Searching records can be a lot of fun. Especially when you are looking for that 'special' loved one or aquaintance and don't know where they 'live'. Anyone who has been married or bought or sold property will be in the county records and it will have the address of that person recorded.

   When I first started doing records searching, I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. A friend of mine is a rock collector(he likes to dig up crystals and there are lots of places in Washington). He complained to me that some guy had staked a mining\mineral claim at a really good spot near Snoqualamie Pass on Interstate 90. He gave me the name of the person who made the claim. Nothing else. I said no problem. Ha Ha. After investigating through BLM(Bureau of Land Management), I discovered all such records are filed at the county records office. The name of that particular office may change slightly from state to state but essentially is the same

  First of all, to find your county governments' website go to search on your browser(I use Google. It seems to go to the right spot every time) and type in the name of the state and county gov;  (ie:washington state county government). It will pull up a result called Access Washington-Governments. Click on that. It will give you the links of all county governments that have websites in that state.(Not all counties have websites yet, in which case you will have to phisically go to that counties records dept.).

  For Washington State, I clicked on King County. It the went to www.metrokc.gov. Inside that website I clicked on Services at the top. Then I scrolled down till I found Recorders Office. Inside that is the Records Search. It pulls up a form that you fill in with the name of the person, dates that you want to search in(ie:01/01/1990 to 01/01/2002), and the document(s) you want to search for.Be sure to fill in the form exactly otherwise it won't work. It took me a couple of tries before I noticed that you type in last name first-Comma-first name.By narrowing the search parameters:dates and document types, it will cut down on the number of documents it pulls up.

  Imagine my suprise the first time it worked. All this guys records suddenly pop up. Marrige certs.(2), property bought and sold, liens, judgements against,address of person, the list goes on and on. I finally narrowed my search to mining\mineral claims and misc. docs. By using Terra-Server aerial\topogaphical maps and the legal description of the mining claim I determined that this person had no legal right to the property in question.

  I have gone to a couple of other county records dept. and have found essentially the same thing. I have tested this on two other states(New York and Florida) and it seems to work although some counties records depts.are not online yet. They seem to be "slow" in doing this because then they have no control over who inspects the docs.

  As I learn more about records searching, I will update this website. Right now I've been searching through Washington State Supreme Court and Appellate Court decisions for the last year trying to locate a court case decision that may affect state search and seizure laws.(that's another story)

  You can email me if you have questions or would like me to help you in a records search(if I have time and feel like it)

                                                                          Phlip Andrews