Genealogy: Indiana Territory Court Records

Program Type:

Speaker, Class/Workshop

Age Group:

Adults
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The Hancock County Public Library hosts an hour with two genealogy resource experts, sponsored by the IUPUI Department of History, the Indiana Historical Society, and the IUPUI Speakers Bureau.

Did you know Indiana is lucky to have the only surviving territorial court records for states formed between 1800 and 1821? Clerk of the General Court of Indiana Territory Henry Hurst maintained detailed records that documented the legal problems of early Indiana settlers from 1801 to statehood in 1816.

IUPUI Professor Dr. Elizabeth Brand Monroe will discuss the importance of these early Hoosier records for legal scholars, historians, and genealogists. During her own research, she found the books fascinating in unexpected ways, especially as they documented the relationships of territorial court judges to Indiana laws. 

Teresa Baer, managing editor for the Indiana Historical Society, will also be present to discuss the society and their journal The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections.

Dr. Monroe is a history professor at IUPUI specializing in American legal and constitutional history. She has lectured on the topic of the court record books locally and nationally. She served as the primary investigator for a Federal Court Law Library grant to digitize the books in 2015. Dr. Monroe also wrote two articles on the records that appear in the journal The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections that illustrates their use for genealogists, legal scholars, and local history researchers.

Ms. Baer is the managing editor of the Indiana Historical Society Press. Over the course of her twenty-year career, she has authored magazine articles and book chapters on both historical and genealogical topics. Her work has won major awards from both the American Association of State and Local History and the National Genealogical Society. Baer has a bachelor’s degree focusing on global history and a master’s degree in comparative history.

View the territorial court collection here: https://ulib.iupui.edu/collections/ITCO.