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Indiana Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 10507, Fort Wayne, Indiana 46852-0507

Index to Court Records for Monroe County, Indiana (1818-1875)

Submitted by Monroe County History Center

PREFACE (by Elizabeth Schlemmer, Library Manager)

The Monroe County History Center in Bloomington holds all known original Monroe County court records up to approximately 1950. These documents were previously held by the Monroe County Clerk’s office and were transferred to the Historical Society in the 1990’s. Some records listed in the original ledgers were lost before this transfer. [See the previous court record index published by Claude and Rachel Rice for reference to court records as listed on original ledgers.]

This index comprises the earliest county court records from 1818 to ca. 1875 held at the History Center. Both civil and criminal cases are included. In criminal cases, the defendant broke a law and the plaintiff is the State of Indiana. In some cases, the defendant broke a law at the offense of another individual (for example, a robbery), and these cases are listed by the plaintiff with the signifier (State ex rel.) following the plaintiff’s name. Divorce cases are marked in the notes section.

Probate records have been separated and are also available in their own index at the Monroe County History Center's Genealogy Library.

Every effort has been made to reflect the accurate spelling of each name and to maintain consistency of naming for companies, organizations, and municipalities.

VOCABULARY

We chose standard terms for entities that were written multiple ways on documents in this collection:

• Monroe County Board of Commissioners
• Bloomington, Town of
• Ellettsville, Town of
• First National Bank
• New Albany & Salem RR (aka the Monon railroad)
• Louisville, New Albany & Chicago RR (aka the Monon railroad)

DEFINITIONS

• Adm. is an abbreviation to signify that the individual is the administrator of an estate.
• Et ux. is an abbreviation for et uxor which means "and spouse."
• Et al. is an abbreviation for et alii which means "and other persons."
• Ex rel. is an abbreviation for ex relatione which means "on the relation of." In this index it is usually seen as (State ex rel.) which signifies that the defendant broke a law in the event of offending the plaintiff.

PUNCTUATION

When multiple individuals are listed as plaintiffs or defendants, they are separated by a semicolon if they have different surnames or by commas and ampersands if they have the same surname.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This index is the product of a tremendous collaboration of Genealogy Library volunteers. These dedicated volunteers spent many hundreds of hours cleaning and filing the original court records and preparing the revised index. Sincere thanks to all: Lucy Jacobs, Sarah Rosencrans, David Goss, Jake Sheff, Scott Evard, Christine Bachman Maribeth McKaig, Eugene Jeng, Caitlin Benallack, Lauren Baker, Beth Brockman, Aaron Walker, Jena Mattix, Lee Ehman, Pam Bilo, Liz Knapp, Randi Richardson, Penny Mathiesen, Hannah Micona, Kristin Milks, Christina Jurusik, Angelina Zara, Matthew Kruse, Kate McNally, Mary Ngo, Rhonda Wathen, Matthew Cesnik.

© 2017 Indiana Genealogical Society