Ancestry Magazine

One of the many pleasures of family history is exploring new places to research. Among the most interesting are those sites that are close to where our ancestors lived. So the local courthouse should not be overlooked as a valuable resource for your family history. However, there may be lots of reasons we tend to avoid it: The courthouse is usually open only during working hours, so we have to take a day off work. We may have to travel a long way. It is a busy and confusing place where lots of very busy people may have little patience for our plodding and poking, way too slowly, through their records and asking questions no one knows the answers to. There are immediate issues and deadlines people have to deal with at the courthouse—titles to search and records to file, and, well, we just don’t often fit. So why bother going? And what’s the best way to approach a trip to the courthouse?

The courthouse should not typically be among yo ur first research options. Before tackling it, remember that in many states and counties, most of the county and local records are available either at a centralized archive, typically in the state’s capital city, or on microfilm at the Family History Library. Many of the records from local U.S. courthouses have been microfilmed by the Latter-day Saints, and those films are available for rental from your local LDS Family History Center.

You should check out these resources before you venture to the courthouse. The staff members at Family History Centers are knowledgeable about older records, and their primary role is to help family researchers. However, once you have exhausted these resources, it may be time to plan your visit to the local courthouse. Here’s a few tips on how to make this trip as productive as possible.

TIP 1: Know the County and Its Courthouse
One of the first things you’ll need to do before you visit a courthouse is to identify whether the records you want are still held by the courthouse. Finding the answers to the following questions can help you understand the county’s records history:

• When was the county formed?
• Is this the correct county to research or do you need an earlier, parent county?

Many courthouses, especially those in larger cities where space is at a premium, have transferred their old records to the state archives or an off-site facility. Make sure you know in what part of the city or building the records you want to research are physically located.

Check Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources (published by Ancestry) for the records available. I find it helpful to take a copy of relevant pages with me to show the courthouse staff. This way I can show them exactly what I want to search. A visual tool like this can be invaluable to aid the staff to know what you are after, not to mention to ensure you remember what is available as well.

Know the answers to these important questions before your arrival:

• What records are available in each of the offices you are interested in?
• What are the procedures to search the records? Do you have to make a reservation to search? Are there any restrictions about who can search?
• What hours are available to search?
• How are copies made and how can you pay for them?

If possible, read a county history, so you know a little about the region, the names of the cities and neighborhoods, influential families and migration patterns. Internet sources can help you figure out how the county is organized. Understanding who does what beforehand will be invaluable. Your knowledge of the county’s court system, and, if applicable, its early land-record system, etc., will help you locate and interpret the records.

TIP 2: Organize Your Current Research
Make sure your research is in an easily accessible form, because you won’t want to spend precious time at the courthouse searching through your binders and other materials. I use two tools for this: (1) A family chronology, which lists critical documented events in the life of a family along with a brief summary of those events (in chronological order) and the source. (2) I also bring my research calendar, which lists all of the records I have searched for on a particular project or family. (See my Ancestry article on Research Chronology).

Before I go to the courthouse, I review the family chronology and research calendar thoroughly and make sure they are up to date, so the facts are fresh in my mind. I take a print copy of these documents with me with plenty of room to write new notes on them.

TIP 3: Decide Your Research Priorities
Now that you know what the courthouse holds for your research, identify the unique resources at the courthouse you want to research ahead of time. Compile a list of records that are available at the LDS Family History Center, the state archives, and other localities so that you don’t spend your time searching records that are more easily accessible elsewhere. You should have already researched these anyway.

Before you go, identify clearly the most important things you want to focus on. If you know of a specific document, write to get a copy of it beforehand. That will give you a leg up on your t rip and may lead you to other documents you will want to explore.

Make a list of your priorities—information you just have to find. Then organize this list by the type of record to search. For example, if there are a few deeds within the same general time frame, list them that way so you can go directly to the deeds, search them and then go to your next source. You don’t want to spend your time hopping from this book to that. Once you see the size and feel the weight of some of the older record books, you’ll understand why this is a good strategy!

While you should organize your priority list based on record type, also give some thought to how you want to budget your time. You may not want to spend all your time on deeds, so keep track of the time you spend working on each document type. Decide when you have searched and located the most important records and when to move on. That way, you won’t find yourself at the end of the day working on lower priority documents when some of your critical documents were in another room or another series of records.

When you make your list, leave enough blank space to write documentation and to take notes. Be specific, this will help you or another person locate the record later on. Always put the exact, complete label found on the source, even if it is not as precise as you would like. I will sometimes put the physical location of the book (in the series of wills or against the east wall), although, yes, I know the courthouse’s organization will probably change next year.

TIP 4: Take Along Tools
Besides your obvious rese arch tools—your research chronology and your family chronology, list of priorities, records available in the courthouse and elsewhere—some practical items are also invaluable to consider bringing along: money for copies, extra supplies, hand towelettes since the records are often very dirty, and a map of the county (a historical map if you can find one).

While I am one of the original geeks who toted laptops to the archives, there is not always enough space to use your computer. In addition, you will likely have to move around a lot and there are many people in the courthouse, so you won’t want to leave it unattended. There is typically so little space that dragging your computer around may not be worth the hassle.

TIP 5: Scan Your Surroundings
After I have arrived and talked with staff about general procedures and the location of records and various rooms I may find them in, I take a brief walk around the room to see where records are located. What records are there that I didn’t know about? How are the books arranged? Are indices in one spot and the books in another? Get a feel for how things are laid out. And, maybe most importantly, where are the ladders and step stools you’ll need to climb the heights to pull down the book you want! (The books I want are always on the very top shelf.)

Once you have inventoried the room, you’re ready to begin with your priority research questions. Take good notes, don’t hurry, and be sure to indicate that a source was checked even if you don’t find anything. You won’t want to search that source to find nothing all over again.

Deed, marriage, and many other important older records are in large, heavy, bound volumes of hundreds of pages. Other records such as case files, marriages, and suits, etc., may be filed in boxes or envelopes called packets. These are usually filed in boxes with a dozen or more cases in each box. These case files and packets are never in order, so be prepared to spend extra time with them. If there is an appeal of the case, the original materials may have been removed and re-filed with the appeal.

TIP 6: Be Friendly with Courthouse Staff
I have found uniformly helpful people at the courthouses, some more or less knowledgeable than others, some more or less frantically busy than others. I will often ask for a general orientation, explaining this is the first time I have researched here and asking what rules or other information I need to know. This is not only informative but shows that you want to be respectful and cooperative.

Rules are there for a reason, and we should respect them. Respect the courthouse’s rules, regardless of how you feel about them; the staff have created the rules in an effort to preserve the records in the best way they know how.

If you are not able to find records that you thought would be in the courthouse, consider a few things to help ensure clear communications: Perhaps the person you are talking to is new to the job and has never been told about the older records. On-the-job training covers a limited number of topics, so your questions about obscure land records may not be the typical ones new staff members have encountered. Careless or thoughtless researchers who came before you may have behaved in ways that the staff has acted to ameliorate. Make sure you are not one of those who leave a undesirable legacy.

TIP 7: Be Creative When Searching for Records
Despite your best efforts at identifying what records the courthouse has, you may be told that a record you thought was there isn’t. In this situation, I find it helpful to take with me the listing of records from the state archives, the FHL, etc. Think about what you are calling the record, is this what the county you are in calls it?

Don’t be put off by the idea that the records were lost or that the courthouse burned and everything was destroyed in the fire. That may be the case, but if your off-site research has indicated otherwise, offer to look yourself or ask to talk to the person in the office who helps genealogists.

If you are told that records are not available, and you have information to the contrary, ask if there is a staff member who has been there a long time who may know more about the records’ availability. I’ve approached this dilemma with something along the lines of “I’ve been told that the records are here, and here’s a copy of this book that says they are here. So I’m confused, can you help me or do you know of someone else who might be able to help me?”

As a last resort, if I’ve been told by an archivist that those records are at the courthouse, and then arrive at the courthouse to be told the record is at the archives, I have a name and telephone number of the archivist, and we can often resolve the miscommunication quickly. Cell phones are wonderful tools.

TIP 8: Document Sources and Take Notes
So you found what you were looking for? Wonderful. Before you copy anything, especially from older fragile books, make sure you have permission to do so, and understand the copying policy and costs. In some places, copying is self service, while in others, a staff member must make the copy for you.

Take good notes—make sure you and future researchers know how to locate the records if you need to look at the source again for clues missed the first time. Begin each search with a complete description of the record book you are searching, along with the dates, the series, and the book number. If you make a copy, record the complete citation, the record type, book, page number, and any other identifying information immediately upon leaving the copy machine. You won’t remember such details even later that day. Don’t be so rushed that you let your research become casual.

TIP 9: Take a Mid-Day Break
Take a few minutes in the middle of the day to step back and review what you have learned, incorporate these new facts and clues into your family chronology, and adjust your strategy for the next half of your day. Reconfirm the key pieces of information you really want to know.

TIP 10: Close Out Early
Everyone wants to leave work on time, so don’t wait until the last minute to close out your research and collect belongings. Return all your materials to their proper locations as you research throughout the day.
As you leave, be sure to thank all the staff—with a special thanks to the ones who went out of their way to help you. Such considerations will ensure that you, or a fellow genealogist, will be welcomed on a subsequent visit.
Finally, although I’ve outlined your day as though it was your last on earth to accomplish a research goal, remember the most important thing is to enjoy your time and your surroundings, be relaxed and friendly. This attitude will shine through to those around you. Just out of curiosity, browse a record or two that you didn’t know about. And, most importantly, have fun!