A Bibliography of American County Histories, a listing by state of the hundreds of county histories that have been written. County histories are gold mines for the amateur and professional genealogist or family historian in that they not only provide a general history of the county and many of its towns, they have wonderful biographies of people and families. County histories were quite a popular thing for counties to compile in the 1880s, and continued into the 1970s and a few even later. Those 19th century editions are a wonderful source of very early family information. Once you learn that a history exists for the county where your family may have lived, you may be able to get it as an interlibrary loan, or write to a library in the county and ask them to copy some pages for you, or you may decide that it's SO worth an in-person trip there yourself..
DESCRIPTION: Published by the Genealogical Publishing Company; 1983; compiled by P. William Filby, who was the chief librarian and director of the Maryland Historical Society; hardback with dust jacket; black cloth covered boards gilt title stamped on cover and spine; 6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches; 449 pages; organized alphabetically by state then by county; no illustrations.
CONDITION: The dust jacket is in very good condition, a little age-related yellowing, very small chips on the top outside corners, a small ½ inch tear on the top front edge, no shelf wear but a few dark marks where it has scraped against other book on online the shelf. The underlying book is in excellent condition, the cover is clean, no bumped corners, no shelf wear. The front pastedown has the small bookplate of a former owner and stickers indicating that it was donated to the Genealogical Association of Sacramento and then to the Sacramento Public Library.
Product code: A Bibliography of AMERICAN online COUNTY HISTORIES