In part 4 of this series I showed what record volumes are currently in the Monroe County Clerk’s Office. It appears that older indexes are missing as are most of the actual record volumes.

I took two cases to look up that I selected from requests to the Rochester Genealogical Society via Facebook. First was a law suit of a man suing a local trolley company in February 1911. This took place in Supreme Court according to a lengthy newspaper article.

This one should have been easy as there is an index to Civil Actions that goes back to 1860. That index is alphabetical by defendant but I looked for both the trolley company and the plaintiff. Couldn’t find either in the index.

The second case that I was looking for was a mention in the Daily Record newspaper. That was and is a newspaper that lists all kinds of legal items including court cases. It had a mention from March 1922 of a man having a hearing for breaking parole. The mention in the newspaper says that his case was being heard in Monroe County Court. That court has jurisdiction over felony criminal cases. But as mentioned in part 4 post I only saw criminal dockets back to 1936.

I struck out on both cases. I went to the front desk and asked a nice older man where I would find records they had for these cases. He lead me back to the Index to Civil Actions and said that the criminal cases before the 1950s were also indexed in the Civil Actions. That didn’t ring true to me. In the end he couldn’t find either case. But he also didn’t say that the County had destroyed old court records like the City did.

When I came home I starting thinking… Mostly I thought that I should do more digging online.

FamilySearch Wiki has this article on New York State Court records. It mentions the changes of the NY court  system over time. There were a couple of types of County courts that no longer exist. I probably will mention those in a future part of this series. For the most part, the County courts from the mid to late 1800s to today are County Court and Supreme Court. That pretty much is what I had seen on other websites.

I found this web page from Historical Society of the New York Courts. That is an organization that preserves, protects, and promotes the legal history of New York. They started a project in 2022 to catalog all historical court records across the State. The link goes to the records of Monroe County, which is one of the few Counties that have submitted data on their available court records. On that web page it says that Monroe County has both Supreme and County Court minutes/records back to 1821. That would have been reported to the Historical Society by the Monroe County Clerk’s office.

So I firmly believe that the old court records do exist for Monroe County.

What do those records look like?

I started looking at other County court records that are online on FamilySearch. I spent a few days looking at records of Ontario Co., Livingston Co., Steuben Co., and Allegany County. I must say that all of these court records are hard to read. They aren’t the best filming I have ever seen plus there are legal abbreviations and jargon that I don’t understand. Most important is that the only index to these records appears to be in the front of the minute volumes. There also were a few volumes that didn’t have any index. That explains why I couldn’t find either case in the indexes; the old records only might have only been indexed in the minute books themselves.

Most of those minutes from other Counties have the court date, a short description of the case and disposition. Some of the court minutes are just the case being filed. Average case minutes are only about a half a page. Didn’t see any cases with detailed testimony. Some of the criminal cases have lists of jurors in the case. There was a run of records in one county (I don’t remember which) of people being tried for lunacy.

A week after my visit to the County Clerk’s office, I went back. This time I talked to a younger lady at the counter. She wanted to take me back to the Civil Action indexes. I told her that I had already looked at those and failed. I told her that my research showed that the older records had indexes in the front of the minute volumes and that I would need to see minutes for the months in order to find the case records. I also showed her print-out of the Historical Society of the NY Courts as proof that they had those minute books. She also mentioned that they have records in 3 basements, an attic, and at an independent storage company. She went to see her supervisor. She had me fill out request forms and I left thinking that maybe I was getting somewhere.

A couple of days later I got a call from Michelle (no last name) from the Clerk’s office. She said that they couldn’t find either court case. She insisted that I would need a case number. I said that none of the old cases had a case number. Again, I said that my research shows that the older minutes are only indexed in the front of the volumes. So I would need the whole minute volumes for the the given months I first requested. She also said that she has worked at the Clerk’s Office for 35 years and never has seen any minute books. She said she would get back to me. That was 10 days ago. She probably never planned on doing any further research.

I really hate to give up on the Monroe Co. Clerk’s Office. Especially because I know that somebody in the Clerk’s Office gave information about their court records to the Historical Society of the NY Courts within the last two years.

Suggestions? Thoughts? Either leave a comment or send me an email at dickhalsey@gmail.com.