Calling all History Nerds! An end of the year review of favorite books and tools.
Coming in 2025.
An upcoming story will take a look inside the secret organization known as The Underground Railroad. I will be examining just one small but significant branch of that group in Randolph County, Illinois. You will also see more articles on interesting (meaning quite crazy) things my cemetery conservation group find in the course of repairing historical grave stones.
But in the meantime, I want to share a few favorite things of use for history and genealogy fans.
My favorite books include:
1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe by Peter Stearns, 1974. Imagine a world of the embattled middle class struggling to survive between the vice grips of disruptive technology, warring political parties, out of control migration and the oppressive global elite power structure! Sounds a bit too familiar doesn’t it? This is the book that attempts to explain why so many of our ancestors left Europe and came to America in 1848. That upheaval is still vibrating through American culture today. Although the topic can be complex and confusing, this era is so important to both the U.S. and Europe that it is well worth the effort in understanding your Irish or German ancestor’s migration.
Kaskaskia The Lost Capital of Illinois by David MacDonald and Raine Waters, 2019. This comprehensive account of the legendary Illinois village of Kaskaskia is a necessary resource for anyone interested in Southern Illinois or Mississippi River Valley history. Imagine my happy surprise to find my old History professor at Illinois State University had co-authored this detailed resource on Old Kaskaskia. Dr. MacDonald was a key person in the fusing of historical archaeology with the history department at Illinois State Univ. back in the 1970s. As a field trip, our cemetery conservation team visited the site this summer. It was once believed that Kaskaskia was completely washed down the Mississippi, but it is now thought that perhaps half of it still exists buried underground as an archaeological site.
Time on the Cross the Economics of American Negro Slavery by Fogel & Engerman, 1974. This is a controversial pick due to the fact that it was (perhaps unfairly) considered apologetic of antebellum slavery. Still, it remains a personal favorite principally because of the method of analysis rather than the finished result. The authors label their work as Cliometrics but any economist would recognize their work as an economic analysis of historical data. If you prefer hard data and economic analysis to squishy historical narrative, this book will resonate. The charts alone are worth the book.
Frontier Illinois by James E. Davis, 1998. I have read many history books on Illinois and this remains my favorite. It is comprehensive, well organized and easy to read. Major events are backed up by numerous contemporaneous accounts. I regard it as an important reference due to the extensive index and bibliography.
The Ohio Frontier by Douglas Hurt, 1996. This is a companion volume to Frontier Illinois and should be considered mandatory reading for anyone interested in early Ohio history. There is considerable attention paid to atrocities between early settlers and Indians. The violence is described in such a way that seems both unsettling and honest. Contains an interesting Bibliographical Essay along with a detailed index.
Favorite Tools and Gadgets.
Randy Majors.org is a free internet overlay of Google maps of section and township for U.S. real estate descriptions. Researching land descriptions on historic records can be confusing at times and this helps to streamline your search efforts. It has a mostly easy learning curve so those “SW 1/4 of the T. 5 S. R. 6 W.” will be easy to see on Google maps. Click on the link below to see for yourself.
David Rumsey Map Collection is a free collection of historic maps. It is free and easy to use. If you were wondering how your 3 times Great Grandfather got from Vincennes, Indiana to Kaskaskia, Illinois in 1816, there are maps from that period that show the roads. Best of all, the maps can be downloaded in fine detail making them very useful for study. Be sure to use the Georeferencer feature that overlays a Google Map with the historical map.
Find A Grave dot com is the largest entry in Cemetery Memorial apps, if not the best. Because of the “early mover advantage” it remains by far dominate. When introduced about 20 years ago, it was strictly a crowd sourced system for digitizing grave stone information. Since then, it has gradually morphed into a decent tool for organizing genealogical and historical information. I consider it an essential tool in spite of its limitations. The drawbacks reside mainly with users that have eccentric notions of its use, not with the structure itself. The occasional brilliant discovery makes the effort worthwhile.
The Internet Archive dot org is a great source for searchable county histories. I also use it for books on archaic language such as 19th century medical terms. The fact that each book is searchable within makes it relatively easy and fast to use. A similar website is the Hathi Trust.
Some housekeeping.
If the only time you read my blog is when the newsletter miraculously misses the spam folder and shows up as an email, you are missing out. Substack is rapidly growing into the preferred social media publishing app. By getting an account, you not only can access past issues of Serengentiy, but you have free access to some of the best writing on the planet.
Much of it is free, some requires a monthly subscription of a couple dollars, but you get to decide based on your preference. They do ask for a credit card number when you open an account but that is only in case you later decide to subscribe to work behind a paywall.
Most subscriptions are voluntary. I offer a free subscription option and never intended to earn a living as a writer. But if you do choose to subscribe with a monthly fee, that money is used to cover our team’s costs of supplies used for grave stone conservation.
Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! See you in 2025.
Dave
Dave, I'm just getting around to my reading of fav posts and this one is great. What a bunch of wonderful resources. Some I use, some I haven't ever used. Now to go play! Thanks.
Happy new year and happy researching