15 May 2014 "Historians look for anachronisms, whether of language, form, or content. ... Sometimes, for example, it is possible to show that a particular 'hand' did not exist when ...

14 May 2014 Laws of heirship, across time and place, have generally dictated estate divisions by either "per capita" or "per stirpes." The jurist Henry Campbell Black has defined the differences this way:*

13 May 2014 Last Tuesday, we thought about the less-fortunate Americans of yesteryear, urban dwellers who left few records, and we brainstormed the kind of resources we might be able to find on them in local courthouses and town halls. Today's test takes a different tack ...

12 May 2014 For most national censuses, the year of the enumeration is a standard part of the citation. The visitation date, on the other hand, is ...

11 May 2014 Most writers love quotations. They capture the "feel" of a document. They express the thoughts of those we're studying. They can provide important perspective, as provided by other writers. They also introduce a host of questions and even more opportunities for ethical and legal transgressions—starting with these five ...

10 May 2014 Citations that involve living people must respect privacy. In our working notes, we record the name and contact information for each person we interview and each person who ...

9 May 2014 The Death Penalty Information Center offers a unique resource for historical researchers: a database of executions that occurred in the United States between 1608 and 1976. The Center describes itself ...

8 May 2014 To study soldiers in a particular war, researchers frequently begin with carded records maintained by the National Archives. As their name implies, these Compiled Military Service Records (CMSRs) ...

7 May 2014 For biographers and personal historians, donations are the crown jewels in every trove of legal documents, because people donate to others and causes that are dear to them. As researchers, it is important for us