Week 18 - Historical Books - 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy

Week 18: Historical Books: This week we're going to shine the spotlight on other historical books that benefit the genealogy field. Do you have a favorite book that falls into this category? What makes this book special to you? How can other genealogists benefit from its content?

One of my favorite historical books is the Mercer County, Ohio History 1978, edited by Joyce Alig. Joyce was the Directory of the Mercer County Historical Museum and currently writes a history column called Our Old Bookcase for the local newspapers there. The book is close to 1000 pages long and contains histories of the county, details on each township and many biographies and pictures. There are quite a few mentions of my ancestors and I refer to it whenever I'm looking into a new name or subject. I always seem to discover something new.

The book is available in several Ohio libraries and sometimes comes up for sale on eBay or Amazon. Abebooks and other used book stores would also be a good place to check. The earlier Mercer County histories for 1882 and 1907 are available online through Heritage Pursuit. This is a subscription site, but is available for free to members of the Ohio Genealogy Society.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.