burned courthouse
What do you do when the records you need to answer your research question are not there? Few experiences frustrate genealogists more frequently or intensely than discovering that records are missing. The reasons for missing documents are many: burned courthouse; clerks tossing “obsolete” records; autograph hungers; relatives who just had to have that ancestral record; […]
I used to think of “record loss” as being related to “burned counties” and a “Southern” researcher’s problem. I was wrong on both counts. As this map of the United States published by FamilySearch will attest, fires were not limited to the Southern states. My eye quickly zoomed in on that bright red color at […]
All genealogists face record loss at some time or another due to researching in a burned county. But record loss is not just a result of fire. There are other disasters, intentional or otherwise, that can lead to missing records. That discovery leads to disappointment and frustration! What is a genealogist to do? In SLIG […]