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Vanity or Subscription Histories

© Mark W. Swarthout

In the late 1800's, America was thriving. Having made it through the Civil War and approaching the century mark, many communities where looking for ways to commemorate the event. One of the ways this was done was to put together a history of the community and publish it. The vast majority of these were done by counties, occasionally by state or territory, and even some cities would get one together.

Most of the time this was done through a publishing company that would hire an editor to do the work. A sales force would also go out and solicit subscriptions. Paying up front for a copy was one way to insure that your name would appear in the book, if nothing else, in the list of subscribers!

One of the problems with these publications is that they often do not have an index. The Table of Contents and Table of Illustrations were expected to provide the location of the information you wanted. And it was a book that was to be read, not just referenced for genealogical data! Fortunately, many genealogists, frustrated with the lack of an index, created them! Some were published through historical and genealogy societies, some are simple carbon paper copies bound into pasteboard booklets. Your local genealogical reference library may well have the key index you need to make a fast job of finding your ancestors.

My favorite place to do research, after the Internet of course, is the Burton Collection of the Detroit Public Library. It has a very comprehensive collection of these histories, and many of them have indexes. The New York Times Reference Book lists it as one of the top five locations for genealogical research in the country. If you are going to be in the Detroit area, it is well worth planning a stop here! The Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County, Michigan, has good information on the facilities and how to get there, but the hours are out of date, so call first! http://www.hvcn.org/info/gswc/library/li...

Prominent individuals would have a page or so of biographical information, and if you really rate, an engraving of their likeness. Their bios appear in the Table of Contents and are easy to find. The article would include that opening line or two about their parents and that vital little paragraph at the end about wife and kids. But the rest of the words will be about that person's position in the community, the organizations they belonged to, their profession and their political stance.