Genealogy Books

In Search of Your Asian Roots: Genealogical Research on Chinese Surnames appeared some time ago but deserves ongoing recommendation as a unique coverage - one of the few - to focus on the special challenges of researching Asian archives. Names and titles are listed in both Chinese and English, discussing the origins of some six hundred surnames and adding in Chinese history which traces the changes to these surname styles over the centuries. It's simply an essential 'must have' reference for any conducting more than a casual investigation into Asian family history.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

The use of over 560 color illustrations of actual badges, medals, documents, sake cups,and bottles brings to the reader an idea of the vast potential of this fascinating area of collecting.
Coverage includes civil defense, veteran, fire brigade, police, Red Cross, naval and air associations, patriotic women's groups, along with military maneuvers and training commemoratives.
There is even a section dedicated to door and gatepost badges !

Valuable resource guide in this field. Outstanding reference lists for all who need to delve further into their ancestry searches.

French scholar Hubert's classic history, Rise Of The Celts, traces the rise of the Celts and their influence on Indo-European peoples. Archaeological evidence support Hubert's investigation into the migration of Celtics into Europe and the British Isles, with black and white drawings and maps peppering a classic account recommended for high school levels on up.

William Henry Egle's Notes and Queries Historical, Biographical, and Genealogical Relating Chiefly to Interior Pennsylvania is the most important multi-volume work on the genealogy, biography, and history of central Pennsylvania. Included in its richly informative pages are genealogies, biographies, and family sketches, as well as lists of early settlers and soldiers of the various wars. In addition, the work encompasses a vast number of church records, wills, and marriage, death, and tax lists.

The small book at hand, which is based upon the master manuscript index to Notes and Queries at the Pennsylvania State Library, contains about 4,000 entries, many with multiple references, the majority being references to families or individuals. While it does not, of course, contain all the names in Egle's opus (which was originally published as a regular feature in the Harrisburg Daily Telegraph), it is nonetheless a critical finding aid for persons with central Pennsylvania ancestry.

The New York Herald commenced publication in May 1835 and ran almost continuously for the next 90 years. As a newspaper at the heart of the most vibrant metropolitan area in the U.S., its news features were of wide-ranging interest. Its announcements of marriages and deaths were equally so, for news about vital events in people's lives was a highly valued commodity in the age before advanced communications.

Since 1986, genealogist and Irish immigration expert James P. Maher has been transcribing for publication the tens of thousands of marriage and death notices cited in the New York Herald. Most of the notices refer to persons who married or died in New York; however, researchers will find numerous references to marriages and deaths from other states, as well as a significant number of references to national and international personalities. Each of the four volumes is divided into two sections--one for marriages and one for deaths--furnishing the names of brides and grooms (or the late deceased) and the date of issue of the newspaper.

This fourth and final volume in Mr. Maher's series brings the total number of notices abstracted to 52,850 marriages and 232,325 deaths. This volume also possesses a number of new or interesting features. Appended to the back of the data from the Herald are about a thousand death notices from the Fenian Irish newspaper, the Phoenix, for the period June 4, 1859, to August 10, 1861. In many cases, the death notices indicate, besides the decedent's name and date of death, his/her age and state of death, city and county of birth, and sometimes the names of his/her survivors. Among the Herald's death notices from states other than New York, 6,300 notices reference New Jersey, where many New Yorkers relocated during this period.

The New York World had a curious history. Philadelphia journalist Alexander Cummings launched the paper on June 14, 1860. A year later, Cummings absorbed the old Courier and Enquirer, one of the city's oldest newspapers. Cummings, a Republican, then sold the World to a group of Democratic financiers that included banker August Belmont and New York City mayor Fernando Wood. During the Civil War, the World was an outspoken critic of the Lincoln administration. In May 1864 General John Dix, provost marshall for New York, acting under orders from the White House, suspended the paper's publication briefly because it had published a forged presidential proclamation purporting to order the military induction of 400,000 men. Railroad tycoon Jay Gould acquired the paper in 1879, only to sell it to "yellow journalist" Joseph Pulitzer in 1883.

Genealogist James P. Maher, who has published a four-volume index to the marriage and death notices that appeared in the New York Herald between 1835 and 1876, has now produced a similar index to the New York World for the years 1860 to 1865. During this brief period, the World's notices, unlike those of the Herald, referred mainly to persons living between Philadelphia and New York, rather than in New York proper. After the change of ownership, by 1865 the World's marriage and obituary notices essentially mirrored those published in the Herald. These are indexed in Mr. Maher's other volumes--a fact that accounts for the brevity of this new book.

Mr. Maher has compiled an index to 3,500 marriages and about 8,500 obituaries for the period 1860 to 1865. The marriages are arranged in two alphabetical sequences: one for grooms and the other for brides. Each marriage entry gives the full names of the bride and groom and the date of the marriage. The death notices are arranged alphabetically, giving each deceased's name and date of death. Persons seeking additional information from a particular marriage or death notice (age at death, place of birth, name of minister, groom's residence, etc.) may contact Mr. Maher, who has transcribed all the genealogically significant data from the notices and stored them in a separate database.

As a certified genealogist who spends hours searching through books, I appreciate a reference book that is as comprehensive and compact as Old Wars! Names are listed alphabetically, and information is abbreviated to pack in as much data as possible, including the file numbers. This book is a one stop shopping mall for personal war info!

Here is the crucial tool for finding a veteran from amongst those named in William S. Stryker's 878-page Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War. With references to 15,000 New Jersey Revolutionary War veterans.

This is an index to the 1800 federal census of Pennsylvania, in effect an alphabetical list of the 100,000 heads of households residing in Pennsylvania at the time of the second census of the United States. All 100,000 enumerated are listed with references to their county of residence and a citation to the page of the National Archives microfilm on which the full census enumeration appears.

In seeking out additional information, the researcher should know that the 1800 census provides the following data: name of head of family; place of residence; number of males and females under 10 years of age, 10 and under 16, 16 and under 26, 26 and under 45, 45 and upward; number of all other free persons in the household (including persons of color but excluding Indians, who were not taxed); and number of slaves in the household.