Capturing the History of Legislative Service

by Karl Kurtz

Legislative research librarians don't often make the news.  But last week The Star-Ledger (Newark) had a nice feature story on New Jersey legislative librarian Peter Mazzei's effort to compile a comprehensive directory of everyone who has ever served in New Jersey's legislature:

Mazzei, manager of the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services Library, is meticulously compiling a database on every lawmaker in state history. His goal: an online site filled with photos, obituaries, statistics and trivia. For those who prefer print, he wants to put it all in a book.

"There's no history of the Legislature yet that's really comprehensive," said Mazzei. "There are some really great names, great patriots, great thinkers and great statesmen who served in our Legislature. There also are some rogues."

The story goes on to cite NCSL as a source saying that only a handful of states have compiled such archives.  As it happens, NCSL's Legislative Research Librarians' staff section did a session on this topic at our annual meeting in Boston, so we can provide more specific references and links to states that have compiled online historical archives of state legislators: Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota and South Dakota.  Of these, the Colorado and Minnesota databases include remarkable details about positions held, committees served on, and legislation sponsored by legislators and other biographical information.  The Connecticut and South Dakota archives are mostly limited to providing years of service, district and political party information.

Are there other states that have such archives of people who have served in the legislature?  If so, please add a comment below or send us an email message.

[Photo of New Jersey Statehouse dome from state legislative web site]

Comments

[Kim]

Kansas does have a database (named legislators past and present) of its legislators going back to territorial days. It becomes more and more complete as family members of previous legislators help us fill in the blanks. It can be found at http://www.kslib.info/ref/legislators/index.html

[Suzie Johnston, Library Director]

The Louisiana House of Representatives has begun to compile the membership of the House from statehood (1812) to the present, with notations for party, race, and gender. This information is presented by parish and is available at: http://house.louisiana.gov/H_PDFdocs/HouseMembers1812_2008.pdf

[A Little to the Right]

I think it would be funny if these databases could be created online in a website set up like Facebook. Legislators could be listed as each others' "friends" and coalitions could be listed as groups. All pictures of them could be tagged - could be especially amusing for states with crazy politicians i.e. Louisiana (where I am) and Texas.

[Shirley Dallas]

Washington State has a publication that has been scanned about past Legislators but does not have a database. It has no biographical information but it does have a wealth of info about the Legislature as a whole.

Here is the URL for the publication:

State of Washington Members of the Legislature
http://www.leg.wa.gov/documents/common/historypage/2005_Members_of_the_Legislature.pdf

Perhaps coincidentally. we got a call two weeks ago because there was a large scale corruption of names in the publication. Laurie Fortier worked closely with staff to make the corrections using our historical collection to verify proper spellings!

Shirley Dallas
Washington State Library

[Teresa Wilt]

Nevada has a searchable database, "Nevada Legislators, 1861-Current." It may be found on our website at http://www.leg.state.nv.us/dbtw-wpd/legsim.cfm.

[Marilyn Johnson]

Add ND to the list; our territorial to

present day legislators can be found

from the Legislative Assembly's home

page http://www.legis. nd.gov

[Susan Zavacky]

Several years ago, PA began an exhaustive project to periodically publish volumes listing every PA legislator from 1682 to present day. Edited by scholars based at Temple University, the third volume was most recently published, covering the period 1757 to 1775. Series name: Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: a biographical dictionary.

[Alice Hobson]

Kentucky is developing a database of biographical information on its state legislators, from the first General Assembly in 1792 to present day. The plan is to include information not only about legislative service but also about other positions that legislators held at the international, federal, state, and local levels.

Due to the lack of historical records, there is sometimes little information available on early legislators. Tracing legislators through census data, libraries, historical societies, and genealogical societies takes time, but it can pay off.

The database may be available on the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission's Web page sometime in 2008.

Many interesting people have served in the Kentucky legislature, including former governors, authors, and federal and state officials. For example, one legislator, George Shannon, was a member of the famed Lewis & Clark expedition from 1803-1806. After the expedition, he studied law and won a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1820.