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Say their names…

Fan and Ana and Mary and … It’s Black History Month here in the United States, a time for all of us to benefit from learning more about the history, role and contributions of African Americans in this country. A time when “The Library of Congress, National...

The tidbits of May

Love the local papers… One of the great joys of being a 21st century genealogist is sitting there, at 3 a.m., in your bunny slippers, and finding out little bits and pieces about your ancestors that you never would have known any other way. For The Legal...

Judging the records

Find the judge, find the court It was a fairly typical post that landed in The Legal Genealogist’s Facebook feed, a day or two or three ago. A genealogist had found a newspaper article about a rascal of an ancestor but wasn’t able to find the court record...

Who took the tally?

Noting the census takers It’s right there in the best practices of the field of genealogy. The guidance that so many of us overlook, especially when we’re starting out. But it’s stated clearly, in Standard 40 of Genealogy Standards, focusing on...

When the law is wrong

Official typos It’s right there, in one of the most important laws ever passed by the early Virginia state legislature. Just nine years after the Fifth Virginia Convention proclaimed that Virginia was a free and independent state,1 and just four years after the...

And about that census…

Just read this A Pennsylvania genealogist, Tammy Hepps, has a lesson for us all, The Legal Genealogist included. It’s about that census… … And, more particularly, about that census taker. It’s an absolutely brilliant study of one enumeration...

On St. Patrick’s Day…

Did ads for workers really say that? It’s March 17 here in the United States. It is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. When, according to the memes at least, everybody is Irish… Except the Scots. They stay Scots. No arguments there. So… despite the...