Early African Americans in Sumner County, both slaves and free, left a legacy not only of beautiful brick buildings and sturdy stone fences, but also a social history as rich and varied as the many tribes they represented. This exciting book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the immeasurable contributions, undeniable services, and the devotion of black Americans to the evolution of Sumner County's communities. Many of the sienna-hued photographs and Civil War-era tintypes presented here were taken when folks wore their Sunday best and didn't smile for the camera. These images, many never before published, capture everything from a "creek baptism" and bonnet worn by a local slave, to views of families and schoolchildren. The volume covers most of the early settlements in Sumner County where African Americans largely resided, from Rockland and Avondale to Scattersville, Parker's Chapel, and Gallatin.

The earliest surviving federal enumerations of the Tennessee Country consist of the 1810 census of Rutherford County and an incomplete 1820 census. But since the first settlers arrived at the French Lick as early as 1779, the first forty years of settlement in the area we now call Tennessee are a blank, at least in the official enumerations. This work is an attempt to reconstruct a census of the Cumberland River settlements in Davidson, Sumner, and Tennessee counties, which today comprise all or part of forty Tennessee counties. To this end, Mr. Fulcher has abstracted from the public records all references to those living in the jurisdictions between 1770 and 1790. From wills, deeds, court minutes, marriage records, military records, and many related items, the author has put together a carefully documented list of inhabitants--virtually the "first" census of Tennessee.

Here is the second volume in Louis Rasmussen's distinguished series dealing with passenger arrivals at the port of San Francisco between 1850 and 1875 (see also San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists Volume I 1850-1864] and San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists Volume III 1851-1852]). In the absence of official port records--which were destroyed by the fire in 1940--this ambitious work attempts a reconstruction of passenger arrivals from newspapers and journals.Volume II is based on completely different sources than the first volume in the series, which covered the years 1850-1864, and it encompasses an additional 16,500 passenger arrivals at San Francisco Bay during the 20-month period from April 1850 to November 1851. Most of these individuals, in the author's words, had come to the West in search of the golden goose who had laid the golden egg. Most would not find it, of course, but would remain in California or migrate to the Oregon territory to take up other commercial or agricultural pursuits. The passengers named in Volume II came from all parts of the United States, as well as from Europe, although the majority were probably from the East Coast of the U.S. The passenger lists themselves are arranged in chronological order, and, typically, each passenger list is introduced with the following notations: name of ship, type of ship, port of embarkation, date of arrival, name of captain, description of cargo, and notes concerning the passage (date of departure, ports of call, length of voyage, and names of passengers who died en route, with their places of residence and dates of death). The list of passengers follows and sometimes identifies accompanying family members. Rounding out the volume are the author's introduction, a key to abbreviations, a list of the shipping lines that sailed/steamed on the Pacific, and superlative name and subject indexes.