Jailhouse records describing the incarceration of dozens of participants of Shays’ Rebellion sat for decades in a cardboard box at the Hampshire County Sheriff’s Office before state archivists discovered them.

The leatherbound register of prisoners, written on yellowed pages in looping cursive, described the charges of treason, sedition and taking up arms against the state leveled against 35 participants of the rebellion that ran from the summer of 1786 to early 1787. The sheriff’s office announced the discovery this week.