Burned Counties Research

Purpose: This page lists strategies for making research progress on families who lived in a place where most of the records are lost.

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  Fires
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  Wars
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  Tornados
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  Floods

The phrase "burned counties" was first used for research in Virginia where many county records were destroyed in courthouse fires, or during the Civil War. The strategies for researching places where a local courthouse or repository was wiped out by fire, tornado, war, flood, hurricane, earthquake, insects, rodents, mold, neglect, foxing, theft, tsunami, or cleaning-streak clerks are useful in similar situations all around the United States, Canada, and throughout the world.

• List of all counties in the United States with record loss

Tactics of Success

• Verify Loss of Records: Every courthouse with record loss has a different story. Some lost all records, some lost only some. It's essential to determine exactly what was lost and the year those records were lost. Contact the local county genealogical society, public library, and the courthouse to verify the information no longer available.
• Research logs: As you research in the county, keep a research log or calendar listing all the resources searched. This includes websites, online databases, books, microfilm, and onsite records at a repository like an archive or courthouse.
• Understand the Whole Family: Research all members of your ancestor's family including parents, siblings, in-laws, children and their spouses, etc. The more you find out about family members, the more clues to other records you will find.
• Friends and Associtates: Research the lives of all known associates including extended family member, witnesses on documents, and neighbors. Search for them in all records available - see above list.
• Write a Plan:' You should have a research goal formulated as it will help you determine what records to focus on and search for.
• Surrounding Counties: Search surrounding counties and those records for your ancestor and family members. You may find them listed in other records because of associating with others over the border of the county. Exhaust these records.
• Search Courthouse of record loss: Search the courthouse for records AFTER the record loss. If your ancestors stayed in the area during the time period, you should look in records up to 100 years after the record loss. Records of children and grandchildren can give information about their ancestors. Search in all the court

records mentioned below.

• State Repositories: State archives and libraries can have records that the county may have sent copies of the records of the county with record loss. Search all the record types listed below at these repositories.
• Federal Repositories: Some record types were copied and sent to the Federal Government and are now housed at the National Archives. Records include, military, land, immigration, naturalization, and other government programs. Search the National Archives finding aids and catalog for possible records to search.
• Search Online Trees: You can sometimes find clues to other researchers' work found on differnet online trees. Always look for supporting documents for claims of vital events and information.

Substute Records

• Substitute records are essential in overcoming a loss of records in a courthouse. Some records were not kept at the courthouse and maybe located at other archives and repositories in the county or states.

List of Records to Search

Do not stop with birth, marriage, and death events when looking for information on the family.

Substitute records can include vital information and are listed below:

• Probate records including wills and intestate estates of surrounding counties
• Land records of surrounding counties
• Tax records of surrounding counties
• Other court records that include both civil and criminal courts of surrounding counties
• Cemetery or sexton records
• Census records
• Newspapers containing obituaries and notices of birth, marriage, and death; in addition, search for articles mentioning your ancestor's name
• Local Histories - In some parts of the country have county or town histories that include early settlers and leaders of the community including biographical information.
• Military records
• Naturalization records, if applicable of surrounding counties
• Franternal or occupation organizations or societies that may have membership records
• For suggestions of other record types to search use the United States Record Finder.

Repository Alternatives

Make friends with librarians and archivists at local repositories and ask where various kinds of records ended up. When hunting down documentation for an event look for it in each of these kinds of repositories;

• neighboring county repositories
• 2nd courthouses (or other repository) in the same county
• county clerk's office
• county historical library
• county genealogical society
• state genealogical society
• state library and archives
• law libraries
• government documents library (usually at a prominent university in the state)
• land offices
• National Archives branches

Kin or Associate Alternatives

If research on the main family members fails to produce results, try studying relatives and associates. Make a list of people who show up in records of the family and study how closely and frequently they were in contact with the family. If necessary, track down the kin and associates to learn more about your family.

Study the family in community context. Get to know the neighbors and relatives. This means you use the census and land records to:

• extract full information on people in the area with the same surname
• extract full information on people by another surname living in same household
• identify census neighbors, at least 12 before/after—note who owned land
• if near a state or county line, study people with the same surname in nearby areas
• comb the neighbors for families with similar naming patterns, origins, or occupations

Think About Burned County Research in New Ways

Be innovative. Break out of the box. Force your brain to break old connections and make new ones.

Create a time line and/or map.This helps clarify thinking, identify gaps, and raises questions that may help resolve the problem.

Organize, review, and re-evaluate the evidence. Summarize the problem. Rearrange relevant documents in a different logical order. Review old sources for overlooked clues. Separate what you assume from what you know. Sort and weigh the evidence. Analyze information for relevance, directness of the evidence, and consistency with other facts.

Write a formal research report (as if you were hired as a professional genealogist) to clarify your thinking. For this formal report:
1. Create a well-documented family group record.
2. Write a narrative report explaining:
a. Why did you search where you did?
b. What did you find or not find?
c. What do your findings, or lack of findings mean?
d. What sources should be searched next?
e. How long will it take to search those sources?
f. What is the likelihood those sources will work?

Create and fill-in new forms to make new brain connections and raise questions:
1. Follow the family in ALL census years
2. In-Out list to help track each piece of land
3. Holes to fill in an ancestor’s life
4. Source citations that need completing
5. Facts that need better evidence
6. Ancestral associates and their roles

Use logic, deduction, inference, and inspiration.
1. Correlate records of neighbors to infer relationships.
2. Study migration patterns to infer where the family’s place of origin.
3. Try to disprove uncertain connections.

Continue Your Education and Follow-Up

Get an education.

• Read about the area your ancestors settled. Study its history and local genealogical periodicals.
• Take classes, conferences, and institutes.
• Go on a research trip to visit their communities to learn about the local way of life and repositories .

Get help. Reach out to others and collaborate to get help and learn more. Place queries. Hire a professional. Pray for help.

Share and collaborate. Give in order to receive. Share your genealogy and pedigree with one or more sites such as FamilySearch Family Tree, FamilySearch Pedigree Resource File, Ancestry.com Family Trees, RootsWeb WorldConnect, or OneGreatFamily.com. Share your genealogy on social media like Facebook. Test your DNA, and share the results with public DNA databases. Leave some family history, or a query, on an Internet genealogy message board—and repeat for several months. Contribute to the Family History Research Wiki. Send a copy of your ancestor John Doe’s family history (include your address) to each county library and to each state and county genealogical society where John Doe lived. Publish an article on the family in their local genealogical periodical. Register your address in directories of members of genealogical Internet web sites and submit your genealogy to their libraries. Put your genealogy on a web page and register your site with major search engines and lists (Cyndi's List). Other researchers will start to contact you and share added details.

Summary. Burned counties do not have to be end of the line research situations if you prepare well, look for alternatives, search a variety of jurisdictions and repositories for the family, kin, and associates, approach such research problems in innovative ways, and follow-up well.

Related Content

• Solving Tough Research Problems—Overcoming Brick Walls
• United States, How to Find Genealogy Records
  

For further suggestions about research in places that suffered historic record losses, see:

• Arlene Eakle, When the Records are Gone in the Tennessee Genealogy Blog.
• Michael John Neill, Burned Counties in Family History Circle.