Often times in genealogical research one must rely on the help of Organizations, Societies, Libraries & Volunteers to find records in other states or countries. With Internet research there are a lot of wonderful people out there who will do look-ups in their immediate area. Most Historical & Genealogical Societies, along with Libraries have folks who will check their holdings. These kind people are a blessing to us all, however at times you may get a reply to a query stating that there are no records for your ancestor. Just because they can’t find the record doesn’t mean it’s not there… Remember that these volunteers get stacks of requests of look-ups and do not know your particular line, therefore may overlook something relating to your ancestor.

Here a few examples of records we have been told were not there, that in fact was there all along:

Prior to our trip to Bedford & Somerset Counties, Pennsylvania, we began a letter writing campaign to all the Societies & Libraries that held Historical Collections for the areas we were looking at. We did receive many records including Tax Assessments, Court Minute Indexes etc., but never any land records. Once we got to Pennsylvania, we began pouring over the many books; files & reels of microfilm ourselves. We just couldn’t believe that there were no land records for Isaac since he was taxed over the years for farming a piece of property. We must have been driving the poor librarians & volunteers crazy with our requests for more film reels & indexes! One woman volunteer, Cindy, was helping us. She sat down at a reader right along with us and went through the reels page by page for better than 2 hours with no results. We had all but given up when we heard her exclaim "WOW!" Of course we dropped our notepads and rushed over to her reader & there it was, the letter of agreement between Isaac Bennett & Richard Nichols dated 1804 (see documents page). Cindy was as excited as we were to find this record giving proof that he did own land, and a lot of land at that!

Here are a couple different examples of how persistence pays off when you get one of these replies. In trying to find a proof that Jacob Bennett of Madison County, Iowa is the son of Isaac Bennett (see Musings & Speculations page), we first wrote to the County Courthouse in Madison County, Iowa. A reply was received that the death records were unfortunately lost due to a fire. We then were hoping that there might be an obituary for Jacob, since he lived in the county for over 40 years and was one of the early pioneers. Once again we started by writing letters to the Historical & Genealogical Societies, a few weeks later we received a lot of material on Jacob, including his will, land records and a plat map showing the 1000 acres of land he owned. Also included was a query and family group sheets dated 1998, from another research who was tracing Jacob’s lineage. In one of these pages was a photocopy of Jacob’s obituary! The Historical Society didn’t even know they had it since it was buried between the group sheets! We got what we wanted and the Historical Society now made aware of the obit, can now pass along this vital piece of information to future researchers.

Another ancestor, not connected to this Bennett line, did not have a death certificate at the county courthouse nor was there any record of where he was buried. The only thing to go on was a "guesstimate" of when he died. On a day off, I (Lisa), took a drive,100 miles round trip, to do some research on this ancestor. First I went to the Courthouse and wrote down every death record for that surname and was disappointed to find that there in fact wasn’t a death record for him. Next I went to the library in that town, which lucky had a large Genealogy/History Department. I was intent on finding an obituary for him – prior to this I had written to the library requesting this very thing and was told there wasn’t an obit for him. Now this ancestor had lived in the town for over 50 years, so I found it hard to believe that being a pioneer to the county that there wouldn’t be a write up in one of the local newspapers mentioning his death. I went through the index card catalog and came across his name with a reference to a newspaper, grabbing the microfilm reel for the paper I found, quite easily his obituary. It was a half page write up on him, not only giving me his date of birth & death, but also that he was in the Battle of Plattsburg (War of 1812) and even the name of the schooner he and his family took across Lake Michigan when they relocated from Wisconsin to Michigan in 1852!

In conclusion, we urge everyone to NEVER give up once you’ve received a reply of "No records found". Sometimes all it takes is a letter writing campaign to each & every possible Society, Courthouse & Library you can find. You may get a lot of duplicate information, but chances are you’ll be sent a piece of the puzzle that one of the other facilities doesn’t have. Likewise, if you live near enough to the place of you’re ancestors, if you make a day of it and go through the records yourself until your eyes blur and you have a kink in your neck…your persistence will be rewarded with answers to questions and new leads galore.