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And so it began…

250 years ago today They met in Philadelphia, at Carpenters’ Hall, on a hot September day. Fifty-six men from as far north as New Hampshire and as far south as South Carolina. Lawyers. Farmers. Millers. Merchants. And revolutionaries. Perhaps not at first. Not...

In March of 1780

Freedom tiptoes into Pennsylvania The Legal Genealogist spent essentially every day of elementary school, junior high school, and high school in the public schools of the north. We studied the Civil War in different ways in different years. And the one sentence I...

Those beastly laws

Oh, the stories to be told… The Legal Genealogist has always loved the traditional Scottish prayer: From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!1 And since we started the week in a beastly...

Treatying history

Ratified Indian Treaties online There are 374 of them in all, transferred to the National Archives from the Department of State almost a century ago. The first is dated 14 August 1722, signed at Fort George, New York. The last is dated 13 August 1868, signed at...

Happy Constitution Day!

On 17 September 1787… They are words for the ages. They begin: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the...

The 31st state

Recording California The Preamble was short and sweet: Whereas the people of California have presented a constitution and asked admission into the Union, which constitution was submitted to Congress by the President of the United States, by message dated February...