Jefferson County, Georgia, Inferior Court Minutes [Volume V], February 1814-July 1820

Description

The Georgia General Assembly created Jefferson County February 20, 1796, from parts of Burke and Warren Counties, making Louisville the seat of its new government. The county’s Inferior Court, made up of five justices of the peace for the county, tried any civil case except those involving title to land. The Inferior Court had jurisdiction over county business matters, such as care for the poor, building and maintaining the courthouse and jails, building and maintaining roads and bridges, issuing liquor licenses, nominating justices of the peace, performing naturalizations, appointing guardians, authorized indentures, and maintaining a register of wills. The Clerk of the Inferior Court kept minutes of the foregoing proceedings—every one of which places individuals in Jefferson County at a particular point in time–and those minutes comprise the basis for this series by Michael Ports. The court minutes also contain numerous original signatures, such as those required from all county civil and military officers to the 1799 oath of allegiance to the state constitution.

Volume V of Inferior Court Minute transcriptions, based on Minute Books 7 and 8, carries the series forward from February 5, 1814 through July 3, 1820. The volumes in this series were extracted from the microfilm of the original record books made by the Genealogical Society of Salt Lake City, Utah, and available at the Georgia Department of Archives and History in Morrow, Georgia. Researchers will find a full name index at the conclusion of each volume.