When you find important information, hang onto it!

This lesson will teach me to hang onto valuable information pertaining to the people whose lives I am trying to put together when I have it.  In 2022 I found the Court Case heard in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, Gaulding vs Woodall, 1835 and read the relevant pages of testimony.  I even took the time to transcribe it all and saved it to a document, which in the intervening time have lost.  The testimony pertained to the fact that Margaret Lane, the first wife of William T. Gaulding, a soldier of the Revolution had a daughter Nancy who was not the biological daughter of her husband.  She gave witness to who Nancy’s real father was and his name was Jonathan Davidson.  Nancy married James Elliott and his family was from Bedford County, in fact they all were pretty much before they moved to Pittsylvania County.  Margaret either met Jonathan Davidson when she and William were still living there, or she already knew him.  Counting backwards from the age reported for Nancy her daughter on the 1860 census of Pittsylvania County, I estimate Nancy was born around 1782.  She was 78 years old in the 1860 census, therefore I think Nancy was born about two or three years into the marriage of Margaret and William.  See Gaulding Origins “Nancy Gaulding, the daughter of Margaret Lane”.

Even though William accepted the girl and raised her in his household, I got the impression she was never really accepted and this caused quite a rift in the family, especially after William’s death.  Margaret thought her daughter should get a part of the estate, which even though William Gaulding died with debts, was quite considerable for the time.  His wealth was in property and slaves, and he owned a lot of them.  The court ordered the ones not specifically owned by Docia (Decia), William’s second wife and his widow to be sold in 1844 at public auction at the Pittsylvania County Courthouse.  It’s very sad that they spoke so casually about the sale of human beings, but the sale receipts were included in the large folder pertaining to the estate distribution of William.  Fortunately, I downloaded every single image from that folder that is still available on Family Search and am currently in the process of going through and processing all of the images, all 301 of them.  As far as I know, it’s the first time the settlement records have been transcribed and analyzed, so I will post a summary on Gaulding Origins when the job is finished.  It isn’t necessary to record every little receipt, who paid who, but will rather publish an overview of the case. 

The Gaulding Heirs of course objected to Nancy getting a share of what they thought they exclusively deserved.  The sale of the slaves itself generated almost $5000, and that was a lot of money back in 1844.  The property was ordered to be liquidated.  Docia got her Dower and some slaves and the others got money.  This left Nancy with nothing.  The court even ruled that the evidence proved she was not the lawful heir.  Nancy’s husband James Elliot took offense and filed a suit, and the testimony pages from that suit are what I am looking for again.  Transcribing the actual wording will (1) PROVE Margaret’s name was LANE (2) Prove Jonathan Davidson was Nancy’s father. I'm more concerned with proving Margaret's family name than I am about anything else.

Here's the issue.  The books and pages I accessed back in 2022 no longer exist on Family Search where I viewed them before.  What I didn’t know is that Family Search is under no obligation to keep its material on the internet and available to researchers.  The relevant pages related to the Gaulding/Woodall case are in Order Book 36:258, 36:289, and 38:125.  Those come directly from the Pittsylvania County courts themselves, not from FamilySearch. These page numbers appear in the 1853 Gauldin chancery case, in the 1841–1843 orders, and again in the 1870s follow‑up decrees. Because the court repeatedly referenced those specific pages when issuing later rulings, the entries must be located in Order Books 36 and 38, the official Chancery Order Books for those years. These citations are internal, contemporaneous court references—not modern indexing—so their accuracy is not in question.

The volumes were microfilmed decades ago by the Library of Virginia in partnership with the LDS Church. They were included in the microfilm series titled “Chancery order (and pleas) books, 1831–1908.” FamilySearch later digitized those reels and made them available online. This series did include Order Books 36 and 38, and they were certainly available in 2022, but probably disappeared after 2023. 

FamilySearch’s online access is governed by contracts, permissions, and agreements with county clerks and state archives. When a county requests removal, when a contract expires, or when access terms change, FamilySearch must restrict or withdraw the digital images. This has happened repeatedly with Virginia counties—Halifax, Campbell, Bedford, and Pittsylvania among them. The disappearance of Order Books 36 and 38 from the FamilySearch database is not unusual and does not mean the books themselves are lost.

The underlying records still exist in multiple locations

The Library of Virginia (microfilm)

The Family History Library in Salt Lake City

Some FamilySearch centers with physical microfilm collections

The Pittsylvania County Clerk’s Office, which holds the original volumes.

Only the online access has changed.  I have been in contact with a representative from my nearest Family Search Center and she concurs with his assessment.

So, what’s my next course of action? 

Probably the next most reasonable step is to contact the Library of Virginia and ask them to print out the three pages from microfilm.  Even though FamilySearch no longer shows the digital images, the microfilm reels still exist in the institutions that originally created or hold them. The disappearance is a digital‑access issue, not a loss of the records.

Library of Virginia (Richmond) — Primary Source

The Library of Virginia (LVA) holds the original microfilm masters for:

Chancery Order Book 36

Chancery Order Book 38

All Pittsylvania County Chancery Order Books, 1831–1908

These reels were created by the LVA in partnership with the LDS Church. They are still available onsite and can be requested at the microfilm desk.

I will ask the LVA staff to pull:

Order Book 36 (pages 258 & 289)

Order Book 38 (page 125)

Lesson learned: when you find important information, hang onto it!