster happens in Cherry Hill, [the township] will be able to still function because the records are stored off-site.

"New Orleans' records were lost [in Hurricane Katrina] because they were not duplicated anywhere else," Curry said.

The benefits have been clear. Cherry Hill law enforcement officers no longer have to call the police station for a records check when they stop motorists. They can key up criminal and driving records on computers in their squad cars.

Other township workers also have benefited. Storage areas such as the one in a barn at historic Croft Farm have been closed. And clerks no longer have to lug heavy records books when they're asked to look up information.

The public has begun to see the change, too. Residents can go on the Cherry Hill Web site to call up records such as ordinances, resolutions, and the minutes of council meetings.

"All of this helps with efficiency of operations," said Messinger. "The records that we still keep are getting proper storage. And instead of being stuffed in attics or the floor of a small closet, they're on proper metal shelving."

The digitizing in Cherry Hill has helped Merchantville and Gloucester Township too, Cherry Hill Mayor Bernie Platt said. "Only a small monetary investment is needed to host multiple municipalities' records systems," he said.

Dan Keashen, a Cherry Hill spokesman, said the scanning efforts afforded towns greater accessibility "internally and externally.

People can check records from their homes, Keashen said. And at township hall, "building permits are more accessible to the staff. The storage burden is being reduced and we're getting to things faster."

Some items, such as the early ledger books, will continue to be stored. The personality of the 19th century cursive writing stands in contrast to today's uniform typed records.

The books inventory the occupations of the township's residents: farmer, carpenter, blacksmith, laborer, soldier, and servant. And they identify causes of death: consumption, convulsions, cholera, paralysis, and pneumonia.

"The handwriting is amazing," Schuenemann said as he sat at a desk next to a ledger and a computer displaying the same page.

"But we don't want people looking through this anymore," Messinger said. "It's too fragile. What we're doing now is more efficient and better for the bottom-line cost."

Contact staff writer Edward Colimore at 856-779-3833 or ecolimore@phillynews.com.