[Genealib] This week's chuckle

[Phyllis Rickard]

Many years ago I was in a library in West Virginia as a patron. The library 
shall remain nameless, but it was a college. I asked for the 1860 census for 
the county in which we were standing. A librarian, not a student, led me to 
the room where the microfilm was and pulled the 1860 Virginia census for the 
county. Looked at it in his hand and said that they seemed to have "only the 
Virginia census, not the West Virginia census", for the county. He then 
started to put it back. I had to explain that was indeed what I wanted as 
"West" Virginia did not exist in 1860 and it would have been Virginia.

Once I stood in a beautiful 1820s court house in a southern state. I had 
found a book of extractions of deeds from the 1770s and I was there to get a 
copy of the entire deed. I was told that they didn't have anything that old 
as "the court house had been burned down during the Civil War in the 1700s". 
I said nothing. Thanked her. Asked to see the deeds anyway. I found my deeds 
and got my copies.

Phyllis Rickard
AV / Outreach Librarian
Lenawee County Library
Adrian, MI
prickard at monroe.lib.mi.us