"Mike Hitch" <mikehitch@mikehitch.com> wrote: >Hi all - esp. John Lyon - I found the following reference in the Somerset >County Judicials several years ago. I have tried to find where, in the >records, the 'judgment' was carried out - I assume via survey or >something....Has anyone any clue where this might be found (NOTE: I search >the land records for the time period following the 1790 judgment to no >avail). John Lyon - have you run across anything in your land studies? _________________ Mike: The Somerset Judicial Records present from early in the 18th century a summation of the proceedings of County Court for each of the four sessions each year, including an abstract of each civil and criminal action heard, but not the whole of the case filings. For Land Commissions, the summation in the Judicials included only the circumstances of the appointments of the commissioners and the verbatim transcripts of the depositions made. The actual findings of the Commissions and any survey papers were not entered there. For the actual detailed case records (including Land Commissions before the Revolution, at least), the place one has to look (and hope) is in the “Somerset Court Papers”, a separate series from the Judicial Records: SOMERSET COUNTY COURT: (Court Papers) MSA C1754, from 1722 to 1851. There are two problems. First, these are paper records, never filmed and endlessly voluminous. They are filed in folders within clamshells at the Archives, ostensibly roughly sequenced by year – but one finds much disarray, and finding a specific record may take you a day or more sifting through clamshells and the roughly 50 or so folders within each, with each folder often containing many unrelated case records. Second, my own experience is that very few of the actual Commission reports including the deliberations and surveys survive, anyway. One usually encounters the originals of the depositions transcribed into the Judicials, and some other summary text, but only rarely useful detail such as you’re looking for. Entering the Court Papers thicket is an almost unimaginable wild goose chase. Wait until you’re retired and have a month or a year to kill. Another prospect, though, in your exact period of interest might be this one: SOMERSET COUNTY REGISTER OF WILLS (Commissions) MSA C1753, covering 1778 to 1804. I just don’t recall offhand ever accessing this volume (later than my primary period of interest), and am not sure what you might run into. If it resembles the only other similarly-titled volume: SOMERSET COUNTY COURT (Land Commissions) MSA C1776, covering 1717-1721, you might have some hope of finding what you want. The 1717-21 volume contains all the wonders of reconstructed survey metes and bounds and detailed plats, and is a great resource for its limited span of years. Evidently the Provincial overlords demanded this briefly at that time from all counties, but then abandoned the requirement. The Commission reports are the principal missing mass from the Provincial land record documentation. They are often referred to in deeds and later resurvey patents, but the actual reports are largely gone with the wind. John