Published Court Records

Some court records can be found on the shelves of most libraries with genealogical collections. These published court records, most in an abstracted format, should not be confused with the published appellate court decisions that are found in case reporters. Case reporters normally contain only decisions in cases appealed from trial courts and are printed by official court printers or major law book publishers when decisions are released by an appellate court. Case reporters, which are primarily found in law libraries, are discussed later in this chapter under “Case Reporters: Published Court Decisions.”

Court records and decisions are not usually published at the time they are created or recorded. Rather, if they are published at all, it is usually by a genealogical publisher many years later. Abstracts or transcripts of minute books or docket books, often published by individual genealogists, local genealogical publishing companies, or local genealogical societies, are probably the most likely published court records to be found.

Although entire case files, which may contain loose documents having a wealth of personal information concerning ancestors, are not usually printed, the trial court records that are published can be quite helpful to genealogists. Many, if not most, consist of abstracts of records (rather than verbatim, or word-for-word, transcripts).

Like abstracts of any records, abstracts of court records should be used only with knowledge of their limitations. Original court records are always more accurate than abstracts and should be used when possible. However, published court records can often help researchers find original records (including many documents in case files that have not been published). Because original court records do not contain every-name indexes, indexed published abstracts are of immense help in locating individuals within records.

Some court records are faded, crumbling, or torn or have missing pages (and many have been destroyed or lost). Experienced editors frequently are better at interpreting such material than untrained researchers (especially researchers who are not familiar with legal terms and abbreviations used by court clerks). Therefore, printed abstracts and transcripts can be extremely useful, especially those prepared by well-trained and reliable editors. Most libraries and archives with genealogical collections have some printed abstracts and transcripts of court records, and major genealogical libraries have numerous volumes for some states.

Many abstracts of, or excerpts from, early court records have been printed recently. It seems that court records for some states are being published so often that researchers must frequently check to see what has been published most recently. (Despite this apparent flurry of court record printing, however, most court records remain unpublished.)

If published court records for the right time and location can be found, the chances of finding ancestors in them should not be underestimated. Many relatively petty disputes were resolved in court, and even people who were not parties to litigation may have been called as jurors or otherwise participated in court proceedings.