When we think about books like “The History of the Wilmer Family” and “Genealogical History of Deacon Stephen Hart and His Descendants” we usually think of going to a library and hunting for them on the shelves. It may surprise you to know that thousands of these books are readily available online, as documents in the public domain. What’s more, you can search the text online, and in many cases you can download the entire book. Not only is this useful in learning about direct-line ancestors and their stories and pedigrees, but you can also find a wealth of information about collateral or descendant lines in these  family history books.

(Incidentally, aforementioned Stephen Hart is one of my ancestors, so I look forward to spending time reading about his life in more depth than I had previously done.)

This week we are introducing a new feature in The Family History Guide: we’re adding links to online books for surnames and for geographic histories.

Surnames

In any of the Learning Path menus—FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, or Findmypast—you’ll see a new entry for Surname eBooks (between Project 4 and Project 5). Click it and you’ll go to the new Surnames eBooks page, as shown below.

There is an alphabetical index at the top of the page to help you quickly find names of interest. As mentioned on the page, the eBooks come primarily from Archive.org, HathiTrust Digital, and Google eBooks. The interface for viewing and downloading the books varies somewhat among the three platforms, but the process is pretty straightforward. Being able to search through text in a book is a huge plus that will save you time and effort. And because the books linked by The Family History Guide are in the public domain, you can copy and print from them as well.

Currently there are links to over 400 Surname eBooks on the page, and we will be adding more. The books focus primarily on the British Isles and America.

Geographic Resources

The next phase of the eBooks project is to gather links for eBooks with county, regional, and state histories and genealogy resources. (A few of these have already been placed in The Family History Guide.) State and regional histories will be included as “eBook” QUIKLinks, in Goal 2: Archives and Libraries for the corresponding U.S. state. County histories will be included in the County links at the bottom of state pages. Look for these areas to be updated with new eBook links in the next few weeks.