Citing a court summons published in a newspaper

By greglovelace on Thu, 08/14/2025 - 14:24

Forums

Hi, EE.  I am trying to figure out how to cite a court summons published in a newspaper for 6 consecutive weeks.  This one concerns the summons for the child of a woman who is petitioning for dower, and the child is married and has moved out of state.  The summons by the Superior Court of Burke County, North Carolina was published in a newspaper in Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina 6 times from 24 December 1869 to 4 February 1870.  Online images are supplied by the DigitalNC website.  The first publication in 1869 can be seen at https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn85042183/1869-12-24/ed-1/seq-2/ on page 2 in column 7 and item 3.  It concerns the case of "Christena Britain against Heirs at Law of Wm Brittain, dec'd."  I am so confused as to what to use for the title of the article and how to show that it was published 6 times in that given time frame.  For the second layer of the citation, I am trying the following:

imaged, 

DigitalNC, “North Carolina Newspapers” (https://www.digitalnc.org/newspapers/ : 13 August 2025), Search Newspapers > Rowan > 1869-1870.

Any guidance here would be greatly appreciated.

Submitted byEEon Sat, 08/16/2025 - 09:23

Hello, Greg. Normally, for the "title" of an article, we take the words from the top of the article. Usually, formal titles will be in a different type face—bold face, all capitals or something similar. If there is no formal title, we can take the first words of the article.

So, what do we see at the top of this item?

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We see a header, words set in distinctive type. They are the same words or header we would see and copy if we were using a volume of court records. That header is equally appropriate to use in this newspaper citation:

"North Carolina, Burke County: Christena Britain against Heirs at Law of W'm Britain, dec'd.," ...

Past that point, we construct the citation as we would any newspaper article:

Title of Newspaper, locale (date), page, column.

If we want to be more explicit, we can add a layer to say "this legal notice ran for five consecutive weeks after this first appearance. All in all, we'd have this:

"North Carolina, Burke County: Christena Britain against Heirs at Law of W'm Britain, dec'd.,"The Old North State, Salisbury, N.C. (24 December 1869), page 2, column 7; this legal notice ran for five consecutive weeks after this first appearance.