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Veterans Day 2023

Honoring those who served In the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 — one hundred and five years ago today — the guns fell silent. On the battlefields of Europe, where war had raged for more than four years, and throughout the world, those...

Labor Day 2023

Mapping our labor ancestors It’s the first Monday in September. Hard to believe, as always, that the summer is speeding to an end, kids are back in school, sunrises are later and sunsets earlier. And that it’s the first holiday of the fall season here in...

The other rangers

Rangers, North Carolina style It popped up in a volume of Rutherford County, North Carolina, court minutes. The County Court of Rutherford County held an election for an office The Legal Genealogist had never associated with North Carolina. The office of County...

The meaning of that word

What invalid means in military parlance Reader Carol Bickel was stumped: “I cannot find a good definition for the meaning of ‘Invalid’ on the jacket of a military record.” And what it means here is a really good question, isn’t it? Because The Legal Genealogist...

No, actually, it’s not…

Not Presidents’ Day at all It’s the third Monday in February in the United States — and you know what that means. CNN has a headline today: “Here’s what’s open and closed on Presidents Day 2023.”1 Fox News has a “Presidents Day quiz! How well do you...

Releasing the land

About that lease and release… You’ll see it all over the land records of colonial America. In one document, person A leases the land to person B. And in another, often a day or two later, and sometimes even on the same day, person A releases the land to...

Kids these days…

… no different than kids those days … The reader’s tone was a little smug… and a little uncertain. John T. had read about the six-year-old in Virginia in custody for shooting a teacher and sounded a typical “kids these days” note. “At least our...

The laws of Christmas: 2022 reprise

It wasn’t always a holiday Here in the holiday season of 2022 — another crazy pandemic-impacted year — The Legal Genealogist is trying again to hang on to as many holiday traditions as possible. Which, given the latest surge in the latest variant...

Labor Day 2022

First Monday in September The Cleveland Public Library. The University of California at Berkeley. The University of Kentucky. The University of Montana. The University of Texas at Arlington. Columbia University. The Meyer Library of Missouri State University. The...