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Milestones, 2024

Looking back to 2023, forward to 2024 The very best part of falling headlong into family history research is the stories. Stories in The Legal Genealogist’s family take us back a long way in America on the maternal side and in Germany on the paternal side. Stories...

Resolved — and resolved!

A win in 2023, and on to 2024 It was just a year ago when The Legal Genealogist resolved to solve, once and for all, the mystery of the marriage of the New Year’s Eve baby. The baby was my father’s aunt, born, the church records say, at 9:30 a.m. on 31...

Thank you, David!

Where there’s a will… It was 185 years ago yesterday that David Baker died near what was to become Bakersville, the county seat of what is now Mitchell County, North Carolina. It wasn’t even Mitchell County then; it had originally been Rowan County,1...

More to the story

There just has to be… It’s not possible for a genealogist to come across a key date in a family history and not want to know more. So too for The Legal Genealogist, looking at a birth 227 years ago tomorrow in a place far across the ocean. Maria Margarethe...

Zufferin’ Zebulons!

Yep, there are at least two of them, too… So The Legal Genealogist was dismayed to learn that the John Baird of Wilson County, Tennessee, who is her 5th great grandfather isn’t the one who left all the cool probate records. Sigh… I mean, I’ve...

The other John

Ruling out one candidate It’s always nice when a genealogist can rule out one of two candidates to be the father of a known ancestor. Of course — sigh — for The Legal Genealogist — sigh — that usually means ruling out the one with the...

No deeds, indeed!

Oh yes there are… A careful review of the grantor and grantee indexes of deeds in Winston County, Mississippi, says there are no deeds to or from William M. Robertson or his son Gustavus Boone Robertson between 1841 and 1860. To which The Legal Genealogist...

You never know

Hitting paydirt at NARA One of the most basic truisms of genealogy is that you never know what you’re going to find. That certainly was the case for The Legal Genealogist at the National Archives last week. The backstory: My maternal grandfather, Clay Rex...

Where did it go?

The rest of the land In December of 1796, Joseph Moore was granted 200 acres of land by the State of North Carolina. The land was entered in June of 1794,1 granted on 20 December 1796,2 and recorded in the Rutherford County, North Carolina, deed books on 27 July...

Memorial Day 2023

Remember and honor In so many ways, they were so much the same. And yet … in so many ways, so different. What they had in common — both were born to pioneering families. Both chose to fight to protect what they believed in. Both were 23 years old when they...