Select Page

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...

GAMECHANGER!!!

BIG news from FamilySearch at RootsTech FamilySearch today opened public access to an experimental search function that can search every word of text — including every name — even in handwritten documents that haven’t been indexed by the hordes of...

The unavailable SS-5

When we don’t get what we asked for Reader Barbara Dottino had an unpleasant surprise when she asked the U.S. Social Security Administration for a copy of a relative’s SS-5 form. She wanted a copy of the original application for a Social Security number....

BIG win on USCIS fees

Final fee rule announced by USCIS Gentle people, we won. Pure and simple. The final rule adopting new fees for the genealogy program at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was published today and… We won. Starting April 1, 2024, the fees for...

About that advanced option…

Searching text on David Rumsey maps Yep, readers are right. The Legal Genealogist sent folks off merrily last week to DavidRumsey.com to play with the new feature for finding text on maps.1 Things like that elusive ancestor’s name as a landowner in the 1870s....

Text searching on maps!

DavidRumsey.com adds text searching It’s here it’s here it’s here it’s here. So maybe The Legal Genealogist is a little excited. But it’s here! Text searching on DavidRumsey maps! Now, there isn’t a genealogist alive who...

Labor Day 2023

Mapping our labor ancestors It’s the first Monday in September. Hard to believe, as always, that the summer is speeding to an end, kids are back in school, sunrises are later and sunsets earlier. And that it’s the first holiday of the fall season here in...

Help with Chronicling America

Tune in to LOC The Library of Congress is, without question, an American treasure. It’s home to so many goodies that we as genealogists use all the time. The collection of United States Statutes at Large for those of us who — like The Legal Genealogist...