Courthouse Road Trip

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 39  (Sept 27-Oct 3)
Prompt: Road Trip
#52ancestors

Road trips are the best. I love doing genealogy in place and finding those obscure records that are still not online.  I started road trips before any records were online. Sometimes to a local library, archive, or cemetery.  The most interesting to me is going to courthouses because you never know what you are going to find.

 Before I tell you about one of my courthouse trips, I must tell you about my husband’s Aunts trip.  They were visiting in a small town named for their grandfather and decided to do a little casual research in the courthouse. When they told the courthouse ladies about their connection to the town and some of their related surnames, one of the ladies told them of an elderly lady in town with the same surname and where she lived. (It was a small town and my husband’s 4 aunts are very personable.) They decided to drop by the lady’s home to meet her. She invited them in. After establishing their direct connections and finding common relatives they all knew, she pulled out albums of pictures which they studied for hours.  Before the visit was over, she had invited them to spend the night which they did. The next morning the aunts fixed breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, and headed out for their next adventure leaving behind a newfound relative.

While my courthouse adventures have never turned into a place to stay for the night, I have had some wonderful adventures.  I won’t mention the name, but I drove 3 hours to a courthouse in Texas to find any mention of a gun battle involving some of my great grandfather’s brothers.

It turned into a dark and stormy day by the time I reached the courthouse. The records that I wanted to search were so far into the past that they had been “archived” in the courthouse attic.  There were no stairs to the attic but there was an elevator. The elevator only ran with the key that a staff member used to escort me to the attic. As we traveled upward, she told me since storms were moving in that if the storm reached us, I should call them to come get me before the electricity went out. She left me in the attic with the phone number in my hand. 

The staff had no idea where a “warrant” might be located, but they did tell me where the land records and court records were located in filing cabinets.  The attic was kind of a maze of filing cabinets.  I found the court records first and the time period which I had determined the gun battle had most likely happened. I found nothing. Then I searched the land records just to see if I could pinpoint the land where this battle over a fence happened. I didn’t find the record of land being bought or sold even though it was listed in the index. I was later told that  it had probably been stolen. 

As the afternoon advanced, I could hear the thunder getting louder. There were no windows, so it was hard to judge just how close the storm was coming.  The louder the thunder got, the louder the birds, until I felt compelled to investigate. I went around several stacks of filing cabinets to see a brick wall about thigh high. I could see over the wall to bare rafters and no flooring. As I started to step over the wall, I spotted the sky in the distance. The entire end of the attic was open to the dark and angry looking sky. The birds were roosting in the attic space near the opening, hiding from the coming storm.

After contemplating for a few minutes, I decided that it was time for me to get out of the attic before I was stranded.  I quickly moved back into the attic archives area and called the staff to come and get me.

I didn’t find what I wanted, and I should probably go back again.  Next time, it will be a bright and sunny day.