North of the line
Recording the enslaved in the North The year was 1782, the place Windsor County, Vermont. And an eight-year-old boy named Anthony faced a fearful fate. Eight years old. Enslaved. And sold away from his parents. Yes, The Legal Genealogist hastens to note, slavery north...Those interrogatories…
Standard Southern Claims Commission questions Any researcher who works with Southern Claims Commission files knows the occasional frustration of seeing a detailed report setting out the claimant’s answers to what are obviously very specific questions…...New portal for Freedmen’s Bureau records
Ancestry launches indexed record set There’s no way to overstate the value of the records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands — an agency that became known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. It’s a record set that extends far beyond its name to just about...Those snippets
Word-picture postcards of a life They are among the most precious gifts a genealogist can ever receive. Those snippets that help breathe life into the names and dates and places of our research. In late August 1908, The Legal Genealogist’s great grandfather...That long switchover
From pounds and pence to dollars and cents Reader David Watson poses a terrific question: “The US government established the U.S. dollar as the unit of currency in 1792,” he writes. “Nevertheless, I’ve seen marriage bonds where the bond is expressed in ‘pounds’ well...Transcribing history
The Citizen Archivist program There can be no better time than the Memorial Day weekend to join the ranks of the transcription warriors. No better time than this to add the brainpower of the genealogical community to the Citizen Archivist program of the U.S. National...Links in the family chains
Why chase land grant records The Legal Genealogist loves the readers of this blog. And Facebook friends. And the genealogical community in general. Yesterday, I asked folks to join with me in crowdsourcing the acquisition of North Carolina land grant records for the...Buy some land!
Okay… buy and share some land records! What a week this has been! It’s the week of the 2021 Family History Conference of the National Genealogical Society — virtual, of course, and not the conference we all hoped for in Richmond this year. But NGS...Proclaiming the war
175 years ago today It’s really only a couple of sentences, thanks to a whole bunch of commas and semicolons that probably should be periods. You can find it in the appendix to volume IX of the United States Statutes at Large. And despite the almost unanimous...Subscribe by Email
