And where were they then?
Just keep trying… It was 176 years ago yesterday that William Baker and his wife Mary Jane, called Jennie, welcomed their second-born child and first-born son. Thomas A. Baker, born 20 November 1844, was The Legal Genealogist’s first cousin three times...It’s just not as good
An alternative resource… but not as good Genealogists want the best resource. The one with the most information. The one with — oh, just as one example — an ancestor’s signature. The original record, however and whenever we can get our hands on...Lessons learned…
About that transient web It’s a resource The Legal Genealogist has consulted dozens of times. Put together by a researcher named George Baumbach, it’s entitled Colonial Pettypool-Poole-P’Pool Families, and it sets out a vast array of known...Original sources
Of original causes These are powerful times in which we live, and part of the power of the moment comes from the tidal wave of history that is sweeping a lot of misconceptions out with it. One of those misconceptions: the Civil War was fought by southern states to...That Johnson child
Even that “contemporaneous” record can be wrong… It’s one of the great joys of Kentucky research, those few short unexpected years of birth records in the 1850s. It’s also one of the great frustrations of Kentucky research. And an object lesson in...Dating history
When we get it wrong It is a stunning piece of American history. The first known written protest against slavery in what was to become the United States. Just about every website that reports on things that happened on this day, February 18th, in history will tell you...Linking father and son
That reasonably exhaustive research thing again… There’s one question The Legal Genealogist asks with respect to any genealogical database. How do I know? And if there’s one genealogical database where that question has to be asked most frequently,...In the hand of the law
When speling wazn’t standerd Reader Austin Gray is struggling with a document from the Laurens District of South Carolina from the early 1800s where one of his ancestors relinquishes her right of dower in a piece of property being sold by her husband. The hitch:...Dead-letter clues
Because the law said so Maybe you descend from J.B. Arnold or Miss S.S. Berry or Georgia Dennise or William Murphy or James Parker. Perhaps you’re researching Seth Cockerilie or Emma Johnson or Josiah Price or Rose Anne Regan or Cole Watkins. They all had one...Subscribe by Email
