Today’s post is by Joseph P. Keefe, Archives Specialist at the National Archives at Boston. When the American Civil War broke out on April 12, 1861, the newly formed Confederate States of America had no ships to speak of in its navy. In the months leading up to the war, the Confederate government sought the … Continue reading The United States vs the Ship Bat: A Civil War Prize Case
Today’s post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver. “Dear Sir. This Company is not making any ‘near-beer of any kind at present and not until Mont. goes dry yours very truly Lewistown Brewing Co.” So wrote Gus Hodel and his Lewistown Brewing Company of Montana in April 1918, a … Continue reading Run for the border: Beer Bootlegging during the Prohibition
Today’s post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver. The stark, black and white Denver Post photograph one finds online is startling; in it two firemen are sweeping broken glass from a window shattered by a pipe bomb while Wilfred Keyes and his wife, just shadows in the dark of … Continue reading Keyes v. School District Number One, Denver, Colorado: Eliminating the “Root and Branch” of School Segregation
Today's post is written by Kimberly Gorman, an Archives Technician at the National Archives at Riverside, CA Currently, I am working on processing records from Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States, which is the largest collection of records we have here at the National Archives at Riverside. RG 21 … Continue reading Redheaded Bertha and William Greene: Persecuted Love in the Arizona Territory
Today's post was written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver 142 years ago this fall Adolf Coors, along with Denver businessman Jacob Shueler, recorded a deed of purchase for an abandoned tannery in Golden, Colorado. Within months the building would become home to the Golden Brewery, thus beginning a new chapter … Continue reading Lithograph Company v. Adolph Coors – a Case of an Unpaid Tab
Today's post is written by archivist Shane Bell of the National Archives at Atlanta. The so-called golden age of piracy ended in the early 18th century, decades before the first shot of the American Revolution. During what is often referred to as the Second War for Independence, however, the last significant era of this practice, legally … Continue reading The War of 1812: Privateers, Plunder, & Profiteering
Today’s post is written by Stephanie Stegman, the special media projects volunteer at the National Archives at Fort Worth. What exactly is a “defendant jacket”? What does the charge “RLD” stand for? How do you find the records of a defendant if he or she had an alias or was charged with multiple co-defendants? These … Continue reading Defendant Jackets, Legal Abbreviations, and Aliases, Oh My!
By Monique Politowski In 1774, British Parliament implemented the Coercive Acts in response to the destruction of British property by colonists during the Boston Tea Party. Paul Revere reproduced an engraving from a London newspaper that depicted the relationship between the British government and America, and he circulated it among the colonies. A copy of this … Continue reading Boston Tea Party Etiquette Lesson 2: Swallowing the Bitter Draught in Rhode Island
