Monthly Archive: January 2024

The American State Papers

In today’s blog post we’ll look at the American State Papers (Papers). This collection consists of 38 physical volumes containing legislative and executive documents of Congress from 1789-1838. They include papers that cover the critical historical gap in the preservation of federal documents from the first presidency in 1789 to the printing of the first volume of the US Serial Set in 1817. The Serial Set picks up where the Papers leaves off and continues to this day. Luckily for genealogists, these historical document sets are freely available on the Library of Congress web site A Century of Lawmaking For a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873. Among the many items are the American State Papers (1789-1838) and the U.S. Serial Set (1817-1873). For more information, read this great article, “Those Elusive Early Americans: Public Lands and Claims in the American State Papers, 1789-1837.” The American State Papers...

Start Your Own Genealogical FAN Club!

The FAN club is a term coined by renowned genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills. “FAN” stands for “Friends, Associates, Neighbors”, and refers to researching the cluster of people who interacted with your ancestors. This principle is also called cluster or collateral genealogy. Researching people within this cluster can provide insights into your ancestors’ lives, as well as help answer thorny questions your direct research hasn’t been able to resolve (“I can’t find this guy ANYWHERE! Where the heck was he?” or “Which of the six John Smiths in this county is mine?” or “Who was Nathan Pyeatt’s (1787-1812) mother?”). The FAN club is a great tool for proving relationships, establishing identities, and busting through brick walls. Many printed and on-line resources contain case studies demonstrating how you can use records of friends, associates, and neighbors to obtain the answers you’re looking for. Some of the best case studies using the FAN...