True. You run into problems during and right after the Revolutionary War, when record keeping was understandably problematic, though. Once you get past that, Colonial records are pretty smooth sailing.
I’m still trying to untangle a couple of ancestors whose records are missing during the war. For generations, they named their first two sons John William and William John. And they always married women named Sarah or Elizabeth, so it was already tedious. Aargh!
Yes, probate records are so helpful. And land records.
More common in the South, it being a poorer region most Southern counties had wooden courthouses rather than brick or stone. Not that brick courthouses can't burn (I know of a couple) but wood burns a lot easier!
I've hit a roadblock running the family of the man who sold me my farm . . . by family lore, they've had the land since it was opened to settlement, but Sherman burned the county courthouse here and the county was mostly hardscrabble farmers (we're in a not-quite-mountain region in GA and the soil is not ideal for farming!) so they didn't get the courthouse rebuilt until the 1870s. Heaven only knows what happened to any land deeds in the interim. But no records before 1884 (maybe people got out of the habit of filing deeds! But GA is a "first-filed" state, so most folks file right away.)