Hampshire County was formed from the Virginia counties of Augusta and Frederick in 1754. Later, during the American Civil War, it became the first Virginia county wholly in the territory that is now West Virginia. Mrs. Vicki Horton is the compiler of a number of Hampshire County genealogical source record collections, six of which are now available from Clearfield Company (see also items 9734, 9339, 9147, 9336, and 9335). Hampshire County Virginia Personal Property Tax Lists consists of alphabetically arranged lists of all persons who paid a property tax for every year between 1800 and 1814, except for 1808, when no tax was collected. For each taxpayer Mrs. Horton has coded the number of white tithables in the household, the number of horses owned, and the number of slaves, if any. On occasion, persons are identified with supporting information, such as occupation. All the taxpayers are readily identified in the comprehensive index at the back of the volume. Since this volume contains more than 20,000 entries, it is hard to imagine a better census approximation of Hampshire County residents for this time period.

Philip Freneau was a poet, editor, and mariner. A graduate of Princeton, he was the roommate of James Madison and a classmate of Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Aaron Burr. When the colonies rebelled against England, he supported his newly born nation as a privateer, spending some time in a British prison as a result. He also served, more effectively, as “the poet of the Revolution.” Later he became the journalistic voice of the democrats. Ardently devoted to liberty, he believed himself to be a defender of the common man, for whom he fought selflessly and often vitriolicly throughout his life. In newspapers such as The Freeman’s Journal, The New York Daily Advertiser, The National Gazette, The Jersey Chronicle, and The Time-Piece, he published articles, letters, and poems, instructing the citizens of the new Republic about their rights, and attacking those who, he believed, were infringing on those rights. In the midst of the controversy in which he was so often involved, he also found time to write a small body of poetry whose sensitivity and beauty mark him as the poetic equal of his European contemporaries, and, in fact, as a precursor of the new Romantic movement In Philip Freneau: Champion of Democracy Jacob Axelrad provides a detailed biography of this pensman of the Revolution and early Republic. He gives a sympathetic, imaginative, perceptive, yet objective interpretation of Freneau and his place in history, and at the same time he presents a delightfully readable and clear picture of the period during which the poet lived. These pages not only re-create the battles between Whig and Tory, federalist and democrat, but they also are alive with the activities and philosophies of the men who made American history. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Adams, James Monroe go about the business of creating and shaping a new country, and as they do, they move into and out of the life of the poet of Monmouth, influencing him in a variety of ways. Above all, Axelrad brings to life for the reader the man Freneau: simple, direct, often uncritical in his devotion to the cause he believed in; courageous in sustaining his stand against strong opposition; disillusioned and pessimistic about human nature, yet boldly optimistic about the future of humanity and of his country. And always behind the furor the reader is aware of the man struggling to provide a living for himself and his family, and never quite succeeding.

Author Faith McClung Kline O’Brien’s paternal grandparents, Albert McClung and Mattie Fitzgerald, met at a small, country church in Oklahoma in 1907, the year that territory became a state. Albert’s ancestors included Revolutionary patriots “Saucy Jack” McClung, of Scotch-Irish descent, and Abraham Kuykendall, of Dutch lineage, who, around 1740, relocated from New York to North Carolina, where he settled and accumulated a fortune in gold coins. Mattie descended from two former sea captains who became merchants in Brooklyn, New York—Edward Card from Maine and Nathaniel Grafton from Newport, Rhode Island, whose seafaring ancestors had sailed the Atlantic Ocean since the mid-1600s. In Move On! O’Brien chronicles her extended family’s history, with each chapter focusing on one of Albert’s or Mattie’s seventeen ancestral branches—the Fitzgerald and McClung Clans and their allied lines: the Anthony, Barry, Card, Dods, Forman, Grafton, Kuykendall, Longstreet, Miller, Reid, Thompson, Tidwell, Trigg, Wilbore, and Wyckoff families. Ten of these lines include Revolutionary patriots, and ten have roots in America extending as far back as the 1600s. Move On! tells how descendants of these disparate families met, united in marriage, and eventually became pioneers on the Southwestern prairies. Glimpses of religion in the lives of everyday Americans appear throughout Move On!, which combines genealogical details with personal stories, many taking place during pivotal events in US history. Stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries told firsthand by O’Brien’s late grandparents help bring Move On! to life through the eyes of real-life characters, her ancestors.

Dutch and English settlers brought the first enslaved people to New Jersey in the seventeenth century. By the time of the Revolutionary War, slavery was an established practice on labor-intensive farms throughout what became known as the Garden State. The progenitor of the influential Morris family, Lewis Morris, brought Barbadian slaves to toil on his estate of Tinton Manor in Monmouth County. Colonel Tye, an escaped slave from Shrewsbury, joined the British Ethiopian Regiment during the Revolutionary War and led raids throughout the towns and villages near his former home. Charles Reeves and Hannah Van Clief married soon after their emancipation in 1850 and became prominent citizens of Lincroft, as did their next four generations. Author Rick Geffken reveals stories from New Jersey's dark history of slavery.

The cartmen—unskilled workers who hauled goods on one horsecarts—were perhaps the most important labor group in early American cities. The forerunners of the Teamsters Union, these white-frocked laborers moved almost all of the nation’s possessions, touching the lives of virtually every American. New York City Cartmen, 1667–1850 tells the story of this vital group of laborers. Besides documenting the cartmen’s history, the book also demonstrates the tremendous impact of government intervention into the American economy via the creation of labor laws. The cartmen possessed a hard-nosed political awareness, and because they transported essential goods, they achieved a status in New York City far above their skills or financial worth. Civic support and discrimination helped the cartmen create a community all their own. The cartmen's culture and their relationship with New York's municipal government are the direct ancestors of the city's fabled taxicab drivers. But this book is about the city itself. It is a stirring street-level account of the growth of New York, growth made possible by the efforts of the cartmen and other unskilled laborers. Containing 23 black-and-white illustrations, New York City Cartmen is informative reading for social, urban, and labor historians.