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Rules of my road: 2024

Not legal advice! So many reader questions come in that are beyond what The Legal Genealogist can answer in this blog, because they’re asking for legal advice. Um… that’s not what this blog is all about. Not what this blog can do. It’s...

Welcome to 1928!

The copyright clock keeps ticking This is the second day of January and, for many Americans, the first work day of 2024. For The Legal Genealogist, it’s the second day of 1928. No, that’s not a typo. I really do mean 1928. The year that books like D.H...

Happy New Year 2024!

Twelve years and counting… Twelve years ago today, on the first of January 2012, the very first post appeared here at The Legal Genealogist. It explained that: My purpose in writing The Legal Genealogist is, in part, to help folks understand the often arcane and...

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...

The Official TLG 2023 Thank You List

To the hosts and more of 2023 Wait just a minute here. Hold on. It isn’t really already…? How can it be…? Seriously…? Can it really be the next to the last day of 2023? Yep. Here we are again, at the end of another busy year, and a time to step up and acknowledge all...

That RootsTech keynote…

By special demand… Recently, on Facebook, friend and genealogical colleague Pat Richley-Erickson recalled hearing a keynote given at the RootsTech conference in 2014. It was by The Legal Genealogist, and entitled Just Three Generations, and Pat and a few others...

The returns of the 2023 season

What to do with the returns cash Okay. Let’s all admit it. Come on. Say it out loud and get it over with. Here… The Legal Genealogist will go first: Not everything we got for a holiday gift was a hit. Yep, folks, that soap-on-a-rope just isn’t quite...

23andMe amends terms of service

A change in arbitration rules There’s been a lot of angst recently, in the genealogical community and in the popular press, about a change in the terms of service at 23andMe posted at the end of last month. The change follows disclosures in October of a data...

Sixty years ago today

Childhood’s end It was sixty years ago today when childhood ended. At least The Legal Genealogist’s childhood. There may not have been all that much remaining, that bleak day in November 1963. I was, after all, a child who learned to curl up in a ball in...