13 June 2014 Lagniappe. The term means "a little gift" or "a little something extra"—its contents unpredictable but delightful. Today, EE's lagniappe is a handful of our own favorite sites whose riches may help you in your research. ...

12 June 2014 So you don't care about Mr. Merchant? Study him anyway. Ditto for Mr. Lawyer, Miss Teacher, Dr. Whoever, the Rev. Mr. Anybody, and Widow DoGood. Many of these community members were "unofficial record-keepers." When their records ...

11 June 2014 A tax on one's very existence? Yes, indeed, such taxes were common in the past. Regardless of social or economic status, taxation was a burden that every free person was expected to share. Today's terms cover three of those tax types that have fallen from disfavor ...

10 June 2014 The basic question to answer is this: To whom, exactly, would the correction matter? That said, there's another issue to consider: ...

10 June 2014 You've just read a monograph or an online publication by a well-respected author. Amid a discussion of an event, situation, or social perspective, the author has grievously erred, in your opinion. You have ...

8 June 2014 We do love our exclamation points. They are so expressive. They can show delight or frustration. They show surprise, or shock, or incredulity. We can make our feelings even more obvious by using ...

7 June 2014 We've all had these problems. We're at the website of a company that offers digital images of U.S. government documents. Our image-of-interest is said to come from, say, a National Archives microfilm publication. Then we're given a roll number that cannot possibly belong to that publisher or publication ...

6 June 2014 "Documents are liars," according to Lawrence of Arabia. Certainly, they can deceive us—even when the creator did not intend to be deceptive. So, how do we get within reasonable distance of reality, when we peer into the past through so many warped lenses? ...

5 June 2014 Although published, broadsides from past centuries have had a high destruction rate and copies of any particular broadside may be extremely rare. For that reason, when we find them in ...