If your ancestor lived in location A, do you know what courts would have heard a case involving a divorce, an unpaid debt, a claim of assault and battery, the foreclosure of a mortgage, a property-line dispute, or a fight over an estate/inheritance? It may have been the same court that heard all these cases or it may have been different courts. Court structure varies over time and from one place to another. Knowing what courts there were and what types of cases they heard impacts the records that need to be accessed.
The relative you heard called “Aunt Margaret” actually had a different first name and Margaret was her middle ame. You are researching a distant cousin whose identity you only learned about through genealogy. Are you certain that name you’ve only see once is actually his first name? It’s not unusual to discover that close relatives we have known our entire lives had a first name other than the one we thought they did. The possibility of not knowing their real name becomes even greater the more distant the connection. That possibility also becomes more likely when our only knowledge of the name is through a few obituaries or other similar sources.
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