Celebrating the law
Happy First of May!
You know what that means? It’s Law Day here in the United States!1
Law Day as a day to celebrate the rule of law and its role in creating and protecting American freedoms was first recognized in 1958 with a proclamation by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.2
In 1961, a joint resolution of Congress called for an annual proclamation of Law Day,3 and each year the American Bar Association chooses a different theme. For 2013, it’s Realizing the Dream: Equality for All.4
Obviously the best holiday of the year from the standpoint of The Legal Genealogist. And one that should be right there at the top of the list for every genealogist.
Because the tools of our trade — the bits and pieces and clues we gather to try to tell the stories of our ancestors’ lives — the very records without which genealogy would be essentially impossible — exist because of the law.
Let’s take the theme of this year’s Law Day and consider, just for a moment, the records we have of our ancestors who were both slaves and slaveholders that exist only because of the law:
• African repatriation records
• Apprenticeships of freed children
• Bills of sale
• Civil rights case records
• Deeds of gift
• Dower slave records
• Emancipation compensation records
• Estate records and inventories
• Execution warrants
• Freedmen’s marriage registers
• Fugitive Slave Act case records
• Legislative petitions for and against slavery
• Manumissions
• Private laws to free slaves
• Slave census records
• Slave importation records
• United States Colored Troops
• Wills
And that list doesn’t even include the big three: the records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau); the Commissioners of Claims (Southern Claims Commission); and the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.
I can’t imagine doing family history research without the records required by law. It’d be a nightmare, assuming it was possible at all.
So, once again, let’s hear it for Law Day. For a genealogist, it’s the best holiday there is.
SOURCES
- See 36 U.S.C. §113. ↩
- Proclamation No. 3221, 3 C.F.R. 143 (1958). ↩
- See 75 Stat. 43. ↩
- American Bar Association, “Law Day 2013” (http://www.americanbar.org : accessed 30 Apr 2013). ↩
I never knew about Law Day – but now I will be sure to celebrate!! It’s so true that there are many things we are able to know about our ancestors because of the law. Thanks!!
Glad to help bring you to a true appreciation of May 1, Diana! 🙂
Good Evening
Last evening I saw your presentation on the DNA it was fabulous. I have learned a lot in just a short period of time. Are you planing to do more on this subject? I loved the analogies you used to present the DNA.
Thank you for a wonderful job
Christine Curtis GR
Thank you so much for your kind words, Christine! I write regularly on Sundays about DNA and lecture to local, state and national audiences, but that’s the only webinar on the subject that’s planned. (Plans of course can change, but…)
I’m going to save this link because I’m trying to understand the full scope of all the records that exist from slavery days. Never heard of “private laws to free slaves,” for example.
Hooray for the law, indeed! Well, even if the South was a lawless place–in some areas–after the Civil War. (I’ve been reading Eric Foner’s Reconstruction, geting the impression that when blacks stood up for their freedom after the Civil War, whites sometimes just shot them dead.)
Mariann, in many jurisdictions, a slaveowner couldn’t simply set his slaves free. He had to have permission, from a court or from a legislature, to do so. So you can find loads of private laws for that.