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...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...Vermont law: who’s on first
Why not the earlier law? As so often happens, about a nanosecond after The Legal Genealogist posts about a topic, somebody pops in with a question that the original post probably should have mentioned — or at least might have if there wasn’t a realistic...Opposite … and not equal
The privacy fight rages on Laws proposed on opposite sides of the country take opposite approaches to law enforcement access to genealogical DNA testing databases. The different proposals point out how genealogical consumers — and even genealogical testing...Time and place
Repeating the mantra Those who’ve heard The Legal Genealogist speak about the law and genealogy have heard the mantra. Those who’ve followed this blog for any length of time have read the mantra. Feel free to chant along with me out loud: If we want to...The laws of Christmas: 2021 reprise
It wasn’t always a holiday Here in the holiday season or 2021 — another crazy pandemic-impacted year, The Legal Genealogist is trying again to hang on to as many holiday traditions as possible. Which, given the latest surge in the latest two variants,...Not just for mariners!
New York City’s Marine Court Reader Nancy Spencer had a question that sent The Legal Genealogist scrambling for the law books. “My g-g grandfather was a policeman at the Marine court at Castle Garden,” she wrote. “Where would the record for his position be...A gift for Keystone State researchers
Pennsylvania law online It’s a gift that keeps on giving: the guides to online state law resources at The Advancing Genealogist. And now Keystone State researchers can find the bulk of Pennsylvania’s historic law resources online in one place, thanks to...Saying no to nullification
Preserving the union, 1830s style It was on this day 189 years ago that it began, in South Carolina. A special state convention voted 136 to 26 to declare that certain tariffs imposed by acts of Congress in 1828 and 1832 “unauthorized by the constitution of the United...Subscribe by Email
