Has the Griffin Been Found?

I just learned about a court fight over a shipwreck that might be the Griffin from Brenda's post. For those who don't know, the Griffin was one of the first European-style ships to sink in the Great Lakes in 1679, and since the ship sank, people have been searching for it. At the moment, I have not decided what I think about this story, but I might post my thoughts about this case later.

And More On That Mystery Court Case ...

As you may remember, I posted a few weeks ago on a mysterious newspaper article that mentioned that one of my ancestor's brothers was found guilty of assaulting a woman. Well, I decided to see if I could uncover an additional information in the newspapers, but unfortunately, there weren't any other articles on the case. I did notice though, that this newspaper only published the results of the court cases that were heard by that court. (I checked the newspaper for the whole year of 1845.) Apparently, there were other assault and battery cases heard by the court, and the newspaper only bothered to print what the outcome of each case was. So, it looks like the article on my brother's ancestor was typical for that newspaper.

Although I was unable to find any further information on the court case, I did decide to do some other digging to see if I could get an idea as to what the fine would be in today's dollars. In a previous post, I used the historical conversions site to covert prices from the past into today's dollars, and I did that again for the court fine. I discovered that a dollar in 1845 would be worth about $28.58 in today's dollars. Add on top of that, a week's worth of wages was lost as well, and I guess the conviction was quite costly for my ancestor's brother.

Of course, I won't know the details until I am able to obtain a transcript of the court case. Has anyone ever obtained court cases like this before? If so, how much did it cost to obtain a copy of the court's records? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

A Mini-Mystery at the Moment ...

Several weeks ago, I decided to browse through the Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania newspapers that are online again, and this time, I happened to notice an article that I had missed in past searches. Of course, I did not mention this discovery at the time because I was extremely busy with schoolwork, but as you can imagine, this brief article has generated some questions in my mind.

So, what was this article? Well, the article happened to be on court cases that had reached verdicts by the point of the article's printing, and it listed whether or not the defendants in the cases had been found guilty or not. Well, in that list, my ancestor's brother, John Oswalt, happened to be found guilty along with another man of assault and battery of a woman. Unfortunately, the article does not mention any of the facts of the case, but it does list the punishment the men received:

"Com'th vs. Henry Harker and John Oswalt. Indictment for assault and battery on Elizabeth Kyler. Verdict, guilty. Sentence of the Court, that Henry Harker pay a fine of $1.00 and be imprisoned in jail 24 hours - John Oswalt pay a fine of $1.00 and be imprisoned in jail one week, pay costs, &c. ... August 23, 1845."
- Taken from "Proceedings of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas," in the Huntingdon Journal, 27 August 1845, page 2.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting to find this article, but either way, I'm curious as to what the circumstances of the case were. Obviously, I want to obtain the transcript of the case so that I can answer that question, but I also want to obtain that file to see if it might shed any light on the daily life of my Oswalt ancestors. For all I know, there might be some important details on my ancestors and their families, and since I know that some of my Oswalt ancestors were illiterate, this might be one of the few sources that I'll find on my ancestors. Since I'm still up at school, I won't have time to get this court case right away, but I hope to get the file as soon as I get a chance.

And just when I was beginning to think my ancestors were getting boring, I'm thrown another curve ball ...