In the April 1895 term of the Nolan County, Texas, District Court, C.A. Culberson, Governor of Texas, filed suit against J.W. Collins. Collins, the suit alleged, was the owner of 160 acres in Nolan County originally sold to J. Asberry … Continue reading →

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.        — George Orwell, Animal Farm (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954). So The Legal Genealogist was poking around in old records again and came across one line in … Continue reading →

The chattel deed On the 24th day of March 1876, T. B. Roberts of Tippah County, Mississippi, executed a deed in favor of Thomas B. Tigert. It recited the usual legal requirements: “in consideration of (cash) in hand paid … … Continue reading →

Paying the piper You’ll find them in so many case files, tucked away in the courthouses and archives and online record collections of American lawsuits. Some are handwritten, some fill-in-the-blanks preprinted forms, some typewritten. They can be confusing documents, but … Continue reading →

The language of the law. Part Latin, part Anglo-Saxon, all confusing. The surrogate. Sounds like the name of a movie about a woman who helps folks have a child. Or some stand-in Romeo who wins the girl in the end … Continue reading →

The language of the law. Part Latin, part Anglo-Saxon, all confusing. Today’s word is coparceners. It popped up in yesterday’s blog on deeds,1 hidden away in the definition of deeds of partition (“A species of primary or original conveyance between … Continue reading →

What exactly is a deed? That was the question confronting Michael John Neill of RootDig.com after he came across two documents in a land entry file for federal land in Coshocton County, Ohio. He wrote about the transactions in his … Continue reading →