Law Indexes: Pennsylvania

As part of efforts to expand the Local Geohistory Project, which aims to educate users and disseminate information concerning the geographic history and structure of political subdivisions and local government, this repository has been created to disseminate law index data for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This index currently covers a portion of the private and special laws only from 1700 through 1892.

Private and special laws concern one or several individuals, entities, or localities, unlike public or general laws, which apply to all similarly situated individuals, entities, and localities within a jurisdiction. Prior to the Constitution of 1874, private and special laws were a common method used to alter municipal and county boundaries and forms of government.

The data is released as individual tab-separated values (TSV) files by volume. The Detail column may contain additional Prefix information that is repeated from prior entries.

This repository does not contain the full text of the laws, nor does it currently contain links to the full text. Because the index was created using OCR technology, it may contain uncaptured errors. This preliminary release is subject to additional caveats explained in the Methodology.

This is not an official publication of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or any of its instrumentalities, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government agency at any level.