The strange thing was that I’d been preparing myself for
what I thought would be a very “dry” file, filled with all sorts of boilerplate
and annoying legalese. However, it
started out with Lazarus Johnston’s will, which goes on for a page and a half
and brought up various events that happened after his death. I became so caught up in what must have
happened to his children and grandchildren as a result of those events that I
kept transcribing for about seven more pages.
I worked a bit more on the Easter Johnson file tonight, 10
August 2016. And will have to force
myself to walk away from it a bit, because again I find myself getting swept up
into the lives of these people that I’m transcribing. My suspicion is that even though I’m feel
that the petition case is fraught with drama that the reality is that it’s just
the language being used and that it’s was just “business as usual” for these
family members and the legal personages involved.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this case and
if I make more interesting discoveries when I work my way through the other
petition files. I’m making a lot of use
of the Black’s Law Dictionary that David gave me several years ago and am also
learning a bit of the meanings of the legalese that I’m encountering in this
particular petition.
