The language of the law. Part Latin, part Greek, part Anglo-Saxon, all confusing.
If this is Friday it must be…
Um…
What day is it again?
The Legal Genealogist is home from the 2018 Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research, hosted by the Georgia Genealogical Society in Athens, where a couple of dozen first-rate students kept her on her toes for five days focusing on advanced methodology and evidence analysis.
But since classes started Sunday this year, instead of the usual Monday, to accommodate the venue, all of us spent the week trying to figure out what day it was. The Tuesday field trip that took place on Monday. The homework due Friday which had to be in by Thursday.
And that discombobulation carries over this morning as we all scramble to catch up on a week away so… you know what that means, right?
More alphabet soup… and we’re up to the letter L, so…
Today, L is for levy.
Which, in the law, can be either a verb (an action word) or a noun (a person, place or thing or person or group of persons, places or things).
The verb, to levy, in the words of Black’s Law Dictionary, is “to raise; execute; exact; collect; gather; take up; seize. Thus, to levy (raise or collect) a tax; to levy (raise or set up) a nuisance; to levy (acknowledge) a fine, to levy (inaugurate) war; to levy an execution, i.e., to levy or collect a sum of money on an execution.”1
And the noun, according to the law dictionaries, in practice, is “a seizure; the raising of the money for which an execution has been issued.”2
Yep, these are pretty important for us as genealogists because in so many cases the records follow the money. The taxes that were levied — set and collected — and the levy executed on property can be among the most interesting and valuable records we can find.
But… I think Mr. Black missed one.
Let’s move over to the ordinary dictionaries for a minute, because even the online versions of the day-to-day dictionaries add one more that’s important for us as genealogists: as a verb, “the enlistment or conscription of men for military service” and as a noun, “troops raised by levy.”3
Many of our early militia records are going to be called a levy as well, whether the record is referring to the act of rounding up the troops needed for a particular purpose or the troops themselves as a collective noun.
The one thing we shouldn’t go looking for as genealogists is the levy to which the Chevy was driven when it turned out to be dry. Because that was levee,4 not levy, and, well… now I’ve given you an ear worm for the rest of the day…
SOURCES
- Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 707, “levy.” ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com : accessed 8 June 2018), “levy.” ↩
- Oxford Dictionaries Online (http://oxforddictionaries.com/ : accessed 8 June 2018), “levee” (a wall made of land or other materials that is built to stop a river from overflowing). ↩
“The one thing we shouldn’t go looking for as genealogists is the levy to which the Chevy was driven when it turned out to be dry.”
Unless you ancestor was on the levee board that passed the levy to fill the levee and then left in his Chevy.
Okay, you win on that one!! 🙂
I never knew about the military use of the term levy – merci, I’ll be checking in a few more sources. I salute Michael above for his winning reply to you! I’m now pulling out a few old rock’n roll CDs to bust that earworm from you. One never knows what will happen after reading a Judy Russell post… 😉
Different languages — levee is a French word inherited from the Acadians who founded the city of New Orleans before the Louisiana Purchase. It means lifting up or arising, and is a perfect description of the land reclamation dike systems the Acadians developed in their native Poitu and brought with them, first to Nova Scotia, and later to Louisiana.
I am delighted to to see “discombobulated” used in the blog. My wife use it all the time to express our state of mind; but I’ve rarely seen seen it used elsewhere. When we are really happy, we say we are combulated :)))))
What? No footnote for the first sentence of the last paragraph? How will I ever find out what you meant? Guess I’ll just have to mull and ponder while I have another slice of American Pie.
Ah, someone else who may have issues with cultural literacy over the last half-century or so … Try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Pie_(song) for an explanation.
Touche´. You and I both can joke, but your point about cultural literacy may not be far off the mark. Two real-life examples: A couple years ago I was speaking with a young professional (early 30s I estimate) about the booming growth of the Charlotte, NC, suburbs. I mentioned that as recently as the 1970s the three towns just north of Charlotte each had only one doctor — “Marcus Welby” types, as I described them. It wasn’t until I saw the blank look on his face that I realized just how old I was. Second example: Talking with my friends’ mid-20s daughters about classic movies. (And these are SMART young women). When Gone With the Wind came up, I commented about Carol Burnett’s classic parody. Not only had they not seen the skit, they knew nothing about Carol herself. Sigh. So yes, sadly, footnotes may be more necessary than we would want to believe. (Oh, and I suppose I should follow my own advice. Where I used the term “mull and ponder,” please add a footnote and cite Mark Lowe! 🙂 )
Many years ago, Beloit College in Wisconsin set up a guide for faculty to the incoming class to orient the faculty to what the students knew and didn’t know — to set their level of cultural literacy. Things like (for the class of 2002, born in 1980) “The Vietnam War is as ancient history to them as WWI and WWII or even the Civil War.” That made me feel old. But in only a few years I realized that I didn’t even understand some of the cultural references these students were supposed to be too young to understand. They had come and gone without my ever having noticed. Sigh…