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Stumpage Reports
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Thursday, May 13, 2004 :::
History Nerds Run Amok, Part 8C: or, The Next State Records Dork
My boss had been looking for the General Assembly Session Records for the spring of 1862 in connection with a really cool old story he has been uncovering (sorry you'll just have to imagine it, too much to get into here and I'd probably get it wrong). He quickly ascertained we had no records from the above session, either in their original form or in the published volumes. He checked with a Civil War geek in another department who said "I know those things are somewhere, they are called something else and stuck on the tail end of another record group."
A couple days later I had five minutes to kill before closing time. During such moments, I'll sometimes grab something off the shelf and flip through, taking a chance on learning something. We have so damn many published guides, finding aids, card catalogs, etc. there's always something to learn. I grabbed one called "Guide to Civil War Records in the Archives." It looked like it had been typed up back in the 1960's on onionskin and bound between grimy old covers. Right there, on the second page, it explained how the secession convention met in Spring 1861. That same convention met in Fall '61 and Spring '62 and functioned as the General Assembly while they got the mechanics of state government working. (If you're still reading this, I can just say wow.)
I casually mentioned that to my boss the other day. After a couple more minutes of digging, he found that these records were in with the Secretary of State records, he pulled the box, and lo and behold, in a thin folder labeled "Petitions, Resolutions, etc." he found exactly what he was looking for and pumped his fists in the air, history nerd style.
It Is So Damn Much Fun . . . finding shit here sometimes. Sometimes you have to do a lot of research before you can even begin to look. I had a guy yesterday looking for old records of lawyers being licensed to practice law in the 1830's, I dug around, found out in late 18th, early 19th century it was all handled by the county courts, after 1831 the supreme court, bar association in 1920 something, etc etc. Someone told me after that, "If you're not careful, you'll be our next State Records Dork."
Washburn University School of Law Student Blog of the Day:
sasnaK (I just got it, its Kansas spelled backwards!)
::: posted by tom at 9:02 AM
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