The laws of Christmas: 2015 reprise
It wasn’t always a holiday In keeping with The Legal Genealogist’s after-Christmas tradition, this post (a reprise from years past), has a question for you: Did you have a good Christmas holiday? And, with apologies to all of our first responders and...A matter of materiality
Locking up the witness It’s a natural human phenomenon: we all tend to root for the underdog. That was driven home this week after Monday’s blog post about a rather gruesome murder in Arkansas Territory that came to The Legal Genealogist’s attention...Reading the law
Oh, the stories in those books So you start out reading a statute book of some of the very first laws in a jurisdiction, and practically the first thing you come across is a special law authorizing the movement of some prisoners awaiting trial for murder from one...Your cheating heart…
The price tag for cheaters They didn’t really mean that, did they? The Legal Genealogist is probably more at home in those old statute books than most folks. I certainly poke around in them more than most folks do. But even I am occasionally taken aback. As I...The rest of Ann’s story
The widow Ann’s choice You’d think by now The Legal Genealogist would know that if there is anything that’s important to another genealogist… It’s the rest of the story. Doesn’t matter that there’s a lesson to be learned in...Her choice, not his
in Lieu of her right of dower When Samuel Wilkison of Orange County, New York, wrote his last will and testament in September 1866, there was one thing about which he was abundantly clear. His wife Ann wasn’t to have any of his lands. She was to be cared for,...Prisons not boundless
Virginia’s“ place of liberty and priviledge” From the earliest days of colonial Virginia — a main ancestral home of The Legal Genealogist and the destination for this week’s adventure (at the Fall Fair of the Fairfax Genealogical Society) —...The case of the family feud
Dueling administrators Oh, the tales the court records tell… And it doesn’t really matters whose court records or where or why… there is always a story to be told. For some reason, The Legal Genealogist ended up poking around in records of the New...Before there was Salem
Not the only, not even the first Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know about the Salem witch trials. Seriously, The Legal Genealogist knows tomorrow is Halloween, and everybody goes a little bit Salem-witch-trial crazy around this time of year. But Massachusetts wasn’t...Subscribe by Email
