Guidebooks an Aid to Tracing Roots

Photographing Your Heritage by Wilma Sadler Shull (Ancestry Publishing, Box 476, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110: $10.45 postpaid)

This engaging book deals with buying cameras and accessories, how to copy photographs, photographing heirlooms and how to get the best people pictures. A chapter called “Capturing the Graven Image,” offers numerous tips for photographing tombstones.

Managing a Genealogical Project by William Dollarhide (Genealogical Publishing Co., 1001 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md. 21201: $16.95 postpaid)

Overwhelmed by all the paper work genealogy creates? Want to get it all organized? Dollarhide offers a unique method for handling these problems.

If descendancy numbering systems mystify you, you will find this book crucial, plus there’s an entire chapter about using computers for your genealogical records. If you need to organize your records, read this easy-to-understand book.

Passenger and Immigration Lists Bibliography, 1538-1900, second edition, edited by P. William Filby (Gale Research Co., Book Tower, Detroit, Mich. 48226: $100 postpaid)

This book lists more than 2,500 published sources of names of persons arriving in the United States and Canada. It is a bibliography, arranged alphabetically by author, with lists by title when no author is known. Since you may not know the author of “Swedish Passenger Arrivals in New York, 1820-1840,” or even that such a book exists, the index enables you to find the reference by looking under “‘Swedes, to New York, 19th Century.” Then you can turn to that reference number and find that Nils William Olsson was the author, and read the descriptive annotation.

More than just a collection of published sources of ship passenger lists, there are invaluable references to naturalizations, because often the country of origin and sometimes the date of immigration are given in these documents. Great Registers (or voters’ lists) also often give emigration data, and several of these compilations are included.

In the diligent search to learn the date your ancestors arrived, the ship they came on, and their country of origin, this book is of immense value. Its references can lead you to published sources that may contain information about your immigrant ancestors.

Tennesseans in Texas by Helen and Timothy Marsh (Southern Historical Press, P.O. Box 738, Easley, S.C. 29641- 0738: $40 postpaid)

The county records of Tennessee are filled with the notation “GTT” (Gone to Texas). Tennessee, it’s claimed, is the mother of Texas. This book was compiled from a detailed study of the 1850 federal census of Texas.

If you have Texas-Tennessee ancestry, this book is significant. Arranged alphabetically by the Texas counties, it lists entire families (if any were born in Tennessee), giving their ages and occupations. A surname index allows you to search for all your family names, then you can determine from the birth dates of the children when the family arrived in Texas.

Louisiana ... En Passant, The Newspaper Writings of Winston De Ville (Smith Books, Box 894, Ville Platte, La. 70586: $12.50 postpaid)

This is a compilation of excellent genealogical columns written by Winston De Ville, F.A.S.G., that appeared in the Alexandria (La.) Daily Town Talk from 1966 to 1970. It is valuable to researchers whose families lived in Louisiana and surrounding locales. A surname index aids in finding references in the columns. Subjects of these columns include “Early Settlers of Pensacola: 1769,” “Natchez Loyalists Prisoners: 1781,” and Rapides Parish Land Surveys: 1819-1829.”