I've had a good experience in the McDowell County Courthouse. A helpful person there is "Missy" in the records room. I called and spoke to "Missy" and gave her an approximate date and a name and within an hour when I called her back she had looked it up and was happy to share her findings of the details of my grandmother's death. To get a certificate she requested I mail the fee and she would mail it to me. I decided it was worth the trip to get it quickly and look for other info. While there I found marriage, death, birth, military service, etc. The books are large and dusty. They have a copy machine in the room and charge a small fee to copy a complete page of the book or about $2.50 to type an "official" certificate for births, deaths, etc. I didn't have time to explore the basement but Missy told me that deeds, land, will, and maybe other books were located there. She also said the census records are located at the public library. Wear old clothes, be prepared to lift heavy items from overhead and to STAND at a counter to write your info. The floor is concrete and painful after a short time. If you have allergies beware that in addition to the dust and musty smell, the complete courthouse is being remodeled and there is sawdust (or worse) flying! But the treasures I found were worth the discomfort! My McDowell-Wyoming lines are BISHOP/MULLINS/FLANAGAN and BEEMAN/PLEMMONS/CLARK. Anybody have info to trade?? Visit with us at the MULLINS (and their kin) family reunion: Twin Falls State Park, AUGUST 1, 1998. Bring a covered dish and your soft drink and join the fun! Becky Beeman-Shumaker Glenn Belcher wrote: > > Good Evening List, > It appears we've run onto an area that needs looking into in Welch > I have no personal experience with researching there. For those who > do, nows the time to speak up. Brenda has encountered problems with > her research. How many others have a good or bad experience doing a > search in Welch. Does someone know of a representative at the court > house who we could check with for their guidelines and availablility > to research material. Maybe there is some rhyme or reason for this? > McDowell ListOwner.....Glenn > ==================================================================== > I agree however It is very difficult to get any McDowell records > I speak from my experience and I have heard this from many others. > The records at the courthouse are not kept and organized . It's hard > to find things. No place to work.If you snail-mail for a record they always come back > that the record isn't found, and you know very well > it is there or should be. > Please don't flame me for saying this but there is a problem with getting information > out of this county and perhaps WE can all figure > out a way to make a difference. Brenda Collins Dillon > ==================================================================== > > ==== WVMCDOWE Mailing List ==== > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% > .........................McDOWELL MAILING LIST......................... > Our McDowell Mailin List is sponsored by the RootsWeb Genealogical Data > Cooperative. RootsWeb is funded entirely by you, the genealogical com- > munity. To find out how you can support these and other internet genea- > logy through RootsWeb, why not go ahead and just visit this page: > ........http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html......... > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%