Wayback it!
Archive those pages A friend and genealogical colleague was lamenting this week that information he curated and contributed to one of the genealogical wikis had disappeared in the course of later edits. The problem now appears to be curable and folks are trying to...In those legal records
The stories to be found How many times has The Legal Genealogist said it? There’s so much to be learned by simply sitting down and poking around in volumes of old legal records. Whether it’s a private law evidencing a soldier’s loss of an arm while...The new Creative Commons search
Fun, weird and sometimes frustrating One of the key ways to use copyright-protected material is to get a license. Now The Legal Genealogist wants you to stop panicking. That’s just a fancy legal word for permission. “Hey Mom,” you may ask, “can...Happy birthday, Homestead Act!
Signed into law 157 years ago today He was a Union soldier home on furlough, so the story goes. And he was determined not to lose his chance under a new law due to take effect on the first of January 1863. Due to report back to his unit in St. Louis, he prevailed on...Referencing legal Wisconsin
Badger State laws It has a long and rich history. Originally part of the original Northwest Territory, between 1788 and 1800, and then part of Indiana Territory from 1800 to 1809, Illinois Territory from 1809 to 1818, Michigan Territory from 1818 to 1836 before...Collecting the resources
Collections at HathiTrust The Legal Genealogist is somewhat shamefaced today. An imprecise use of the terms for record sets at the online digitized service HathiTrust Digital Library in a blog post earlier this week left a reader frustrated. I was focusing on some...Federal land in general
Happy birthday to the BLM GLO If there’s one thing that’s for certain in The Legal Genealogist’s world, it’s that the statutes of the United States and the states provide unlimited fodder for comment and — very often — a mass of...Such books as may be necessary
Happy birthday, LOC! It is, to a genealogist, about the happiest provision ever to be encountered in a statute book. It’s in section 5 of a law signed by President John Adams 219 years ago today — and that section read: And be it further enacted, That for...Landing those decisions
And in the latest “it never fails” category… It never fails. Inevitably, The Legal Genealogist will finish a post referencing in passing a resource that wasn’t exactly central to that particular post, and somebody will pop up within minutes to ask about...Subscribe by Email
