Gale has launched another new project--Genealogical Sourcebook series--and the first volumes look promising. The remaining volumes on Asian Americans and Native Americans will be published this summer. Libraries can order all four volumes for $239 (0-8103-8541-4). Part 1 of each volume consists of informative essays on immigration and migration, basic genealogical methods and resources, and problems specific to ethnic genealogy--such as naming practices, the reuse of graves where families could not afford perpetual sites, and reasons for deliberate falsification of records. Explanations and tips on accessing records specific to these groups, such as those of the Freedmen's Bureau and the Inquisition, records of religious orders, and an overview of newspaper ads and Hispanic heraldry are instructive and pragmatic. Tables, examples, and an extensive bibliography are included. Part 2, 'Directory of Genealogical Information, ' lists libraries and archives, public and private organizations, print resources, and other media that 'hold materials relevant to genealogists whether their focus is on genealogy in general or on a specific ethnic group.' Libraries and archives are listed geographically; those outside the U.S. are in Canada for African Americans, and in Guatemala, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Canada for Hispanic Americans. There are surprisingly few listings for Florida, which has a substantial Hispanic population. Private and public organizations include commercial ventures (publishers, researchers for a fee, bookstores) and nonprofits (genealogical societies, the American Antiquarian Society, etc.). The section entitled 'Print Resources' lists many sources from the 1980s, but there are also current publications. The author and title-organization indexes access only the products and sources listed in part 2. The subject index accesses the essays in part 1. Libraries that hold books such as George R. Ryskamp's Tracing Your Hispanic Heritage (1984) will want to keep them for their scholarly thoroughness. They will want to add these new books for their relative currency and for their simpler explanations of complicated facets of black and Hispanic culture.--BL 05/15/1995.

In February 1862, General Ambrose E. Burnside led Union forces to victory at the Battle of Roanoke Island. As word spread that the Union army had established a foothold in eastern North Carolina, slaves from the surrounding area streamed across Federal lines seeking freedom. By early 1863, nearly 1,000 refugees had gathered on Roanoke Island, working together to create a thriving community that included a school and several churches. As the settlement expanded, the Reverend Horace James, an army chaplain from Massachusetts, was appointed to oversee the establishment of a freedmen's colony there. James and his missionary assistants sought to instill evangelical fervor and northern republican values in the colonists, who numbered nearly 3,500 by 1865, through a plan that included education, small-scale land ownership, and a system of wage labor. Time Full of Trial tells the story of the Roanoke Island freedmen's colony from its contraband-camp beginnings to the conflict over land ownership that led to its demise in 1867. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Patricia Click traces the struggles and successes of this long-overlooked yet significant attempt at building what the Reverend James hoped would be the model for "a new social order" in the postwar South.

First published in 1956, Proud Shoes is the remarkable true story of slavery, survival, and miscegenation in the South from the pre-Civil War era through the Reconstruction. Written by Pauli Murray the legendary civil rights activist and one of the founders of NOW, Proud Shoes chronicles the lives of Murray's maternal grandparents. From the birth of her grandmother, Cornelia Smith, daughter of a slave whose beauty incited the master's sons to near murder to the story of her grandfather Robert Fitzgerald, whose free black father married a white woman in 1840, Proud Shoes offers a revealing glimpse of our nation's history.

An exhaustively researched history of black families in America from the days of slavery until just after the Civil War.

" ... provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization ... information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide ... The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail ... Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"--Publisher decription.