JewishGen Talks: En el nombre de Dio Amen: Notarial Archives and Jewish Genealogy

Notary archives are a vast, virtually untapped resource for genealogy. Notaries were necessary for all kinds of legal acts, just like today. Whether it was a business transaction, protest, quitclaim, prenuptial agreement, assignment, will, or virtually any kind of document that needed legal power behind it, notary archives contain a vast wealth of information on economic, legal, and social history. For Jewish genealogy, notary archives can often serve to bridge record loss gaps. In this talk, spanning from Suriname in the West to the Ottoman Empire in the East and points in between, Michael Waas will show just what kind of research might be possible, focusing on some cases from his own family research.