Section describes examples of searches using computer databases, federal court records, indexes, justice of the peace records, and law library research, including how to search for people of color. The appendices list contact information for state and federal courts and other sources. Rapaport is a former trial lawyer and writes the column "Tales from the Courthouse" for New England Ancestors magazine. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

" ... provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization ... information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide ... The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail ... Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"--Publisher decription.

Tracing one's African-American ancestry can be uniquely challenging. This guide helps overcome the obstacles and pitfalls of specialized research by offering a proven, three-part approach.

The idea of covenant was at the heart of early New England society. In this singular book David Weir explores the origins and development of covenant thought in America by analyzing the town and church documents written and signed by seventeenth-century New Englanders. Unmatched in the breadth of its scope, this study takes into account all of the surviving covenants in all of the New England colonies. Weir's comprehensive survey of seventeenth-century covenants leads to a more complex picture of early New England than what emerges from looking at only a few famous civil covenants like the Mayflower Compact. His work shows covenant theology being transformed into a covenantal vision for society but also reveals the stress and strains on church-state relationships that eventually led to more secularized colonial governments in eighteenth-century New England. He concludes that New England colonial society was much more "English" and much less "American" than has often been thought, and that the New England colonies substantially mirrored religious and social change in Old England.

A manual for researchers writers, editors, lecturers, and Librarians.