I think that I may have mentioned to you, about 18 months ago(or I
may not have<g>), that I was abstracting cases heard before the KY
Court of Appeals in the 1792 - 1801 time frame(the first phase of a
much larger project to cover these cases up to 1880). I have many of
the ones in the first time frame completed, and I would like to make
these available through a site on our KYGenWeb, and not through the
USGenWeb Archives, if you believe such is possible(and I am pretty
sure that it is). Perhaps a link from our main index page might be workable.
Each abstract would be short, containing the names of the plaintiff
and defendant(and there are cases in which the given names do not
appear - only the surnames), the date of the case, the type(such as
land dispute, which many of them were, since this was early on in the
state's history), the county, and the names of interest contained in
the case. In probably 50% of them, there is not any mention of other
family members. However, they do pinpoint where these individuals
were located at the time of the suit, and there are those suits which
have information about when the individuals actually first settled in
the old KY area when it was still part of VA(since things began to
change as more people arrived and as statehood occurred), and there
are those that do have family information. They were still arguing
land cases in the KY Court of Appeals, dating back to the
Revolutionary War era, as late as 1830. I consider the Court of
Appeals cases to be a vast untapped resource for KY researchers.
Unfortunately, we have full case files only from 1863 forward. Case
files prior to that time were destroyed in a fire in the old court
building. However, we do have the law reporters, which, while not
nearly as valuable as the actual case file with all the depositions,
petition and answers, and all of the other items(the last one that I
ordered had 657 pages in it - fantastic material), it is better than nothing.
Please let me know your thoughts about this. I would probably be
sending them in groups, to be held in whatever location you
designate, and then, when they are all there(or, at least, what I
have completed), the link could be added to the index page. I still
have about a hundred more to do, but I see no reason why the
abstracts already completed could not be put on line, with the rest
added as I get them done. My time has been severely restricted for
the past 18 months, for a number of reasons, primarily the health
situation with my wife. Although I think we have that situation now
well in hand, I have a huge backlog of things I need to do to get
"caught up" to the point that I would like to be, this abstract
project among them.
-B
========================================================================
Joy Fisher has a Penny Postcard Collection that is a part of the USGenWeb
Archives and the actual postcard images are filed in our county files (if
there are any for your county). Please DO NOT delete these image files or
any table of contents that you might find that begins with ppcs-ky-xx.
Thanks,
Sherri