GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH IN
TENNESSEE COUNTY COURTHOUSES
I have permission to copy "Researching in Tennessee Courthouses" an article written by Ed Byler, III for inclusion on my homepages as an aid to those doing research in TN. Ed is editor of the Wayne County Historian, and is extremely knowledgeable in genealogical research. This is a very good article, especially for a novice (like me)
To quote:
This paper was presented to the 10 September 1995 meeting of the Society at the Court Room, Wayne County Courthouse, Waynesboro, Tennessee.
I am often surprised when people ask me about what records are available in the courthouse. Anyone researching their family history should make the local county courthouse their second stop after talking to living family members. Many first timers and seasoned researchers are often disappointed when they visit the courthouse. They really don't know where to look for the records they need. And the seasoned researchers often don't know about obscure records that may contain the information they seek. Therefore I put this program together to provide some information about the various records groups in Tennessee County Courthouses. It is certainly not complete because some counties have differing records and have named their records with various names. But it will provide you with the general records groups and their locations in the courthouse. I've also addressed some of the more obscure records which can provide additional information.
First, before you hop in your car and head to the county seat, it would be wise to familiarize yourself with the records that are available in that particular courthouse. You can do this at home be ordering the Inventory of Microfilmed County Records for the specific county from the Tennessee State Archives. Before ordering, first write to the Public Service Section, Tennessee State Archives, 403 7th Avenue North, Nashville, TN 37243-0312, and request a list of the inventories and their costs. The inventories will be xeroxed when you order; the state has not published them in many years. When you get the copy of the county inventory, take a while to study it and find out what records have been microfilmed. This will provide you will a fairly good index to the records and their location in the courthouse.
Next, contact the Tennessee Historical Commission, 701 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203 and request a list of the County Historians for each county in Tennessee. While not all counties have active county historians, some do and with proper contact they can provide you with a wealth of material and assistance.
Finally, before you head out to the courthouse, check your local library and see what books have been published on that specific county. If your library doesn't have anything in print, have the librarian request through interlibrary loan a listing of published and unpublished material from the Tennessee State Library. As part of the Information Superhighway, the State library has developed a computer system which catalogues all available material in most libraries in the State of Tennessee. This includes manuscript collections. I don't have the complete information on the system at this time, but your local librarian should be able to obtain a synopsis for you. Or you can contact the State Library directly.
Now you're ready to head to the county seat and begin your work at the courthouse. But are you really ready? No. There are two more important things you need to do. First contact the courthouse, either the tourist office or the County Executive's office, and find out when the Courthouse and its offices are open. Nothing can be more disappointing than to drive two hundred miles only to discover that the courthouse, libraries and most businesses are closed. Wayne County courthouse closes at 12:00 noon on Wednesday and Saturday although the Clerk and Master's office is open on Wednesday all day. In Lawrence county, the courthouse is closed on Thursdays. Contacting the Courthouse will give you an opportunity to get the hours of operation, to determine whether or not there is a county archives, separate and apart from the courthouse, and to request information on road maps, lodging and restaurants. Now you're ready to head to the courthouse!
When you get to the courthouse you are going to find that the records you need to research are scattered throughout several different offices, record rooms and broom closets. I would recommend that your first stop is the county historian's office, if he or she has one. Sometimes the county will provide office space to an active county historian, while in another courthouse no one will even know who the county historian is. If the county has an active county historian, please pay that office a visit first to help you get your orientation and to find out what assistance the historian can provide. The office may already have a file on your family or the particular surname you are researching; or the historian may refer you first to a local library where there are files of information on your family. This can save you an immense amount of time and can be done by mail or telephone before you actually arrive. Nothing can be more depressing than to spend a fruitless day at the courthouse searching for an ancestor, only to find out at closing time that so and so had done a book on that family and the book was in the library, which was also just closing!
Now let's get down to the real dirt! And I do mean dirt, because all the county records I've ever handled are dirty! I would recommend that any researcher begin with the Registrar of Deeds office. Here you will find all the records books covering land title and registration, along with other records of permanent registration. No matter what has happened to the courthouse in the past: fire, pestilence and flood, the deed records generally survive when everything else is destroyed. People value their land records above all else. Which is an interesting comment on what not only we, but our ancestors considered important.
When you first enter the registrar's office, locate the original entry books. The original entry book will record the first step in the process your ancestor would have used to acquire land from the State. Not all of these entries will be recorded in a particular county especially if it were created from an older county. And here it becomes important to know that there are widely different laws governing land entry in Tennessee depending on your counties location. When North Carolina ceded its western territory to the US Government in 1787, it retained the right to grant lands in that territory until all of the revolutionary veterans had been paid. This caused a great deal of confusion in early Tennessee because both North Carolina and Tennessee were granting lands in the same area. Tennessee would frequently nullify all North Carolina grants, North Carolina would complain and issue even more grants. Finally in 1806, Congress took over the whole operation and by the Act of 1806 and the enabling acts in Tennessee, some order was brought to the business.
The act of 1806 established the Congressional Reservation located south of Duck River and East of the Tennessee River, west of Winchester Military line running from Huntsville through Pulaski to Columbia, and north of the southern boundary of the state.
All land west of the Tennessee river were included in this congressional reservation. The act stated that these congressional reservation lands were to be held in reserve until all the lands north and east of the line had been taken up and would be used only if the revolutionary war claims of North Carolina could not be satisfied by those lands north and east. The same act of 1806 also divided the land north and east of the reservation into 5 surveyors districts. Each district was laid off in ranges and sections with each section 5 miles square instead of the Jeffersonian I mile square. In 1819, the act was amended to take in the remainder of the state with and additional seven districts being created. Giles, Lawrence, Wayne and the part of Hardin Co., east of the Tennessee River, are part of the 7th and 8th surveyors districts, Hardin county west of the Tennessee is part of the 9th. These districts are not to be confused with the county civil districts which came into being with the state constitution of 1836. The surveyor's districts deal expressly with land, while the civil districts are a division of government.
The entry books recorded the original application for the land, indicating where it was generally and the amount and how it was purchased, either by military warrant, a certificate of purchase issued by the Register of the State or his subordinates, or by occupancy or preemption. Next the settler had to get the land surveyed. The entry taker issued a certificate to the settler who took it to the surveyor to have the land surveyed. The plat of the survey was recorded in a separate survey book. Both of these record books are very important because transfers of title were recorded in each which were not recorded anywhere else. They also will provide references to land which had been granted earlier but which does not appear anywhere in either the entry book or the surveyors books, thus referencing you to an older book in an older county.
I don't need to go into detail on the deed books. If you have done any research in a courthouse anywhere, you know the importance of the deed records. But the registrars office will also have other records which might prove important. There are the lease and mortgage records, records of oil, gas, coal and mineral rights to property, and also registers of military discharges from W.W.I and subsequent wars. There are also registrar's notebooks. These notebooks show the date a document was brought in for recording, the date it was recorded in the record books and the book and page number. Sometimes this may be the only record of a land transaction, especially if the clerk was negligent in actually recording the deed or for records during periods of war or disaster. If an older book has been copied into a newer book, don't be afraid to ask to see the original. If it still exists it may contain information that was inadvertently left out of the transcription.
Now let's turn our attention to the County Court Clerk's or County Clerk's office. Generally you will find in this office, the minute books of the county court, marriage records, estate records, birth and death records between 1881 1883, 1908 and 1912 and later, guardianship records, and various other county and inferior court records. Now in some cases the various records may now be under the jurisdiction of another office. General Sessions Court records are now in the Circuit Court Clerk's office and in some counties the estate records have been moved to the Clerk & Master's office of the Chancery Court. But will address those in turn.
