Skip to main content
HomeEvent CalendarSleuthing for Hidden Gems

Event Calendar - Event View

This is the "Event Detail" view, showing all available information for this event. If the event has passed, click the "Event Report" icon to read a report and view photos that were uploaded.
Sleuthing for Hidden Gems

Date and Time

Saturday, October 19, 2024, 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM

Category

Special Events

Registration Info

Registration is required
Payment In Full In Advance Only

About this event


Sleuthing for Hidden Gems - The FxGS Fall Seminar

The Fall Fair is a hybrid event, both in person and online. There will be three presentations, detailed below, and lunch will be available.  A registration fee ($20 for members, $40 for non-members), is required.  Lunch fees are listed on the website.  Go to the Membership > Members Only section of the website to receive the code for the member discount.

FamilySearch’s Secret Weapon: Court Order Books

 

From widows to orphans, soldiers to sheriffs, the court orders address the issues that its citizenry bring to its attention. Court suits, petitions, requests for compensation, a new (or better road or one that doesn’t go through the middle of their cornfield), permission to build a mill dam, a demand for freedom from indenture or unjust slavery, all come before the court and are recorded on the pages of the orders (and/or minutes). Usually incompletely or totally unindexed, finding the jewels among these pages often requires a page-by-page search in a courthouse or via a microfilm reader. Today, one can, thanks to FamilySearch, peruse many of these online.

 

Chancery Records: The Secrets They Hold, The Families They Reveal

 

Although this will use Virginia examples, it will explain how these can be found in every state, and sometimes online.

 

Controversies over ownership of land, division of estates and guardianship of children are settled in a chancery court. Theft, murder and assault are tried in a court of law. Both of these courts generate records which can provide information of interest to the researcher; however, it is the chancery court which most often provides the proof of relationships that are sought by so many researchers.

 

Chancery suits frequently deal with estate division. In the process of determining how the estate is to be divided, they often provide the researcher with detailed lists of family members for multiple generations, place(s) of residence and other details. Suits dealing with land ownership will often include depositions by neighbors and details regarding when an area was settled. This lecture discusses how to find these unindexed loose records and interpret the information in them.

 

But, I’ve Looked Everywhere

 

Finding records can often be the most difficult part of the search. Burned counties, missing documents, no record was made all lean to frustration. Learn how to expand your research into the lesser known records that can often solve your most difficult problems.



Barbara Vines Little Portrait
Barbara Vines Little, cg, fngs, fuga, fvgs, a professional genealogist, has lectured over the past thirty-plus years at conferences in thirty-two states on research methodology, Virginia and West Virginia resources and writing and publishing. Editor of the quarterly Magazine of Virginia Genealogy since 1996 and winner of the NGS Quarterly Award of excellence in 2001 and 2022, she has written articles for a number of publications including the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, the National Genealogical Society Newsletter, and the Board for Certification of Genealogists’ newsletter, OnBoard. The current editor of National Genealogical Society’s Research in the States series, she is the author of the West Virginia volume and has published three volumes of Virginia court records and edited others for publication. She served as coordinator and instructor for VIGR (Virginia Institute of Genealogical Research) Track II, 1996–2004 and as the coordinator and instructor of the Virginia track for Samford University’s Institute for Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR) from 2007–2012 and the 2017, 2020, and 2023 Virginia track at SLIG (Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy). A member of the board of the Library of Virginia and a former board member of the Orange County Historical Society, she is a former board member and president of both the National Genealogical Society and the Virginia Genealogical Society.

Register Now

Fairfax Genealogical Society

P.O. Box 2290

Merrifield, Virginia 22116-2290