The Tories of Connecticut

Here’s another new download from the Connecticut Quarterly, Volume IV (1898).

It did not take much to be considered a Tory during the times of the American Revolution — being committed to maintaining the status quo was really the only requirement to be categorized as such.  As a consequence, Connecticut had many, many people who fell in this category.

As the article points out, not all were subjected to criminal prosecution, but there were many ways in which Connecticut’s Tories paid for their loyalty to King and to the status quo.  The “Tory effect” was also lasting.  Descendents of Tories often found that it was prudent to move westward rather than stay in their Connecticut home towns with the stigma of being the child or even later descendant of a Tory.

This could result in whole communities forming in newly settled areas in which the occupants generally were guarded about where they came from and why they had elected to settle where they did.

You can access this article for download on the “Connecticut Miscellany” page of our main website.

Rockville HS 25th Reunion

A few years ago we republished the high school yearbook of the class of 1932 from Rockville High School in Connecticut.

Now we are happy to offer a rare chance to be able to look back on these students a quarter century (and one great depression and two wars) later with their 25th reunion program.

Rockville HS reunion
Rockville High School Class of 1932 25th Reunion

More information about this program, now available as a download, is on the Tolland 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

Owl Annual – 1917 – Hartford High School

This is one of the oldest high school yearbooks we’ve republished, and also one of the best.  High school yearbooks were different animals, back before the roaring 20s — indeed, high schools were!  Not everyone went to high school, just for openers.

Hartford, Connecticut, was also a different city.  Hartford was prosperous then.   This was a time when the city (and probably the state) were governed by the “Seven Bishops” — the Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut, and the CEOs of the six major insurance companies headquartered there that made Hartford the Insurance Capital of America.   
Hartford High School

This is a remarkable social document, and it is available now as a download now, for $5.00.

See it on our main website HERE.

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.

 

Provost Marshal of Charleston

 

Provost Marshal of CharlestonThis is an important piece of Confederate military history, one that has not been published elsewhere.  At the same time, it is a snapshot of one of the most important cities of the Confederacy during the early years of the Civil War.

When Charleston, SC, was under martial law during the Civil War (or the War Between the States), the person in command of the entire city was the Provost Marshal of Charleston.  He was responsible for all activities in the city, both military and civilian.

During this period, the Provost Marshal, Colonel Alexander Haskell Brown, kept a “letter book” that today serves as a chronicle of the period of military law.  (For those who might not know the concept of a letter book, back in the days before typewriters and carbon paper, official correspondence was hand written, then hand copied to a “letter book” so a record of the correspondence could be kept.  Frequently, correspondence received was also copied to the letter book.  As you can imagine, this letter book covers many topics germane to a city under martial law.)

Robert G. (Gerry) Carroon, the editor of this document, hand copied the original letter book, which is in the archives of the University of South Carolina, and transcribed it.  A number of years ago, at his request, we published this document on CD-ROM.  When we discontinued the CD in the process of phasing out our CD business, the material became unavailable for a period of time.  We are happy to say that Provost Marshal of Charleston is again available, this time as a download.

Please CLICK HERE to read more about it and, perhaps, download a copy.

About CD-ROMs

CD-ROMs and Between the Lakes Group

Our longer term customers will remember when Between the Lakes Group started selling CD-ROMs full of historical material.

CD-ROMs - Liberty Volume I
Our first CD-ROM product

The first we offered was one of material from Liberty, NY — still the locality for which we have the most products available.  The CD sold well, telling us that people were happy buying historical material on CDs, and encouraging us to continue to build our historical republication business.  We followed with more than 30 additional CD-ROMs of historical material.

But that was “then”.  Just as, back then, we were witnessing the demise of computer media like 3 1/2 inch “floppy” drives, today we are in the process of another technology sea change — and that is the demise of the CD-ROM as a highly popular vehicle for moving and storing information.

To tell the truth, we’ve seen this day coming for quite a while.  We began shifting our new publications to downloads several years ago, and we’ve not produced a new CD-ROM in at least five years.  During those years we’ve produced well over 200 downloads, and we intend to continue along that route.

The internet rules today, and the day of the CD-ROM has passed.   Every week or so we hear from a customer who bought one of our CDs a few years ago and who now has a computer that doesn’t even have a drive that can read CDs.  Beyond directing them to their local public library to find a PC that can read their CDs, or suggesting that they purchase a USB-connected portable CD reader, we have little we can offer these folks.

Except for one thing:  we can reissue the material on our CD-ROMs as downloads.  In fact, that’s what we’ve already done with some of the less popular CDs, and we’ve not yet heard a single complaint!

Once the material is available as downloads, we’ll keep the CDs available for sale until we run out, and then we’ll discontinue the CD versions.  Presto!  We will be living in more modern times.

Benefits

Benefits for you, our customers, include:

  1. Instant gratification.  You can download the material you want with no waiting for the postman.
  2. Lower prices.  It costs us far less to provide material to you via download than it does via CD-ROM, and we pass those savings along to you.
  3. More material available.  Producing a new download can happen almost as soon as we have the material — no waiting until we have a CD-ROM full of stuff.
  4. No deteriorating CDs.  We’ve not seen this problem yet, but we’ve been advised to expect CDs that we shipped a decade ago will begin to fail.
  5. Easier to store your information.  You can put the PDF file of our download right in the same folder on your computer where you store your own notes on that subject, not in a paper folder or a CD box somewhere to misplace or discard in error.

At any rate, you will see this process — the process of converting from CD-ROM to downloads — speeding up going forward.  We think you’ll be very happy with the result!

To see what we have for a particular locality or interest of yours, why not visit our catalog today!

Go to our catalog
See our catalog of local history, genealogy, and Americana
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