Yesterday I had a phone call from the Butler County, Pennsylvania courthouse. I had sent and requested, by snail mail, information on Ulrich West. He was naturalized in 1844 and had immigrated here with his parents in 1829 at the age of 9. This should give me information on his parents, where he was born and possibly the ship he came to the United States in.
The prothonotary’s office called and left a message on my cell phone. She said she found all kinds of information in his file and to send a check for $6.50. I can hardly wait for the 6 pages of information they will be sending me. I figure that I should be getting it back sometime early next week. The waiting is killer.
I put together more documents to send for death notices yesterday and they will get dropped in the mail today too. The NARA sent a notice yesterday that they were unable to find information on my Michael-Martin-John Collins grandfather. He is getting a bit frustrating to chase around.
Every success and failure makes you look again at the information that you have on an individual. If military info is not available, try death records. If they immigrated, try naturalization records and if they had children you can sometimes get the information from files the kids had filled out.