Not all Court records are stored in a courthouse. Sometimes there is an Annex that holds the court records. Many times the Court Records are in an offsite storage facility and need to be requested.
Sometimes all the records are not destroyed or an index survives. Sometimes there are old vaults that workers do not know exist. The Works Progress Administration workers, in the 1930’s, completed surveys or records contained an courthouses. Many Courts have many of the same types of records, but every courthouse contains different records. You won’t know all of them until you personally visit the Courthouse and look inside the rooms. Copies of many Courthouse records are transferred to other places. Many places that have duplicate records are: State and National Archives, Libraries, Historical and Genealogy Societies. Many Lost Court records can be found in other sources. As an example I found a copy of My 3rd great grand uncles Naturalization records from pre-1906 San Francisco Earthquake. That record was found at the National Archives in DC in a Homestead application file. It was needed in a Homestead Allotment application in the 1860’s.
It is reported that the 1890 Federal Census was all destroyed. Many State repositories have copies of their own Census Records, but are not cataloged and a lot of onsite searching is needed to find these. Sales of Land at time of death is often contained in Newspapers.

December 3, 2019