Massachusetts Genealogical Research $9.95
By George K. Schweitzer, Ph.D., Sc.D.
1990
This is a comprehensive work that covers many sources.
Chapter 1 starts with a brief history of the state and features county maps with a listing of the towns. At the end of the chapter is a recommended bibliography.
Chapter 2 describes the types of major records available. Record types include: bible, biography, birth, cemetery, census, church, city directory, county history, colonial, Daughters of the American Revolution, death, divorce, ethnic, gazetteers, maps, atlases, genealogical compilations, periodicals & societies, historical societies, land (deed, grant, tax), manuscripts, marriage, military (Revolution, 1812, Mexican, Civil War, Spanish), mortuary, naturalization, newspaper, published genealogies, regional, tax, will & probate and the WPA.
Chapter 3 covers record locations: The New England Historic Genealogical Society, The Massachusetts State Archives, The Massachusetts State Library, The Boston Public Library, other Massachusetts repositories, Family History Library & branches, The National Archives and its branches, Large genealogical libraries and local libraries and repositories.
Chapter 4 covers research procedures and detailed listings of records for each of the counties or towns. Each county has a list of its towns and the records available. The last section is on extinct names, towns and districts.
170 pages, 6×9 new softbound.
A Geographic Dictionary of Massachusetts $12.00
Henry Gannett
Baltimore: GPC, 1978 reprint of 1894 edition printed by the Government Printing Office.
The Geographic Dictionary of Massachusetts, which constitutes this bulletin, is designed to aid in finding any geographic feature upon the atlas sheets of that State which are published by the U. S. Geological survey. It contains all the names given upon the sheets, and is limited to them. Under each name is a brief statement showing the feature it designates and its location, and opposite to it the name of the atlas sheet, or sheets, upon which it is to be found.
126 pages, very good condition.
Massachusetts Beautiful $13.00
Wallace Nutting
Bonanza Books 1973, reprint of 1923 edition
Here is a volume with photographs as eloquent as its prose. In over 300 reproductions the numerous picturesque cottages and haunts of Massachusetts-many never shown in any book–are presented. The interior as well as the exterior of stately houses and old rural homes is feelingly depicted by the author who has a confessed great love for the landscape and history of the state.
Two main ideas have been kept in mind in the preparation of this book. The first is that of avoiding clichés about the subject Mr. Nutting has succeeded in stating and showing in a fresh way the essence of the state’s distinctive architecture and natural environment. The second is to place before the public scenes with which they are not generally familiar but which merit attention.
Originally compiled in 1923 the book has a special value in capturing permanently that which may no longer exist or that which has changed. Photographs of women in long dresses working on their farms or chatting in their living rooms have an intimate and nostalgic quality. Each picture whether of a sea-port, forest or country lane has received a fitting caption.
Natives of the state will delight in recognizing some quaint feature of their own home town. For those who have vacationed there, this book will expand and preserve their experiences. And finally, for readers who have yet to visit Massachusetts this book may help to explain the subtle charm and indescribable mystique of New England now and as in days gone by.
301 pages, 6×9 hardbound, dust jacket, very good condition. gift inscription inside front cover.
Genealogical Notes, or, Contributions to the Family History of Some of the First Settlers of Connecticut and Massachusetts. $119.95
Nathaniel Goodwin.
Hartford, Conn.; F.A. Brown; 1856.
Memoir Of Nathaniel Goodwin. Genealogy Of The Goodwin Family. Adam Blakeman, Of Stratford, Conn. Leonard Chester, Of Wethersfield, Conn. Daniel Clark, Of Windsor, Conn. John Dwight, Of Dedham, Mass. William Edwards, Of Hartford, Conn. William Goodrich, Of Wethersfield, Conn. John Goodrich, Of Wethersfield, Conn. William Gurley, Of Northampton, Mass. John Hollister, Of Wethersfield, Conn. John Hopkins, Of Hartford, Conn. Joiin Ingersoll, Of Hartford, Conn., And Of Northampton, Mass. Lewis Jones, Of Watertown, Mass. William Judson, Of Concord, Mass. And Of Stratford And New Haven, Conn. John Kent, Of Suffield, Conn, Richard Mather, Of Dorchester, Mass. Michael Metcalf, Of Dedham, Mass. Joseph Mygatt, Of Hartford, Conn. John Nott, Of Wethersfield, Conn. John Porter, Of Windsor, Conn. Robert Sedgwick, Of Charlestown, Mass. Rev. Henry Smith, Of Wethersfield, Conn. Jared Spencer, Of Cambridge And Lynn, Mass., And Of Haddam Conn. Thomas Spencer, Of Hartford, Conn.
362 pages. Hardbound. Ornately embossed brown cloth binding. Pages foxed. Chip at top of spine. Shelf wear. Binding is tight. Fair Condition. <G MA CT>
Strange Superstitions $2.50
Robert Ellis Cahill
Salem: Old Saltbox Publishing House, 1990
Table of Contents:
Raising the Devil
Wisdom of the Witches
That Old Black and White Magic
48 pages, 6×9 softbound, very good condition.
Building the Mass Pike (Images of America) $9.00
Yanni K. Tsipis
Arcadia Publishing, 2002(from the back cover) By 1950, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and its capital city had fallen on hard times. With the region’s railroads in decline and the roads in appalling disrepair, the difficulty of moving people and goods around the state and into its largest port was taking a heavy toll on the economy. The solution came in 1952 from one man and the road he devoted the last decade of his life to building. The man was William Callahan, and the road was the Massachusetts Turnpike. Building the Mass Pike tells the story of the road’s planning, construction, and impact on the communities through which it passed. The book includes previously unpublished images from the Turnpike Authority archives and provides a vivid document of the largest public works project in the state’s history and the firestorm of controversy that surrounded it. Written by an engineer-historian, Building the Mass Pike will appeal not only to those fascinated by the history of the Commonwealth and its capital but also to those with an interest in construction, urban history, and the politics of old Boston.
Author Bio: Yanni K. Tsipis holds degrees in civil engineering and urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A Boston native, he is the author of Arcadia Publishing’s Boston’s Central Artery, the bestselling account of the construction of the elevated expressway through the city. Tsipis leads walking tours around Boston and serves on the editorial board of Civil Engineering Practice, the journal of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers.
128 pages, 6×9 softbound, good condition.
Transportation Bulletin 1960-1962 $21.00
Connecticut Valley Chapter National Railway Society, 1962
Index to Transportation Bulletin Nos. 63-66 1960-62
No. 63 Brockton Street Railway Company—
History of Brockton lines up to 1901. C-1 thru C-22
No. 64 Bay State Street Railway Company—
Freight and Express Operations. C-23 thru C-34
No. 65 Boston MTA, Riverside Line Extension, 1959. C-35 thru C-54
No. 66 Norfolk & Bristol Street Railway Company—
A complete history of the line. C-55 thru C-74
72 pages, 9×12 hardbound, very good condition.
Society and Power: Five New England Towns 1800-1860 $14.95
Robert Doherty
Privately printed, 1977
(from the forward) “Alexis de Tocqueville described nineteenth-century America as an open society in which the traditional European restraints of inherited social position and powerful church and state were absent. In this study, Robert Doherty uses the raw material of social history—census reports, tax lists, assessors’ records, estate inventories, and town directories—to examine geographic and social mobility, wealth distribution, and political power in five Massachusetts towns from 1800 to 1860.
In contrast to much recent research which has focused on individual nineteenth-century communities, this work is a comparative study of towns of varying types. Included are two “hill-towns” (Pelham and Ware), two “market and administrative centers” (Northampton and Worcester), and one “major international sea-port” (Salem). Using a framework derived from central-place and regional economic theory, Doherty analyzes the statistical data and attempts to answer basic questions about the inhabitants of these towns: to what extent were they able to attain material security and make choices about their lives, and which geographical and socio-economic factors appear to have contributed to the availability of choice and security? He concludes that the actual opportunities of the “open” society in antebellum New England varied systematically in quantity and quality according to the physical location and socio-economic characteristics of the individual towns.”
Table of contents: American Society, 1800-1860: Themes and Problems, The Five Towns: Pelham, Ware, Northampton, Worcester and Salem, Massachusetts, Economic Change, 1800-1860, Geographic Mobility, Wealth Distribution, Property Mobility and Group Status, A Summary and Interpretation of Social Structure, Political Power, Appendix, Notes, Index.
112 pages, 6×9 hardbound, very good condition, dust jacket has some closed tears and some ragged spots on the bottom.
Town and City Seals of Massachusetts Volume 1 $15.00
The State Street Trust Company, Boston 1950
State Street Trust produced a number of interesting books on different facets of Massachusetts history. These two volumes are my among my favorites. Each town includes a picture of the seal, some history of the seal, a brief history of the town and some interesting historical tidbits. This volume includes the towns of Athol, Attleboro, Barnstable, Beverly, Brockton, Canton, Dedham, Dover, Essex, Fall River, Falmouth, Fitchburg, Framingham, Gardner, Gloucester, Groton, Hamilton, Haverhill, Hingham, Holyoke, Ipswich, Lawrence, Lexington, Lowell, Manchester, Marblehead, Milton, Nantucket, New Bedford, Newburyport, Norwood, Peabody, Peru Pittsfield, Plymouth, Salem, Sherborn, Southbridge, Springfield, Sturbridge, Topsfield, Walpole, Wellesley, Weston, Westwood, Winchester, Winthrop and Worcester.
146 pages, softbound, good condition, corners bumped.
Hayward’s Massachusetts Gazetteer $65.00
Boston: J. Hayward, 1847
Includes descriptions of every town in the Commonwealth.
444 pages, hardbound, fair condition, spine is decaying.
Massachusetts Newspapers and the Revolutionary Crisis 1763-1776 $6.00 & $1.50 s&h
Francis G. Walett
Boston: Massachusetts Bicentennial Commission 1974
44 pages 7×10 softbound pamphlet, good condition.
The Glorious Ninety-Two Members of the House of Representatives: Selections from the Journals of the Honorable House of Representatives, of His Majesty’s Province of Massachusetts-Bay in New England – Begun and Held at Boston in the County of Suffolk, December 30, 1767 and May 25, 1768. $19.95
Joint Committee for the Convention of the Senate and House of Representatives held on February 15, 1949 to Commemorate the Return to Massachusetts of the Paul Revere Liberty Bowl.
Boston: 1949.
71 pages; hardbound, no d/j; illus. with b/w photos; good; unread copy, some pages not cut.
Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1880. $19.95Printed by Order of the House.
Front end-paper inscription: “Sidney A. Bull, Carlisle, Mass., Nov. 11th, 1880.” (Sidney A. Bull, grandson of Ephraim Bull, was the author of The History of Carlisle).
Proceedings of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, January 27 to April 24, 1880.
Boston, Mass.: Rand, Avery & Co., Printers to the Commonwealth; 1880.
524 pages., appendix, index; hardbound; ornamental binding; gilt title and arms of the Commonwealth on spine; good.
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society volume 118, 1996 $13.00
Boston: Massachusetts historical Society, 1998
Table of contents:
Passing: Race, Religion, and Healy Family, 1820-1920, by James M. O’Toole
“Macintosh, Otis and Adams are our demagogues”: Nathaniel Cotton and the Loyalist interpretation of the origins of the American Revolution, by Colin Nicholson
Notes and documents:
New light on the Bathsheba Spooner execution, by Deborah Navas
routines of upper-class life in Boston, 1887-1919: two women diarists by P.A.M. Taylor
199 pages, 6 x 9 hardbound, good condition.
Memorials of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati $75.00
Edited by James M. Bugbee
Boston, Mass: Printed for the Society 1890
Table of contents: Past and present members, Historical sketch of the General Society, Annals of the Massachusetts Society, Biographical Notices of members, Appendix: Statement of Dr. William Eustis, Note on the original members of the Massachusetts Society, Officers of the Massachusetts Society from 1783 to 1890, Acts of incorporation, 1806, By-laws and rules of the General Society from 1783 to 1890, Rules and regulations of the General Society, Members of the American Order of the Cincinnati in France.
575 pages, red cloth hardbound with gold inlay.
Political Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts $14.95
Stephen E. Patterson
University of Wisconsin Press 1973
(from the end flaps) In this, the first book of recent times that develops the history of the American Revolution through the 1770s, Stephen E. Patterson explodes the myth that Massachusetts revolutionaries approached the American Revolution in a united and cohesive way. They were, the author finds, partisan in their behavior both before and during the revolution, and their internal conflicts were at times of greater significance to them than the war with Great Britain.
Patterson explores the meaning of “party” in eighteenth-century Massachusetts, and he presents significant new evidence of surprisingly vigorous party activity among the state’s political leaders. Thus, while illuminating the many conflicting political, social, and economic forces at work in Massachusetts in the period 1774 to 1780, Patterson makes a solid contribution to our understanding of the party concept in all of revolutionary America.
Of all the participants in the revolution, none were more successful in appropriating it and making it their own than the men of Massachusetts. While a leader in the movement, Massachusetts also was constrained by its attachment to traditional values . Both English common law and the Puritan tradition were based on principles of social unity and intolerance of dissent. In spite of this background, political parties existed in Massachusetts before 1765, and Patterson turns to the voting records to prove it. By the time of the revolution, the people of Massachusetts were used to coping with political problems in a partisan way, although the parties were still not fully developed and were not freely accepted as desirable. The book thus points to the contradiction that existed between theory and reality in the political life of revolutionary Massachusetts. Paradoxically, the revolution there was shaped by political parties whose goals, in part, were the eradication of partisanship.
Patterson offers a striking interpretation of the shifting concepts of the nature of society and the evolution of political thought. He portrays the clash between traditional holistic values and modern pluralist reality that characterized the situation and laid the groundwork for the modem acceptance of political parties. Of especial importance are his presentation of the problem of devising a constitution and his discussion of the changes wrought by the revolution in the political role of Massachusetts towns. He explores the political struggle for power at the time when the strength of many early revolutionary leaders, such as Sam Adams, had declined. Particularly interesting is Patterson’s documentation of the struggle between coastal conservatives and the agriculturally based democrats of the inland counties for political control of the new state.
Patterson’s book, lively with quotations from the men who shaped this history, will go far in stimulating reevaluations of America’s political behavior in this crucial period. It will also serve as important and challenging collateral reading in many advanced courses dealing with the American Revolution.
Stephen E. Patterson is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick.
654. 299 pages, hardbound, dust jacket, V/F V/F, end flap price clipped.
Journal of Convention, Dept. Mass. Woman’s Relief Corps 1897 $50.00
Boston, Mass: 1897
Full title: Journal of the 18th Annual Convention of the Department of Massachusetts, Woman’s Relief Corps, Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic. Worcester, Mass. February 10 and 11, 1897.
290 pages, hardbound, green cloth, some rubbing, top and bottom of spine show wear, bumped.
The Bay State Monthly $20.00
Boston: John McClintock and Company 1884
A Massachusetts magazine of literature, history, biography and state progress. Lots of articles about Massachusetts history. Some articles by Samuel Abbott Green about Groton Mass, among others.
426 pages hardcover bottom right hand corner is worn, edges are worn.
The Massachusetts Miracle $4.00
Edited by David R. Lampe
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1988
An economic analysis of the booming economy of the 1980s
366 pages, hardbound, dust jacket, good condition.
The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1960 $7.50
Samuel Eliot Morison
Boston: Northeastern University Press: second impression 1922
The classic story of maritime Massachusetts.
Table of contents: Coast and sea, the colonial background, revolution and reconstruction, pioneers of the pacific, the northwest fur trade, canton market, Salem East Indies, ships and seamen, merchants and mansions, the sacred codfish, Newburyport and Nantucket, federalism and neutral trade, embargo and war, ,the passing of Salem, the hub of the universe, ships and seamen in southern seas, china and the east Indies, Mediterranean and Baltic, Cape Cod and Cape Ann, the whalers, oh! California, the clipper ship, conclusion, supplement of letters, appendix: statistics, bibliography, index.
401 pages, reading copy, covers are stained and have wear along the edges, pages are in good shape.
Puddingstone, Drumlins, and Ancient Volcanoes: A Geologic Field Guide Along Historic Trails of Greater Boston $20.00
James W. Skehan, S.J.
Dedham: WesStone Press, Second revised edition 1979
(from the introduction) “The area of this field guide comprises portions of several geomorphic districts–The Fells upland, the Boston Basin, the Needham Upland, the Blue Hills Block, The Norfolk Basin, the Sharon Upland and the Sudbury Valley.”
This is a great geographic tour of the 128 area. Get in your car follow the directions to these many interesting places and prepare to learn more than you expect. Includes illustrations and photos.
63 page pamphlet, good condition covers are faded and have a few stains.