A matter of local law
Remember the mantra! Okay, fans of The Legal Genealogist, here’s your pop quiz for today. What’s the mantra around these parts? Yep, you know it. You can probably recite it in your sleep: If we want to understand the records, we have to understand the law...About that mama’s age
Was she really that young? A reader wasn’t quite convinced it wasn’t a typo. He’d read the post about The Legal Genealogist’s maternal line, and was struck by one fact. “I see your 2nd great grandmother gave birth to your great grandmother when...Judging the records
Find the judge, find the court It was a fairly typical post that landed in The Legal Genealogist’s Facebook feed, a day or two or three ago. A genealogist had found a newspaper article about a rascal of an ancestor but wasn’t able to find the court record...Who took the tally?
Noting the census takers It’s right there in the best practices of the field of genealogy. The guidance that so many of us overlook, especially when we’re starting out. But it’s stated clearly, in Standard 40 of Genealogy Standards, focusing on...When the law is wrong
Official typos It’s right there, in one of the most important laws ever passed by the early Virginia state legislature. Just nine years after the Fifth Virginia Convention proclaimed that Virginia was a free and independent state,1 and just four years after the...And about that census…
Just read this A Pennsylvania genealogist, Tammy Hepps, has a lesson for us all, The Legal Genealogist included. It’s about that census… … And, more particularly, about that census taker. It’s an absolutely brilliant study of one enumeration...On St. Patrick’s Day…
Did ads for workers really say that? It’s March 17 here in the United States. It is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. When, according to the memes at least, everybody is Irish… Except the Scots. They stay Scots. No arguments there. So… despite the...The clues in official bonds
About the best FAN Club evidence ever… Reader Diane George ran into an issue that many genealogists encounter when looking at records of our ancestors. She’d come across an 1895 Wisconsin newspaper article that noted that C. G. Crosse and J. E. Morton of...The whys and what-ifs
Why we ask the unanswerable questions After The Legal Genealogist’s weekend lament about not knowing why a relative chose to remain in Germany in the 1930s rather than emigrate to the United States as her siblings had, Dutch genealogist John Boeren weighed in on...Subscribe by Email
