Was your ancestor sued? Find out using FamilySearch full text search for court records

When was your immigrant ancestor naturalized? Did the family own land somewhere in Upper Canada, as claimed in family lore? Was great-aunt Letetia sued by a neighbor over a wandering milk cow?

These are the types of questions that can now be quickly answered thanks to a powerful new FamilySearch feature: Full-text search for court records. It’s completely free to use with registration, and is available on an experimental basis through FamilySearch labs.

I’ve tried it out, and it was able to surface records I didn’t know existed, from Canadian land records to probate documents and even a suspected fraud case targeting a great-great grandfather (more on that below).

Earlier this year, we previewed full text search in this newsletter and on YouTube (see 5 reasons why FamilySearch full text search is so useful). At the time, it could only be used for wills and deeds. It was a huge improvement over manually browsing images, and helped us locate old wills and deeds in minutes. The quality of transcripts was excellent, too.

Now the power of full text search has been extended to other types of records in FamilySearch. The photo above was taken when I went to the St. Lawrence County Courthouse over the summer to look for old naturalization records. It took me hours to ferret through the stacks and browse the paper indexes to find a single ledger entry. Full-text search took just 5 minutes from the comfort of home.

Full text search uncovers lawsuit involving ancestor

It also surfaced the minutes of a lawsuit I had never heard about involving a great-great grandfather. He and several other relatives were allegedly targeted by fraudsters in Maine and Chicago following the death of an in-law. The transcript is intriguing, albeit convoluted, and will require more research. The inclusion of names, dates, and places opens up the possibility of surfacing other court records or local newspaper accounts to get to the bottom of the story.

Full text search is rough around the edges. Keywords are hit or miss. There is no advanced search feature. The results are often national, even if counties or states are used in the initial query. This requires careful filtering on specific FamilySearch collections to winnow the results to something more manageable. (Pro tip: Look for “Legal” in the collection name for miscellaneous records such as court minutes and Lis Penden suits involving real estate.)

I’ve created a video that lists some of the court records now available in full text search, as well as basic instructions for getting started on FamilySearch Labs. Happy hunting!