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Ancestral trails : the complete guide to British genealogy and family history
1998
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Library Journal Review
Herber's book is billed as "the complete guide to British genealogy and family history," and that is exactly what it is. Thoughtfully designed, this orderly, comprehensive, and elegant work guides the researcher (beginner or advanced) through the entire process of tracing British heritage, from obtaining information from living relatives to drawing family trees and starting research in the birth, marriage, death, or census records. Later chapters guide researchers to records that are more difficult to find and use, such as wills, parish registers, civil and ecclesiastical court records, poll books, and property records. Written for practitioners by a practitioner (Herber is a member of the Society of Genealogists in London), this complete, current, and beautiful guide ultimately helps the researcher focus on how the ancestral trail begins and how to form a coherent picture of past generations and their links to the present. Highly recommended. Howells's Netting Your Ancestors, on the other hand, is less elegant in delivering its guidance to genealogical research on the Internet. Nothing that it covers‘the selection of hardware and software, getting a direct internet connection, E-mail, mailing lists, and newsgroups‘is tied uniquely to genealogical research. In fact, a good 95 percent of the skills and tools it covers could be gleaned just as effectively from any basic computer book. This seems to be written as a how-to book‘how to get to the author's popular web site. Not recommended.‘Scott Hightower, Gallatin/NYU (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
CHOICE Review
Copublished by Britain's Society of Genealogists, this second edition is 200 pages longer than the original (CH, Sep'98, 36-0004). Herber has kept the same format, beginning with chapters that cover the basics of British family history, such as how and where to begin, how to organize research materials, and common problems one can expect to encounter. He describes in great detail the different records available (e.g., birth, marriage, death, census, cemeteries, newspapers, courts, and military), as well as where to access them and the procedures for searching them, frequently providing examples from his own family research to illustrate his points. Although the author has added an appendix listing 184 Web sites, he does not go into great detail about Internet-based research, often referring the reader to popular genealogical periodicals. This reviewer is concerned with the binding, since very thick paperbacks (nearly 900 pages) often have broken spines after frequent photocopying. This volume will benefit advanced genealogical researchers and social historians; giving this book to a beginner would be like giving the OED to someone who needs a basic definition. Beginners would be better off with In Search of Your British & Irish Roots, by Angus Baxter (4th ed., 1999), which one hopes will be updated to reflect the 2003 creation of Britain's National Archives. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Libraries with large genealogical and British history collections serving upper-level undergraduates and above, and general readers. J. A. Drobnicki York College, CUNY
Summary
This guide describes the many books, reference works, published sources, and aids that deal with specific aspects of research into British genealogy. The author describes such procedures as dating photographs and tracing living relatives, and such in formation sources as the records of the Royal Marines and of the 17th century hearth tax. He provides numerous maps and reproductions of genealogical records. The extensive appendices include the addresses of county record offices and other archives. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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