2019 Summer Seminar – Judy G. Russell

August 3, 2019

Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL
Tracing Your Ancestors Through Courthouse Records

Meet Judy G. Russell

Judy G. Russell, The Legal Genealogist, is a genealogist with a law degree. She writes, teaches, and lectures on a wide variety of genealogical topics, ranging from using court records in family history to understanding DNA testing. A Colorado native with roots deep in the American south on her mother’s side and entirely in Germany on her father’s side, she holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a political science minor from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and a law degree from Rutgers School of Law-Newark. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, trade association writer, legal investigator, defense attorney, federal prosecutor, law editor and, for more than 20 years before her retirement in 2014, was an adjunct member of the faculty at Rutgers Law School.

She is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the National Genealogical Society and numerous state and regional genealogical societies. She has written for the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (from which she received the 2017 Award of Excellence), the National Genealogical Society Magazine, the FGS Forum, BCG’s OnBoard, and Family Tree Magazine, among other publications.

On the faculty of the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research, the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, the Midwest African American Genealogy Institute, and the Genealogical Institute on Federal Records, she is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Board for Certification of Genealogists^®, from which she holds credentials as a Certified Genealogist^® and Certified Genealogical Lecturer^sm. Her award-winning blog appears at The Legal Genealogist website.

Sessions

• That First Trip to the Courthouse
  If there is one home truth in genealogy research, it’s this: not everything is available online. Sooner or later, every genealogist has got to make that first trip to the courthouse to check out the original records available there. How to prepare for that trip, the rules of the road, what to expect, what to ask for, and how to be sure you’ll be welcomed back the next time are explored in this lecture.
• Property Rights and Wrongs – African-Americans at the Courthouse
  From being treated as property to having their property stolen by those who used the law against the freedmen, African Americans’ experience at the courthouse had only one bright spot: it created records for the genealogist-descendants of slaves and slave owners alike.
• Polls, Personalty and Property – Making Sense of Tax Lists
  Somebody had to pay government’s bills, and they did it through the law by imposing taxes on polls, personal property and real property. The records of those taxes offer some of the best clues available to our ancestors, their families and their neighborhoods.
• Making a Federal Case Out of It
  Even genealogists who have a good background in court records often overlook the wealth of detail available in the records of the federal courts: the District Court and the Circuit Court (now Circuit Court of Appeals). From bankruptcies to copyrights to patent to cases in admiralty jurisdiction and more, federal court records merit a close look.