Cincinnati: Betterway Books, 2002. 336p., softcover. Index, illus, maps. $19.99. ISBN 1-55870-647-X.
I have to be suspicious of a book subtitled “Everything You Need to Know to Trace Your Genealogy Across North America,” because that’s patently untrue. The Introduction by Emily Anne Croom, “Getting Started Tracing Your Ancestors,” is well-written and touches all the methodological bases — documenting your sources, “clustering,” continuing education, etc. — but it’s simply not possible to compress a useful discussion of genealogical techniques into seven pages.
Editors of Family Tree Magazine. The Family Tree Guide Book.
Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace.
Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 2007. 885p. Hardcover, index, illus. $59.95. ISBN 0-8063-1806-6.
I admit it — when a new book is announced by Elizabeth Mills, I immediately put in an advance order, without even reading any reviews. I’ve heard her speak at dozens of conferences and seminars, local and national, and I’ve read (I think) all of her published articles. My regard for her professional expertise is such that anything she cares to say, I want to hear.
Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian.
Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997. 124p.; hardcover. $16.95. ISBN 0-8063-1543-1.
Every serious family researcher should be not only aware of, but thoroughly familiar with, the late Richard Lackey’s Cite Your Sources, which, on its publication in 1981, quickly became the Bible of genealogical source citation. Many, however, are not aware that Lackey was inspired by an article published a few years before by Elizabeth Mills — another name that all genealogists should be familiar with.
Hoffman, Lee H. (ed.). Getting the Most Out of The Master Genealogist.
Baltimore: Gateway Press, 2003. 309p., softcover. Index, illus. $24.95 ISBN 0-9721567-0-4.
“Which genealogy software do you use?” is often the beginning of what might be characterized as almost a religious argument. Still, there aren’t many products on the market sufficiently complex to create demand for an after-market manual.
Jones, Henry Z., Jr. Psychic Roots: Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy.
CLASSIC REVIEW
Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 1993. 236p., softcover. Index, illus. $18.95. ISBN 0-8063-1388-7.
Hank Jones spent twenty years in movies, especially Disney films, and that freed him up later on to pursue his genealogical interests, both as an author and as a well-known national conference speaker — for both of which he received the NGS Award of Merit.
Boyer, Carl, III. Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans.
Santa Clarita, CA: Carl Boyer 3rd, 2001. 327p., hardcover. Index. $35.00 + $3.35 s/h. ISBN 0-936124-21-0. (PO Box 220333, Santa Clarita, CA 91322)
Boyer published the 3d edition of Ancestral Lines in 1981, and this volume, concentrating on medieval lineages of broad interest, is a further addition to that. He notes that publishing anything on medieval genealogy is perilous because errors are unavoidable, even among the experts.
The Handybook for Genealogists, United States of America.
11th ed. Draper, UT: Everton Publishers, 2006. 862p., hardcover. Index, maps. $59.95. ISBN 1-932008-00-8.
For several decades, one of the first books a new (or newly serious) genealogist was likely to purchase has been “Everton’s Handybook.” It first appeared in 1947 with only a couple hundred pages of contact information, but it was an almost immediate success and the first ten editions have sold more than 1,000,000 copies.
Smith, Gordon Burns. History of the Georgia Militia, 1783–1861.
4v. Milledgeville, GA: Boyd Publishing, 2000–1. Hardcover. Index. ISBN 1-890307-32-7. (PO Box 367, Milledgeville, GA 31061 / <tignall@accucomm.net>)
There have traditionally been three schools of thought about the antebellum State militias in the South. Some historians have treated them as a joke, a haven for those who wanted only to carouse and get drunk. Others consider it as primarily an paranoid institution organized to enforce slavery. Most historians, however, have simply ignored the militia.
Stevenson, Noel C. The Genealogical Reader.
New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1977, 1958. 188p., softcover. Index. [Out of Print]
These days, we’re used to finding a dozen or more nationally published genealogical periodicals on the shelves of even a small family history research library, but that’s a phenomenon of only the last generation or so. Until the 1970s, there were only a handful of journals in our field, and unless you subscribed to them personally, you had to travel to a large city’s public library, especially if you wanted to consult back issues.
Swan, James. The Librarian’s Guide to Genealogical Services and Research.
New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2004. 361p., softcover. Index, illus. $75.00. ISBN 1-55570-491-3.
Working the reference desk in the Genealogy Department of a large public library can be an eye-opening experience. You have to know (or be able to identify) the principal resources for family research that might be very different from your own personal research, often involving regions of the country and ethnic groups with which you have limited experience. You have to be able to instruct beginners in the most basic concepts, often many times each day.
