​​​​​Chancery Court Records are valuable for genealogists because they provide names, relationships and often, quite a bit of detail, including information about scandals. These are civil court cases that fall into four main areas:

• land cases, i.e. partitions from estates and selling off land to pay bad debts

• bad debt / bankruptcy cases

• property disputes not linked to family cases

• divorce records (1844-1852) which sometime includes child custody cases

Chancery records can be found in either the Supreme Court Records or the Common Pleas Court Records. The Supreme Court Chancery records are arranged chronologically by the date the case was settled. It contains a complete record of the Chancery proceedings including petitions, pleas motions, affidavits, briefs or testimony, and orders of the court showing plaintiff and defendant case number, judge, verdict rendered and date the judgment was issued. Common Pleas Court Chancery records are arranged chronologically by the court term, then by the date the case was settled. It includes verbatim transcript of all actions in the case number, plaintiff and defendant, including bills of particular petitions, answers, demurrers, jury verdicts, court orders and final disposition.

The following lists are searchable by using <CTRL+F> if using a Microsoft Windows-based operating system.

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**When searching, please try a variety of spellings and name variations.  These indexes are not comprehensive, but have more names than just the main parties named in the cases.  We hope that one day these records will be able to be searched using the Full Text Search feature on FamilySearch.org.  Also, the page number provided is the START OF THE RECORD, not necessarily where the individual is named in the record.**

From 1824-1851, Chancery Court cases were held in Warren County Common Pleas Court.
Index to Chancery Court Records 1824-1851 (PDF)

Volume 15 (July 1851-September 1851) and Volume 1 (March 1852-April 1853) were not included in the original indexes.  Thanks to Jim Brokaw, this index will be coming soon!

From 1852-1882, these cases were held in the newly created Probate Court.
Index to Chancery Court Records 1852-1882 (PDF)

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