The information found on the following pages consists of descriptive reviews of the facilities and records available at the various court houses which comprise the Old~Bedford County region. (It should be noted that the comments made pertaining to the cooperation given by the Court House employees are personal opinions derived from the first hand experiences of the author and may or may not represent the experiences everyone might have at these institutions.)
The types of records commonly found at the County Court Houses include: wills and intestate records; Orphans Court records, such as estate partition proceedings and guardian-ship proceedings; deeds and indentures; marriage license applications; tax assessment returns; veterans records and some birth and death records.
Of the various types of records to be found at the County Court Houses, marriage license applications were first required to be recorded circa 1885. They are often recorded and maintained in the Prothonotary's Office. Birth and death records were not required to be recorded in the court houses prior to 1893. They were discontinued around 1905, although some counties continued to record them into the early 1910s. After 1905, and continuing to the present time, the birth and death records have been recorded and maintained at the Bureau of Vital Statistics at PO Box 1528, New Castle, PA 16103. The birth and death records maintained in the court houses are usually found in the Prothon-otary's Office.
Wills and deeds are often found together in the "Register and Recorder's" Office (i.e. Register of Wills and Recorder of Deeds). Intestate proceeding records and Orphans Court records are usually found in the Prothonotary's Office. But as will be noted below, sometimes the various types of records are all to be found together in one office (usually the Register and Recorder's). Tax assessment returns are most often found in the Tax Assessor's Office, but in many counties, those records are being maintained by a local historical and genealogical society. The Veterans Affairs Office most often maintained all of the Veterans records, but in some court houses (e.g. Fulton County), dockets recording veterans information may be found in the Register and Recorder's Office.
