Documenting the land rush
When the Boomers met the Sooners Two million acres west of the Mississippi. Land that had been promised to Native Americans “…as long as grass grows or water runs…”1 Land that — 130 years ago today — was opened for settlement as part of the public lands of...Evidence, not proof
A marriage bond doesn’t prove a marriage And in the “it never fails” category, reader Dan Babish came up with the one thing The Legal Genealogist should have said in about marriage bonds… and didn’t. In a comment posted this morning to the blog...Revisiting the bond
Those marriage bond issues again It’s not an easy thing to wrap our heads around. For those of us living in the 21st century, understanding what a marriage bond was, how it worked, and what it was used for just isn’t the easiest thing to manage. We all...How do we know?
Genealogy’s one constant question The Legal Genealogist doesn’t generally go ballistic while poking around on Ancestry.com. Particularly when reviewing somebody else’s family tree, I understand that what I’m looking at is generally at best a...Read the law books
Yes, read them, really The Legal Genealogist loves it when this happens. A fabulous question just came in minutes ago in a comment to Wednesday’s post about private laws,1 and I absolutely can’t wait to answer it. Reader Sylvia Anne Nash had reviewed that...Drawing the lines
When county borders get fuzzy As genealogists we all know how counties are created, right? The legislature of the appropriate jurisdiction — colony, territory or state — passes a law creating the new county and setting out its borders. Kind of like what...A fractional case
To understand the records, understand the law The Legal Genealogist is looking back over Alabama court cases in anticipation of this weekend’s 2019 Alabama Genealogical Society seminar at Samford University. And there’s still not much to beat 1/4 of 1/8 of...Birthing a cousin
It really shouldn’t be this hard… She was born 110 years ago today in a little town in Wichita County, Texas. Or maybe not. And The Legal Genealogist is getting really annoyed at finding these gaps in the research files… Typically on a family...The courts versus the Family Bible
Always always doublecheck Everything about the entries in the Family Bible says they should be believed. Those two final deaths entered on the family pages were written in two different inks and two different handwritings — or at least by one person at two very...Subscribe by Email
