Cortland County Clerk Elizabeth Larkin is retiring at the end of this year after a 20-year run in the position. (Photo provided by Timothy A. Bennett, Owner & Publisher of The Cortland Voice).
Elizabeth Larkin likes to joke about her time as a resident of Cortland County.
Larkin, also known as Betsy or Liz, likes to say that she went “over the hill” from her hometown in Virgil to her current residency in Harford.
“It’s kind of a running joke that I have,” Larkin said.
Aside from calling the area home, Larkin has been a staple in the county for over three decades.
Following her run as the Harford town clerk and more recently as the Cortland County clerk, Larkin is calling it a career on Dec. 31 of this year.
“It’s been a nice run, very interesting and a great job,” Larkin said.
Larkin graduated from Cortland High School. She didn’t go to college, but soon started a family with her husband John.
The Larkin family went on to have 13 children. Larkin noted she and her husband would work opposite shifts to make sure the kids wouldn’t have to go to daycare.
“When I was going to work, he was coming home. It worked out well,” Larkin said.
Larkin and her family temporarily lived outside of the county, moving to places like Groton and Moravia. She even made her way down to West Virginia, living “in the middle of nowhere” with six children at the time, she said.
“It was fun for a couple of years, but I was ready to come back,” Larkin said.
Larkin and her husband eventually bought their family home in 1988 in Harford. A year later, she ran for Harford town clerk and won.
Larkin was the Harford town clerk from 1990 to 2003. She then took a shot at running for the Cortland County clerk position in 2003, and won again.
The magnitude of the county clerk position shocked Larkin a bit at first.
“I sort of knew what went on in the county clerk’s office,” she said in terms of research, deeds and more. “But I had no idea how expansive the job could be.”
Cortland County Clerk Elizabeth Larkin is retiring at the end of this year after a 20-year run in the position. (Photo provided by Timothy A. Bennett, Owner & Publisher of The Cortland Voice).
Larkin quickly figured out that the job is about “how much you want to put into it” and “how much you want to do.”
“Everyday’s a challenge. There’s always something new,” Larkin said. “Everything a county clerk does is governed by New York State. When they change laws, it changes our procedure.”
One thing is clear for Larkin: she loves working and serving with people.
That feeling of a connection with county residents and others is what led to the biggest accomplishment of her career, which was the digitization and preservation of records.
“It always concerned me, and I would actually think about it at night,” Larkin said.
Larkin’s motivation was that most of the county’s criminal records were in the basement of the Cortland County Courthouse.
“They’re very secure, but there are sewer pipes that run above it. If it ever floods or a pipe breaks, these are the only records I have,” she said.
It led to Larkin writing grants to digitize all of the mortgages, deeds that dated back to 1808, and all of the criminal and civil records.
“God forbid something happens to this building or I can’t access it, I still have access to our digital records. I can bring them up anywhere,” Larkin said.
Now with a 20-year run that stretched across five terms as the county clerk, Larkin is ready to retire.
“Cortland County has been extremely fortunate to have had Betsy as our County Clerk for 20 years,” said Brooke Kemak, currently a deputy clerk that will become the new head county clerk in January. “I have worked for her for 8 years and have seen her dedication to the citizens of the County. It is bittersweet to have this chapter come to an end. She is going to be missed in our County and across the State. Each day I try to soak up more and more of her knowledge, knowing she isn’t going to be a few steps away.”
Once she retires, Larkin said she’s going to travel with her husband. Their first stop will be Ireland, a place where she and her husband have ancestors.
“We never had much time (to travel) because we were raising the family. You just didn’t with a handful of kids,” Larkin said.
Larkin will also tend to her small farm of chickens and rabbits. She looks to add goats so she can make goat milk soap.
