History of the Town of Litchfield, CT

Alain White wrote this book around 1920 for the Litchfield Historical Society, and it’s the definitive history of the Litchfield Township from the point where the early town histories leave off until the point when White’s book went to press.

Litchfield map
Litchfield Map from White’s History of the Town of Litchfield

Several years ago, we scanned, indexed, and published the book as a CD-ROM — and it was a moderately good seller.

Then, two things happened:

  1.  Technology advanced.  CDs fell out of favor, replaced by downloads
  2.  Several not for profit organizations scanned lots of historical works and made them available for free.

Retiring the CD was not a difficult decision at that point.

But there were two downsides:

  1.  The free downloads did not have the index we painstakingly created of this book, and
  2.   While the free downloads are certainly legible, the quality of the reproduction of the images leaves a bit to be desired (compared with our high-resolution scans).

If you’ll go to the page on our main website about this book, you’ll see where you can get a free download of this book (minus the index, and at decent but not great resolution).

You’ll also have the opportunity to purchase and download our version, which DOES include the index and the high resolution scans.  (We also provide a free list of everything that showed up in the index so you can decide before purchasing whether our index is worth the money.)

 

Three Court Calendars – Sullivan County, NY

Three Court Calendars of the Sullivan County Court.

July 1893 term, June 1899 term, and January 1904 term.

To us these are quite novel.  Although they were obviously very familiar to practicing attorneys a century and more ago, we have not encountered other specimens of similar material.

Sullivan County Court Calendar
Title page of a court calendar for Sullivan County, NY

Information includes the attorneys in the county were at that time (they’re listed),  the county officers  (likewise listed), and, interestingly, the grand jurors and the trial jurors for the term are listed too.  It specifies which cases would be heard, and approximately upon what date.

Among the litigants, we say some familiar names, including a railroad that was never completed – the Liberty and Jeffersonville Electric Railway – suggesting that without even operating it succeeded in running afoul of some people (the investors, perhaps?).  Regardless of its historical value, it’s fascinating to look at these relics of a judicial system that is now transformed into a far different animal.

More about this, as well as the opportunity to purchase a download of it, can be found on the Sullivan County page of our main website.

The Graduates of Emory College (1910)

Our second publication of Southern History in the last month is this important volume listing the occupations and addresses of more than 1000 graduates of Emory College (now Emory University) in Georgia.

The volume includes some history of the college and other supporting documents, but most important is the information provided about the graduates themselves.  Here’s the table of contents:

Emory Alumni Register
Table of Contents

More information is available at our main website, where you can also download this document.

EMORY ALUMNI REGISTER

Early Sullivan County Timeline

 

Quinlan’s History of Sullivan County is considered the definitive history of Sullivan County, New York up until 1873.

James H. Quinlan, historian
James H. Quinlan, historian

While we were working through those early years in Quinlan’s History, we discovered that it was sometimes hard to tie all those events together in a sequential way.  To help us understand Sullivan County history better, we decided to use Quinlan to help develop a timeline of those years.  Suddenly much was made clear.

We’re glad to be able to offer this timeline free for your use.  Just click below to download it with our compliments.

Sullivan County Timeline to 1873

If you find that this timeline raises your curiosity and makes you want to read the whole book, there’s no reason not to do so.  There are several free scanned versions of Quinlan you can download, but our favorite is one scanned by Penn State University.  A link to a free version we like is on our main website on our Quinlan page, HERE.

After you download it, you might discover what we did:  that a 700 page book really needs an index.  No one can fault Quinlan for not providing one, given all that he did provide us with.  But we did decide to do something to make up for his omission.  We indexed Quinlan ourselves.  While you are on our Quinlan page, you will probably notice that we sell our index.  Frankly, it was a lot of work, and we think you will find that it is worth the price.

 

History of Garland, Maine

We are happy to announce the re-publication of this comprehensive 1912 History of Garland, Maine, by Lyndon Oak, as a download.

Lyndon Oak
Lyndon Oak, author of History of Garland, Maine

This volume, which includes a 12 page index, includes just about anything you might ever want to know about Garland from its founding until just after the Civil War.  If you are interested in Penobscot County, ME, the History of Garland, Maine should be of interest to you.

To help you more easily determine whether this is of interest to you, we also have provided the index to this volume on our website (where you can also order the download).

Visit our page about this book by clicking HERE.

 

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