Using the Archives
How to find records, what is open, how to cite the Archives and how to ask for more.
What is open
Every record opens to everyone 72 years after it was made, on the first of January after it turns 72. In 2026 that means everything made in 1953 or earlier. Newer records are kept for the family.
Whatever its age, a record never shows identity or account numbers, and living people appear by name only.
Most open records are shown with an image of the page and a full typed transcript. Images that carry another website's watermark, such as Civil War files from Fold3 and the printed Tennessee court reports from Google Books, are shown by transcript only; each entry names where the original can be seen.
Finding records
- Search for both spellings, Belcher and Belsher, and for first names as the clerks wrote them: Wiley, Wily, Wylie.
- Records are numbered in the order they entered the Archives, not by date. The number is the record's permanent reference.
- Undated pages are dated from their contents where possible; the transcript notes say when a date is uncertain.
- Words the transcriber could not read are marked [?] or [illegible].
Citing the Archives
Cite the original record first, then the Archives, as each catalogue entry shows. For example:
Supreme Court of Tennessee, Belcher v. Belcher, 10 Yerger 121 (1836); Belsher Archives, record 387.
Asking for copies or information
To ask for a copy of a scan, write a short request below. To share family records or send a correction, use the contact page. The page puts it together for you to copy and send to the Keeper of the Archives.
Copy this text and send it to the Keeper of the Archives.
Records of enslaved people
Members of the Belsher family held people in slavery in Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi until 1865. Their deeds, mortgages, bills of sale and estate papers name some of those people, often by first name, age and price alone.
The Archives keeps these records open and transcribes them in full, using the words of the original, so that descendants of the people named can find their ancestors. Each such record is marked in the catalogue. The Archives does not soften or remove them.
Acknowledgments
Much of what the Archives holds was found by family researchers before it existed, above all Millie Belsher Liebert, who has researched the family since 1963 and brought the 1836 Tennessee Supreme Court case to light, and Ken Belsher, the family genealogist.