Local court cases usually only index the name of one defendant and one plaintiff, regardless of how many people are involved in the case as defendants and plaintiffs. Witnesses and others who may be mentioned in testimony and other court cases will not appear in indexes either.

For this reason it is important to search for names of relatives of your direct line ancestor in defendants’ and plaintiffs’ index to court cases. Otherwise you may easily overlook something involving your ancestor, especially if he and his siblings were sued and the name of his sibling is the one under which the case is indexed.

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One response

  1. The really good cases did not make the index. The court book containing my gggrandmother’s divorce excluded this case from its index. Illegitimacy cases (aka Bastardy) didn’t make the index either

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