10
Dec
2019

An Inventory of Inventories of Federal Court Records from the WPA

As I’ve been researching lost copyright records from the District Courts (AKA pre-1870 copyright records), I’ve found that the “Inventories of Federal Archives in the States” done by the WPA are invaluable. Series 2 – federal court records – is especially important to those interested in legal history, tracking where things were before it was accessioned to the National Archives (which was only created a few years earlier). In many cases these are more detailed than the National Archives Finding Aids, and/or describe material which didn’t make it to the National Archives.

The usefulness of these inventories is focused in cases like Ohio, where the 1829-1842 copyright record book is listed in the inventory, but hasn’t been seen since. I haven’t yet located this record book (and may not), but having a reference of where things were before the transfer to the National Archives is invaluable, even if occasionally frustrating. Given that these inventories are generally available online but haven’t been organized in one place, I decided to provide such a resource – for my own purposes as well as to help others. In many cases there’s a survey note as well, for instance this is the survey note on the now-missing Ohio copyright record book.

A preliminary checklist was prepared of all inventories produced for this project, which I’ve scanned and reproduced here. Note that Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states and thus were not included. The manual for creating these inventories is also available, here. The Research Bibliography of WPA Publications also lists these, should it be helpful.

Also, although it wasn’t part of the WPA’s inventory, the 1962 inventory of records of the US Supreme Court is here. The list of states follows below the jump.

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