In this post we are finally working on some of the Monroe County Court records. There are 2 indexes to court records on FamilySearch:
- Index to Lis Pendens, 1821-1901. Lis Pendens are legal actions that are related to property. Think of it as when a person has a mortgage that they aren’t paying. A person or bank would file a suit in court and this index would show that the property couldn’t be sold until the case is resolved. The index is alphabetical by defendant. It also gives the plaintiff, date of action and then there are columns for the liber and page of the mortgage and the liber and page in the Lis Pendens books. In modern times a Title Searcher would check these books before a deed could be executed.
- Miscellaneous Record Index, 1821-1923. This is an odd bunch of court records. The largest percentage are Power of Attorneys where a person gives another person (usually a lawyer) the right to do things like sell property. There are other things in this index like political appointments, agreements, and affidavits. This is also where I found the name changes that I extracted. Volumes 1 – 16 of Miscellaneous Records used to be in the Clerk’s office on microfilm. I couldn’t find those films now.
Other Counties in New York have more Court records on FamilySearch but not Monroe. So I headed to the County Executive Building (former the Courthouse) to see what they have on their shelves.
General Index to Civil Actions. This appears to be the oldest record index. It starts at 1860 and ends in 1957. It alphabetical by defendant and also gives plaintiff, file number, liber, and page. Another set of these indexes runs from 1986 to 1993.
Civil Actions books. In each of these books the records are by case number. Then within that case are actions and date of the action. On the shelves the oldest book is #18 from 1925. They run up until 1992 but there are some books that are missing from the shelf. I would think that you might be able to use the case number to get a file that possibly has more details.
Criminal Docket. These run from volume 3 (1936) to volume 13 (1993). They are by docket number and there isn’t a name index. I didn’t see what the person was charged with, just court actions. These would be difficult volumes to find a specific person in.
Index to Records of Convictions. There are two volumes with this name. Vol. 1 has records from 1960 to the 1980s. Vol. 2 has records from 1985 to the 1990s. At least these records are alphabetical but it only has two numbers after the name. I suspect these are liber and page. Not sure where the records are that these index relate to.
General Index of Convictions & Criminal Records. These indexes are better than the ones above. These alphabetically list the person, the court where convicted, certificate of conviction number and on a few records a criminal docket (with liber, page and file number). These volumes cover 1961 – 1993. Some records say that the conviction took place in City Court and in the last part of this series I found out that the City doesn’t keep old court records.
Index of Orders and Decrees. These indexes are alphabetical by plaintiff. They have a date, the defendant, liber, page, and a column labeled “nature of.” That column just has a series of numbers and I have no idea what they refer to.
That is all the records related to courts that are in the Clerk’s office. There seems to be a lot of missing indexes let alone the records to which they related to.
I had taken two court cases from the early 1900s to look for. Results of that search in the next part of this series.
I’m not a lawyer. I don’t have any legal training. I’m just a genealogist so I may have made some mistakes. If you see any mistakes, please comment or send an email to me at dickhalsey@gmail.com.