The Inter-Mountain file photo Randolph County Clerk Brenda Wiseman, left, speaks with West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner at the Randolph County Courthouse earlier this year.

Editor’s Note: This is the latest in an ongoing series of articles which focus on our local elected and appointed governmental leaders, the duties they perform and the services offered by their respective offices.

ELKINS — When it comes to having a full workload, not many people have as much on their to-do list as Randolph County Clerk Brenda Wiseman.

For the past 16 years, Wiseman has tackled her position head-on after first being elected to the job in November 2006. And even though her job is filled with non-stop activity, Wiseman says she loves what she does each day.

“I really enjoy working here and especially working with the public,” she said. “We stay pretty busy on a daily basis in the clerk’s office, but I truly enjoy my job here.”

Wiseman said that the clerk’s main job is to record documents, which consists of but is not limited to deeds, trusts, liens and the probating of estates.

“I like it when someone comes in to probate a will and we can help them through the process,” Wiseman said. “We try to ease their mind because we know it’s a very upsetting time for them. It feels good to me when I can help someone.”

Another major part of the county clerk’s job has to do with elections.

“We handle everything to do with the elections,” Wiseman said. “And that’s something that is not just done at election time, we work on it all the time. Because people are coming in all the time, registering to vote, or making changes on their voter’s card. Or if they’ve moved and have a new address, we take care of that. So it’s a full-time job just keeping up with the election stuff.”

Wiseman and her staff, which consists of five employees, three in the front of the office and two in the back as bookkeepers, also do payroll for every employee in the county. They also make sure all the bills for all the county offices are paid.

The county clerk’s office also issues marriage licenses, birth certificates and death certificates. Plus they maintain all of the old records of births, deaths and marriages in the county. The birth and death certificates at the courthouse go all the way back to the year1853. The marriage records date back to the late 1700s.

“We have a lot of people who come in and want to research their family history,” Wiseman said. “So we take them back and show them where the old records are. We have some people come in and spend a couple days back there looking up their family history. We will help anyone who comes in get started, and make certificates for them if they want.”

Wiseman said during the summer months a lot of people come from out-of-state to research the archives.

“We’ve had people take vacation time and come from out of state to look at the records,” she said. “They will sit back there and go through those old records for two or three days at a time. Sometimes they find what they’re looking for and sometimes they don’t. But it’s really exciting when they do find what they are after.”

Wiseman, a native of Randolph County, has been married to her husband Danny for 36 years. The couple has two children, Denny Wiseman and Serena Wiseman.

Brenda Wiseman who has been in the clerk’s office as an employee since 1991, has a current salary of $60,000 per year as the county clerk. She first served as a staff member and deputy clerk in the office before running for office and being elected to her current position.

Wiseman also serves as the secretary of the Deputy Sheriff’s Civil Service Board and does testing for the Civil Service tests for deputy sheriffs in the county. She takes minutes for both the Sheriff’s Board and Randolph County Commission meetings.