The Genealogy Annual is a comprehensive bibliography of the year's genealogies, handbooks, and source materials. It is divided into three main sections.p liFAMILY HISTORIES-/licites American and international single and multifamily genealogies, listed alphabetically by major surnames included in each book.p liGUIDES AND HANDBOOKS-/liincludes reference and how-to books for doing research on specific record groups or areas of the U.S. or the world.p liGENEALOGICAL SOURCES BY STATE-/liconsists of entries for genealogical data, organized alphabetically by state and then by city or county.p The Genealogy Annual, the core reference book of published local histories and genealogies, makes finding the latest information easy. Because the information is compiled annually, it is always up to date. No other book offers as many citations as The Genealogy Annual; all works are included. You can be assured that fees were not required to be listed.

New Stories from an Old American Shrine The home of our first president has come to symbolize the ideals of our nation: freedom for all, national solidarity, and universal democracy. Mount Vernon is a place where the memories of George Washington and the era of America's birth are carefully preserved and re-created for the nearly one million tourists who visit it every year. But behind the familiar stories lies a history that visitors never hear. Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon recounts the experience of the hundreds of African Americans who are forgotten in Mount Vernon's narrative. Historian and archival sleuth Scott E. Casper recovers the remarkable history of former slave Sarah Johnson, who spent more than fifty years at Mount Vernon, before and after emancipation. Through her life and the lives of her family and friends, Casper provides an intimate picture of Mount Vernon's operation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, years that are rarely part of its story. Working for the Washington heirs and then the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, these African Americans played an essential part in creating the legacy of Mount Vernon as an American shrine. Their lives and contributions have long been lost to history and erased from memory. Casper restores them both, and in so doing adds a new layer of significance to America's most popular historical estate.

The remarkable true story of the woman who sheltered Confederate soldiers and gathered intelligence—and the secret book given to her by J. E. B. Stuart. As the Civil War raged, Confederate brigadier general J. E. B. Stuart entrusted a secret album to Laura Ratcliffe, a young girl in Fairfax County, “as a token of his high appreciation of her patriotism, admiration of her virtues, and pledge of his lasting esteem.” A devoted Southerner, Laura provided a safe haven for Rebel forces, along with intelligence gathered from passing Union soldiers. Ratcliffe’s book contains four poems and forty undated signatures: twenty-six of Confederate officers and soldiers and fourteen of loyal Confederate civilians. In A Southern Spy in Northern Virginia, Charles V. Mauro uncovers the mystery behind this album, identifying who the soldiers were and when they could have signed its pages. The result is a fascinating look at the covert lives and relationships of civilians and soldiers during the war, kept hidden until now. Includes photos and illustrations

This collection chronicles the tumultuous history of landowning African American farmers from the end of the Civil War to today. Each essay provides a case study of people in one place at a particular time and the factors that affected their ability to acquire, secure, and protect their land. The contributors walk readers through a century and a half of African American agricultural history, from the strivings of black farm owners in the immediate post-emancipation period to the efforts of contemporary black farm owners to receive justice through the courts for decades of discrimination by the U.S Department of Agriculture. They reveal that despite enormous obstacles, by 1920 a quarter of African American farm families owned their land, and demonstrate that farm ownership was not simply a departure point for black migrants seeking a better life but a core component of the African American experience.