ROOTS & BRANCHES

Despite us being in a season of joy, I’m going to talk about some county courthouses in Pennsylvania that do some awfully genealogist-unfriendly things.

First, I want to make clear that there are many courthouse officials and officers who take their roles as custodians of public records very seriously and deserve to be commended (I’ve written before that Berks County Recorder of Deed Fred Sheeler is one such public official, who has made it his mission to make many of the records under his care available on the Internet, treats in-person requests with courtesy … and also has a great holiday display at his office!).

But then there are other offices. In other counties.

I was working for another genealogist who needed a naturalization from the 1940s that was performed in a county Common Pleas court (as was more common historically vs. now being done as a purely federal matter).

The genealogist needed me to find the papers relating to the naturalization, make copies and have the copies certified (with an official stamped seal) for the project in question.

I gave all this information to the person who greeted me at the prothonotary’s office. I was told the records were on microfilm but that they didn’t really know much about them.

So I found what I needed, made the copies and then asked for them to be certified.

Which was when an extremely self-important deputy – whose duties seemed limited to operating a sledgehammer-like, rapid-fire stapler – announced, “Those are federal records so we can’t certify them.”

No one in the office would buck her and I decided not to make an enemy at this particular point and just left with my copies (It took the county’s president judge to order the prothonotary’s office to certify the records, which clearly stated they came from the county Common Pleas court).

Then there was Barry Becker of Philadelphia’s experience. He went to a recorder of deeds office and first was confronted by a clerk who claimed the county didn’t exist in the timeframe that Becker was researching.

“After I got the guy to consider, not maybe agree to, but consider that his county was 40 years older than he thought, he took me into the room where all the deed books are,” Becker said.

Becker, of course, needed the indexes first. The clerk needed to ask a co-worker, and it turned out that all of the indexes before 1924 were offsite, being scanned.

His best advice was either to send names to the scanning company to look up and come back, or perhaps Becker could start with the 1924 indexes and work back in time – even though his research was a century earlier.

My hope and for the folks constructively criticized here is that they take seriously their roles as custodians of records – learning about and cherishing these records and cheerfully helping anyone accessing them.

Happy Holidays to all!