County Maps and Family History Books - Where to Find Them

When researching your family history, there is a need to review the social, political, economic, geographic, religious and educational history of the area where your family lived.  Where can you find this sort of information?  Well, one place is right at your fingertips...

This website has been one of my favorite for years, and evidently the favorite of many other researchers, as it has been mentioned as one of the Family Tree Magazine's 101 Best Websites for several years.  

Found at www.mygenealogyhound.com , you can have access to county histories, family biographies, genealogy references and county map images.  Did I mention this website and it's listings are FREE?

Family biographies are now available for the states of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.  This website is constantly growing.  You can subscribe to a weekly newsletter, in which you will be advised of the new listings added periodically.  Browse the site for biographies by surname to see whether your family was mentioned in texts in more than one state.

I did a quick search for the BRYAN family name, knowing that it was quite important in the history books of Kentucky, and in the ancestry of my husband.  One of the returns was exactly what I was looking for :  

http://www.mygenealogyhound.com/kentucky-biographies/ky-jefferson-county-biographies/geo-b-eastin-genealogy-jefferson-county-kentucky-louisville-ky.htmlption

This excerpt is wonderful for me, because it just added more information to my husband's family tree which I did not have before now.  Try searching your family tree surnames, and see what results you can find.

Historical County maps are available to view for the states of Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and Indian Territories, Tennessee and Texas.  More maps will be added in the future. State maps showing the location of each county can also be viewed.  

I searched for Fayette County, Kentucky maps to see if there would be something of interest regarding the BRYAN family.  Unfortunately, they do not have maps for the county, yet.  When searching for Jefferson County, Kentucky, there was only one from 1905, but with a note that there were more to come in the future.  Please check back again, soon.  

  Additional genealogy links are also listed, which include State county division maps, Articles about life in the United States prior to 1900, How to obtain a death certificate, Various genealogy and history news articles and Genealogy research in Missouri.  Also, there are links to various websites that may be of interest to family history buffs. 

Hearthstone Legacy Publications provides My Genealogy Hound for free.  However, Hearthstone Legacy Publications sells CD/DVD and digital downloads for county histories and genealogy titles for a wide variety of states. Census records and plat map books are also available.  Visit their website at http://www.hearthstonelegacy.com/ to review the extensive list.

My Genealogy Hound is a growing website.  Be patient with them.  And check back periodically, or, sign up for their free newsletter and keep abreast of their new content.