This book is the answer to the perennial question, "What's out there in the world of genealogy?" What organizations, institutions, special resources, and websites can help me? Where do I write or phone or send e-mail? Once again, Elizabeth Bentley's Address Book answers these questions and more. Now in its 6th edition, The Genealogist's Address Book gives you access to all the key sources of genealogical information, providing names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses, websites, names of contact persons, and other pertinent information for more than 27,000 organizations, including libraries, archives, societies, government agencies, vital records offices, professional bodies, publications, research centers, and special interest groups.

V.1-2, 5-6, 9-10, 13-14:Places; v.3-4,7-8,11-12,15-16: Families.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions…and gold dust. When Henry Jenkins’s sawmill business goes bust and his family loses their Indiana farm to foreclosure, he sees gold as the answer to his financial woes. Joining a company of younger men, Jenkins and the other prospective miners sign fraudulent promissory notes to borrow from a ruthless businessman, Allen Makepeace, to reach the gold mines. They sail the risky route via Panama to the mines in 1851. But gold is not so easy to find by then. Making enough to survive and get home will be difficult; repaying Makepeace could be impossible. As Henry Jenkins becomes mired in mining, his wife, Abby, struggles to meet the needs of her large family amidst crop failures, waves of deadly disease, and harassment by Henry’s creditors. When Henry’s sons-in-law follow in his wake, they find themselves on a notorious death ship, stranded in the vast Pacific. Will any of these frantic men make it home to their distressed families? Fortune’s Frenzy reveals the plight of miners who borrowed at extortionate rates to get to California, and explores the dangerous and deadly sea routes to the west coast that killed roughly 10 percent of those who risked the journey. Alternating between the miners’ trials and terrors, and the challenges for the wives, children, and mothers left behind, Fortune’s Frenzy delves into the country’s pressing social, economic, and nationalist issues in the pre-Civil War decades. The theme is age-old, and still relevant: desperate people falling for get-rich-quick schemes. They fail to consider the sacrifices they will have to make and the dismal odds of their success.

This is one of the finest statewide sourcebooks ever published, a remarkable compilation of sources and resources that are available to help researchers find their Michigan ancestors. It identifies records on the state and regional level and then the county level, providing details of vital records, court and land records, military records, newspapers, and census records, as well as the holdings of the various societies and institutions whose resources and facilities support the special needs of the genealogist. County-by-county, it lists the names, addresses, websites, e-mail addresses, and hours of business of libraries, archives, genealogical and historical societies, courthouses, and other record repositories; describes their manuscripts and record collections; highlights their special holdings; and provides details regarding queries, searches, and restrictions on the use of their records.