Terms

Archival passages are quoted or transcribed from the document that carries them, and every page links to that document. Page labels, navigation, and calculated counts are clearly separate from source text. Where a document is excerpted, the excerpt stops on a sentence boundary and the full text is published on its own page.

Those documents are of three kinds, and the difference matters: works of the United States government, which carry no copyright; books published in the United States before 1929, whose copyright has expired; and openly licensed data, used within the terms its publisher set. The rights page names every source and states which of the three applies to it. That page is the authoritative list; this one is a summary.

Figures are computed from source data rather than asserted. When a page says a property appears on six map sheets, that is the result of testing its coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical inventory, not an estimate.

Much of the text here was read off scanned paper by machine. Printed indexes from the 1880s, typewritten case files from the 1970s and microfilmed newsprint are recognised imperfectly, and a page that carries machine-read text says so plainly where it appears.

Nothing is silently corrected. Where several independent readings of the same line disagree, the site publishes the reading that most of them agreed on and never a spelling that none of them produced. Business names are published only where at least three of four independent readings agree. A visible error in a passage labelled machine-read is preferable to an invented one that reads cleanly, and this site takes that trade deliberately.

The material is published for reference and research, as it stands and without any warranty, express or implied, of accuracy, completeness, currency or fitness for any particular purpose. Nothing here is legal, financial, surveying or title advice. Boundaries, coordinates and ownership shown on historical maps describe the past and must not be relied on for any present-day purpose. Verify anything that matters against the source record, which every page links to.

The underlying material carries the rights described above and on the rights page, and those terms travel with it: the public-domain material is yours to use freely, and the openly licensed material remains subject to its own licence, including any attribution the licence requires. This site claims no new copyright over any of it.

What this site adds on top - the arrangement, the joins between sources, the page text and the design - is ours, and bulk or automated copying of it is not permitted. That restriction is on this compilation only and takes nothing away from the underlying works: those you may take freely from the archives named on the rights page, or from here, under whatever terms attach to them.

Please also do not republish the machine-read text as though it were a verified transcription. It is not, this site says so on every page that carries it, and stripping that caveat turns a useful record into a misleading one. Link to the page instead, or go to the source archive the page cites.

This site is published by BEE2.IO LLC. Corrections, questions and rights claims: info@blockbefore.com.

If you hold rights in something here, or a credit is missing or wrong, write with the page address, the material you mean and the basis of your claim. Every request is read and checked against the source record the page cites. Where a claim is substantiated, the page is corrected or the material removed promptly; where the material is a federal work, or its United States copyright has expired, or it is used within the terms of its licence, we will say so and explain which applies. Factual errors are worth reporting on the same address whether or not anyone holds rights in them.