June 2020 — GENOHISTORY.COM

June 2020

The Supreme Court Shopping Binge: Unlayering a Court Document

Not long ago, a historian friend surprised me with an email referring to “the high-rollin’ kids” of my ancestor, Jacob Mayberry. He included a link to a summary report of the Alabama Supreme Court case of Sanford v. Howard.[1] In the eleven-page summary, I learned that Jacob’s kids had created a Supreme Court–caliber stir by shopping. They had racked up a huge tab at a local store, buying luxuries in 1852, the year after their father died. Their uncle, executor of Jacob’s estate, had refused to pay the tab.

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Degrees of Connection: What the Neighbors Meant to Your Ancestors

My mid-nineteenth-century small-town ancestors would be utterly baffled at how little I know about my neighbors. Neighbors were their family, in-laws, society, colleagues, entertainment, education, support system, and source of marriage partners, gossip, trade, and annoyance. They were the cast and crew of our ancestors’ life dramas.

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