Gazetteers and Genealogy

People tell us “I’ve got Ancestry.  Why do I need a gazetteer of the town where my family lived?”

That’s a fair question.  We’ll use the Childs’ Gazetteer and Business Directory of Sullivan County for 1872-73, which we publish as a download as an example here.

As it turns out, we use Ancestry heavily both in our own genealogy research and in writing local history (which we also do).  Being able to hypothesize a family tree for a local history figure on short notice, and work out marriages, births, and that sort of thing on the fly is a little-recognized capability Ancestry is great for.  We’ll write another post about that soon, but this one is about the use of gazetteers in your genealogical research.

First off, gazetteers (also local directories, business directories, and that kind of thing) usually contain a few components.  Often there’s a short narrative about the locality.  We got our feet wet in genealogy in Sullivan County, in New York State, and conveniently we publish a gazetteer from there.

These volumes are notable, first, for listings of the families (usually the head of household) and the businesses in each locality, normally in alphabetic order. Here’s a sample: From any of those listings you know several things that you’re not apt to find as a hint in Ancestry. 

Also, there’s often a short article about the town or city, its history and its industries.  Frequently you’ll find a list of houses of worship.  Perhaps there will be ads for local businesses (selling ads was one way publishers of directories made their money).  You may find listings of organizations, and often lists of other things about the locality that were meaningful when the gazetteer was compiled.  You’ll almost always find the occupation of the head of household listed. And, best of all, gazetteers were normally published in non-census years, providing a good way to check where a person or family might be outside the years ending in 0.

In addition to the Childs’ Gazetteer and Business Directory of Sullivan County for 1872-73 that we use as an example, we publish several others, including:

–The Erie County, NY Directory for 1924

Genesee County Business Directory and Gazetteer (1882).  

Child’s Gazetteer and Business Directory for Lewis County for 1872-73 

Port Jervis City Directory (1922)

Child’s Gazetteer and Business Directory for Wayne County for 1867-68

Boyd’s 1908 Street Guide for Philadelphia and Camden

Westbrook, Maine:  Directory for 1888

Blue Book of Newton, MA for 1910

Worcester Directory for 1871

Nevada, Missouri Directory for 1905

Tax Book and Valuation of Property, Town of West Greenwich, for 1889

White’s Peoria County Directory for 1919

Directory of All Business and Professional Men of Ashtabula County, Ohio (1895)

In future articles we’ll discuss some other obscure material we publish that you just might find helpful in your research, and, generally, you won’t find on Ancestry, as good as it is.

 

 

 

Trinity Lime Rock in Context – a History

We are happy to announce a new book by Geoffrey Brown, called Trinity Lime Rock in Context – a History. Here’s some background:

30 years ago we started going to a local Episcopal church, here in Northwestern Connecticut, called Trinity Lime Rock. Lots of people don’t have much to do with churches anymore. However, we had kept up churchgoing, and when we moved here we continued. Eventually we settled on Trinity as the place where we wanted to bend a knee, or whatever term you prefer.

Since we’re in the history business, this institution was probably destined to be the subject of at least an article, and perhaps a book. Poking around in the records, we found a history that had been done around 1950. Almost immediately it was clear that an update was needed at very least. So with the help of archeology services the project started in a small way that, as such things do, became bigger and bigger.

Around the same time, Judy Sherman, the wife and also a historian, was wrapping up her MA in history at Hunter College. She found the local area to be a trove of old records — and some less-than-objective, occasionally downright incorrect history. So we had a familial interest in correcting errors where we found them. More importantly, we felt that making sure that anything we wrote considered the history in some kind of larger context.

We found that Trinity Lime Rock presented some opportunities, both in correction historical errors, and in establishing some context. Corrections included figuring out who the actual architect of the building was (hint: it’s not who everyone claimed it was), and exploring the many contexts in which Trinity played at least a minor role.

What we discovered

There were obvious things. US Senator William H. Barnum (who donated much of the cost of the building) was multitalented with fingers in many pies. They included state and national politics, the Barnum & Richardson Company (from the iron history of the area), a whole passel of different railroads, and a few additional ventures. Subsequent developments included a successful art community (in the Lime Rock area and at Trinity), and sports car racing at Lime Rock Park (where Trinity has successfully walked both sides of the street). Immigration, prohibition, women’s suffrage….well, you name it, and Trinity had a hand in it.

At any rate, it turned into a six year project, quickly produced one book (“Lakeville Crucifix” — that was NOT about Trinity, by the way). Now it has produced another.

The result

Trinity Lime Rock in Context – a History is now completed. You can order it in paperback, eBook, and even hardcover form from Amazon — simply click HERE We think it’s pretty good. If nothing else, there is a whole lot of information there! Have a look!

Front cover of Trinity Lime Rock in Context - a History, by Geoffrey Brown

Anyway, Trinity Lime Rock in Context – a History contains a whole lot more than the history of a smallish Episcopalian congregation in the wilds of Northwest Connecticut. It’s available in paperback (our preference), eBook, and Amazon’s new hardcover format. Take your pick! But be sure to take a look.

Lakeville Crucifix interview podcast

There’s now a Lakeville Crucifix interview podcast!

We were delighted to be interviewed by Dan Dwyer, host of “Offscript with Dan Dwyer”, on WHDD-FM in Sharon, CT “the smallest NPR station in the nation.” And the subject was Lakeville Crucifix!

Dan is a first-rate interviewer who knows his local history! WHDD is an extraordinary local resource — one we are uniquely fortunate to have in our area.

WHDD has generously made a podcast of the interview available — and here’s a link to it!

To listen to the Lakeville Crucifix interview podcast, simply CLICK HERE!

More information about Lakeville Crucifix is HERE

Lakeville Crucifix

The book is available locally at Johnnycake Books in Salisbury, CT, or via Amazon.

Lakeville Crucifix

Our latest book, entitled Lakeville Crucifix, is now available from Amazon.

It’s local history about a subject area that has gone largely unstudied in the part of Northwestern Connecticut that was considered to have an iron industry that was second to none for much of the 19th century.  A number of people have written thorough, careful, and fascinating books about the iron industry itself.  But Lakeville Crucifix takes a different tack.

Basically, Lakeville Crucifix is about the people who made the iron industry function and how they interacted with each other when you add nativism, Irish immigration, changes in the Roman Catholic Church, vestiges of New England Puritanism, and electoral politics to the mix.

In 1882, the Roman Catholic priest in Lakeville erected a 12-foot crucifix on the lawn of his parish church.  The following summer, the local Protestants, offended by this structure, petitioned him to remove the Lakeville Crucifix.  His parishioners retaliated by boycotting the Protestant merchants, and the merchants retaliated for that by calling on the local iron magnate, William H. Barnum, who also happened to be the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, to ask him to fire all his Irish Catholic workmen.  It also happened that an ally of the aggrieved merchants was a former Governor of Connecticut, Alexander H. Holley.

The story of the Lakeville Crucifix does NOT end there!  The New York Times ran the story on page 1, it was covered in depth by the Hartford Courant, and the relatively new Associated Press spread the story all over the United States.  And, the tensions continued to mount as the local ladies organized with the intent of firing all of their Irish Catholic household help.  There are many other elements in the story, and we would be poor salespeople if we let all of the surprises out of the bag here.

At any rate, Lakeville Crucifix is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and we suggest that you have a look at it there.

CLICK HERE to see Lakeville Crucifix on Amazon!

Lakeville Crucifix
Purchase direct from Amazon.com as a paperback book or as an eBook for Kindle.

 

Thanks for visiting Between the Lakes Group!

See what else we have in our catalog!

 

 

Annals of Winchester is back

Annals of Winchester is back
Annals of Winchester is back

Annals of Winchester, previously one of our best-selling CD-ROMs, had been unavailable since we discontinued our CD-ROM business to concentrate on low-cost, immediately available downloads.

However, we’ve had several requests for this classic, which, to anticipate a question we were asked many times about the CD, Annals of Winchester DOES include the history of Winsted.

If you are seeking historical information about the Town of Winchester, or Winsted, or the people who lived there and the businesses that made this an important manufacturing center, Annals of Winchester is pretty much the go-to source.  It is indexed — and we have added an additional index of place names that we compiled — and, since it is in PDF format, easy to use on any computer.

There’s lots more information available on our Annals of Winchester page, so please have a look.  If you considered buying the CD originally but were put off by the price tag, you will find that the download version is a small fraction of that amount — and has the advantage of being an immediate download, not something you have to wait a week or more for the Post Office to deliver.

So, CLICK HERE to go to our Annals of Winchester page.

And join us in celebrating that Annals of Winchester is back!

Lime Rock Walking Tour

More than a decade ago, Geoff Brown, the Principal Partner of Between the Lakes Group, was asked by the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area to conduct a Lime Rock Walking Tour.  He repeated the tour by request a few years later.

Trinity Church in Lime Rock graciously hosted the tour and provided hospitality as well as access to their archives.  Lime Rock Park provided a highly knowledgeable historian of the track to tell us a bit about that internationally known institution from an insider’s point of view.  Many others helped in ways too numerous to mention.

But there was one problem.  A number of people told us they would like to go on a Lime Rock Walking Tour, but they were not physically capable of walking the three miles that even a minimal tour would require.  What could we do?  The answer was soon in coming:  we would prepare a Powerpoint slide show of the walking tour, and while those up to the walk could experience it in real life, those who could not would be able to watch the slide show in Trinity’s Walker Hall in comfort.

As we prepared the slide show, it quickly became clear that we would be able to put far more information about Lime Rock in the slide show than actual participants in the Lime Rock Walking Tour would actually get to see.  We could include sights too distant to walk to.  We could include historic photos and maps of features of Lime Rock that were no longer there.  We could include concise summaries of things we would talk about on the walk.  We could include photos of sights that still remain that are not accessible because they are on private property.

Ultimately, the slide show accompanying the Lime Rock Walking Tour became considerably more comprehensive and satisfying than the tour itself!

Subsequently, we decided to make the slide show of the Lime Rock Walking Tour available as a CD-ROM.  We sold quite a number in that format, but when the time came to retire our CD business, the slide show became unavailable.

However, we recently resurrected the slide show and, realizing we could republish it as a PDF file, could include even more information and photos than the slideshow format permitted.  For example, we could provide the old maps in a way that people could study them as long as they wanted.  We were able to add considerable information that would have passed too quickly to be absorbed in a slide show.  We could even improve on the original slide show by incorporating information unearthed since the slide show was created.

Coincidentally, we had two “real” books in the works.  Research for our forthcoming “The Lakeville Crucifix” and “History of Trinity Lime Rock in Context” had turned up huge amounts of information that permitted an updating of the Lime Rock Walking Tour slide show that genuinely improved it.

This is all in the way of announcing that the new, enlarged and enhanced Lime Rock Walking Tour is now available as a download in PDF format.  Now 141 pages long, we feel that it is something that belongs in the collection of any student of Lime Rock or the Town of Salisbury or the historic iron industry of the Upper Housatonic Valley.

More information and an opportunity to download the document are on our Lime Rock page.   We encourage you to take a look!  CLICK HERE to find out more about it!

Here’s one of the items we particularly like that appears in the Lime Rock Walking Tour:

Lime Rock Walking Tour
A photo of the company band of the Barnum Richardson Company circa 1900

 

Middletown CT Downloads

We’ve got some Middletown CT downloads available for you!

Several years ago, we collected a quantity of Middletown, CT material and published it on a CD-ROM, called, somewhat predictably, the

Middletown, CT

When we decided that times and technology had provided better alternatives than CDs for distributing our material, we took this one out of the catalog along with the others.  Now, The Middletown Collection has made its way to the head of the queue as “Middletown CT Downloads” and we are pleased to bring you four new items.

Here’s what is now available:

–The Middletown Real Property List, tabulated by street, for 1931.  Want to see exactly where someone lived in 1931 and what their property was valued at?  Want to see who lived in a particular location in that year?  You can do it with this download.

–The 1947 Cauldron yearbook from Middletown, CT, High School, including the supplement that filled in the blanks representing the time between when the yearbook was published during the school year and graduation.  The supplement, by the way, is very hard to find today — not surprisingly — but it is included in the download.

The Connecticut Quarterly was an elegant magazine about all kinds of Connecticut topics that began in the closing years of the 19th century.  One of the earlier communities that received feature article treatment was Middletown!  Lovely photos and quite a bit of history here too.

Middletown Ephemera.  One thing we miss about the CD-ROMs was the ability to include random material that certainly didn’t justify a CD of its own, and was even a little weak to make a separate download.  However, when we collected the ephemera from this CD, it represented a nice package, and some may find material in it that is of use to them.  One item here is the relevant Middletown listings for one of the annual Connecticut Registers.  Another is a collection of postcards of Middletown and particularly of the fraternity houses at Wesleyan.  A Chamber of Commerce brochure is here, as is the program for the Middletown tercentenary.

Unlike the old days, when you had to buy a CD-ROM with everything on it even if you just wanted one of these items, now you can pick and choose — and probably save yourself a few dollars in the process.

Why not have a look?  Take a look at our overall catalog as well.  Who knows what might be there for you?

The Wesleyan Gymnasium, back in the day

 

New Milford downloads

We’re happy to announce two New Milford downloads!

A few months ago we announced that we had discontinued our “New Milford: 230 Years” CD-ROM.

A 1907 panorama map of New Milford

Now, we’re happy to say that we’ve followed through on our commitment to bring you the important material from that CD in the form of downloadable files.  You benefit because (1) it’s less expensive for us to deliver material to you by downloads than by making and shipping CDs — so we pass the savings along to you, and (2) you get the material you want immediately (or as fast as the file can download) without waiting for us to pack and ship the CD and the Post Office to deliver it to you.

Without further ado, here are the two books that are once again available as downloads:

Two Centuries of New Milford:  1707 – 1907

The New Milford High School yearbook for 1937

Both of these include indexes we prepared especially for them, and both are in PDF format — readable on your computer, whether a PC or Mac.

While the CD-ROM cost $20 plus postage, these downloads are available for $5 for the Two Centuries book, and $4 for the 1937 yearbook.

Take a look at the New Milford page of our website for more information!

The New Milford seal as it appeared on the front of the original book

Or, have a look at our catalog!

Suffield History and Genealogy

Suffield history and genealogy took a step forward this week, as we re-published some documents that should be genuinely helpful.

Suffield Quarter Millennial
We’ve re-published Suffield: Quarter Millennial

Here are the four:

  1. Suffield Quarter Millennial — this book encompasses the history of Suffield, CT from its founding until the time of the celebration, is also the program for the celebration, and has tons of additional Suffield information in it.
  2. An annual report from Suffield’s Congregational Church.  Town (and church) history, lists of pastors, lists of members and also “absent members”
  3. A Sagitta yearbook from Suffield High School
  4. A package of miscellany, including an article from the first volume of the Connecticut Quarterly, a short excerpt from the Connecticut Guide, and a lot of photos.

You can find all this Suffield history and genealogy on our Suffield page on our main website.  If Suffield, CT is of interest to you, have a look today!

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.)