Archival and Genealogical Cultures

Abstract

This article looks at the French and Spanish colonial judicial records of Louisiana and uses these records as a prism into the history of genealogy. The trajectory of the records’ creation and care over three centuries takes readers on a journey of varying archival cultures, ephemera, philosophies, and economies of care and neglect. This is also an essay about the city as a main character—as a symbol for the foundation of an archival and genealogical culture. Records are at the center of the practice of family history for many people, and thus their stories tell us about a significance beyond a specificity of place. Nevertheless, specific cultures represent varying archival and genealogical practices, and New Orleans especially has a distinctive recordkeeping past worthy of study.