This new publication provides a list of the major genealogy and local history collections throughout the state of New Hampshire. The arrangement is by county and immediately thereunder by municipality. For each of New Hampshire's ten counties the compiler gives the addresses and phone numbers of the Registrar of Deeds and Registrar of Probate. In the majority of cases, the information listed under the towns and cities consists of the community's date of foundation, mailing address and phone number of the city or town clerk, prior names for that community, and a succinct listing of the city/town's principal genealogy repositories.

The first Englishman to explore the Kanawha Valley was Captain Thomas Batts of Virginia, who went so far west as the Falls in 1671, but permanent settlement did not begin until just over 100 years later. This history deals primarily with the upper valley from its origin near Gauley Bridge west past Charleston to Davis Creek. It provides a wealth of historical and genealogical information on dozens of early families, and is very attractively illustrated with over a dozen drawings. An appendix gives additional genealogies, and military and other lists. A bibliography and a full-name index complete this work.

The Allegheny frontier, comprising the mountainous area of present-day West Virginia and bordering states, is studied here in a broad context of frontier history and national development. The region was significant in the great American westward movement, but Otis K. Rice seeks also to call attention to the impact of the frontier experience upon the later history of the Allegheny Highlands. He sees a relationship between its prolonged frontier experience and the problems of Appalachia in the twentieth century. Through an intensive study of the social, economic, and political developments in pioneer West Virginia, Rice shows that during the period 1730–1830 some of the most significant features of West Virginia life and thought were established. There also appeared evidences of arrested development, which contrasted sharply with the expansiveness, ebullience, and optimism commonly associated with the American frontier. In this period customs, manners, and folkways associated with the conquest of the wilderness to root and became characteristic of the mountainous region well into the twentieth century. During this pioneer period, problems also took root that continue to be associated with the region, such as poverty, poor infrastructure, lack of economic development, and problematic education. Since the West Virginia frontier played an important role in the westward thrust of migration through the Alleghenies, Rice also provides some account of the role of West Virginia in the French and Indian War, eighteenth-century land speculations, the Revolutionary War, and national events after the establishment of the federal government in 1789.