Genealogy and Local History Blog

Tagged: #genealogy

Genealogy

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 Luckily for genealogists, these historical document sets are freely available on the Library of Congress web site A Century of Lawmaking For a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873.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...

Genealogy

Epidemics and Genealogical Research

“Philadelphia 11th october 1793 11 OClock A.M. “The fever from all that I can learn is more fatal than ever, yesterday a vast number of burials – I do not expect any abatement of the fever before we have rain and high winds – The day before yesterday we were witness to what appears to me Shocking – a Coffin was brought to the entrance of Welsh’s alley, where it stayed sometime for the man to die before he was put into the Coffin, Such hurry must burry many alive.” The role of disease-causing microbes in human history has long been studied. When conducting genealogical research, however, knowledge of disease becomes just as important. Disease could be the reason why you can’t find an ancestor somewhere, or why long-residing families suddenly relocated, or why an ancestor may have remarried. But it also has wider genealogical ramifications. Disease affected entire communities....