Check New Criminal and Prison Records from Chester County, Pennsylvania: Ancestry
If your ancestors or family tree have roots in Pennsylvania, you need to check the index of criminal and prison records from Chester County, Pennsylvania, that your ancestors acquired. The criminal and prison collection have five databases of records that are available on the Chester county website. In these records, some belong back to 1681, one year back when William Penn founded Chester County.
Now, all the records can be found on Ancestry and can be searched at one time. Chester County was the most popular area at that time in Pennsylvania, said Mindi Stevens, a researcher at Ancestry Pro Genealogists who have a specialty Mid-Atlantic region of America. If you are searching for your family history and ancestors, you can check them on Ancestry and Chester County website.
It is a great idea to check these records on Ancestry and find more information. You don’t know what kind of court case can pop up. Your client may be a defendant, or someone else has brought a case against your client for land partition and other cases. Court records can be helpful in a time when there are not a lot of records.
What type of records can be in the Collection?
There are records of Languishing Prisoner Petitions from 1718–1790, and these records contain the people who demanded to be released from jail. There was a time when they were put up in jail, and the prisoners left the jail.
Oyer and Terminer was a higher criminal court that handled the country’s capital crimes, and anyone can find these records from 1802 to 1910 related to crimes such as rape, murder, burglary, robbery, treason, and more. The court officials meet four times a year to hear less serious crimes that happened in the country, and anyone can find those records in the Quarter Session Indictments.
Most cases were heard for bastardy, assault, fornication, battery, horse theft, riots, counterfeiting, and more. These records were kept by Chester County and can be found in Gaol Keepers from 1804 to 1857. Also, prison discharge records can be found from 1843 to 1872, and these were filled with the court clerk, and anyone can find the proof of prisoners who had delivered their sentences but did not get paid the fines.
If I found the related person, what would I do?
You will not find the original record images’ on Ancestry because this collection is an index. The index contains name, complainant, or type of court case, date of action was taken, nature of the crime, and more. You can also order the original copies of the records from Chester County that contain enough information that isn’t included on the index.
If you want to understand the condition and situation of the people involved in these records, it will be great to get some historical background. What can you find about the laws of that era? Pennsylvania has its own rules, laws, and customs that separate the area from other colonies.
If you have put your ancestors in a particular time and place, you can find them in census records. US Federal Census that has been listed or counted every 10 years since 1790.Ancestry has a collection of US Census records from 1660 to 1820 and a combined Pennsylvania census index from 1772 to 1890. Go to the website and search for the newly available criminal records.
Ancestry DNA tells you the stories of your ancestors. In your Ancestry DNA kit, you get to learn precise geographical details of your family and clear-cut insights about your ethnicity. If you want to discover your family’s journey, visit the link ancestrydna.com/activate now and activate your Ancestry DNA kit.
