Book Reviews

Book Reviews Saco Valley Settlements and Families. Historical, Biographical, Genealogical, Traditional, and Legendary. By G. T. RidIon. (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1969. [Reprint of the 1895 edition.] xv, 1250 p. Frontispiece, portraits, illustrations, maps, index. $17.50.) The History of Nantucket County, Island and Town. Including Genealogies of First Settlers. By Alexander Starbuck. (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1969. [Reprint of the 1924 edition.] 871 p. Frontispiece, illustrations, tables, maps, index. $15.00.) History of the Town of Middlebury in the County of Addison, Vermont. By Samuel Swift. (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle Company. [Reprint of the 1859 edition and the 1898 index.] 454 p. Frontispiece, portraits, appendices, index. $12.50.) The first of the above three titles, the Ridlon work, is one of the classics of the local histories of Maine, with 773 pages devoted to genealogy, discussing 128 families, some of which are quite detailed, followed by 32 pages of indices. Elsewhere the reader will often find much more information, but this volume is still an excellent start for families in this area. The first part of the volume gives data on all the settlements in the Saco Valley, and includes short biographical sketches of the founders of each of those settlements. Starbuck's volume, the second of the above titles, is the standard history of Nantucket and contains 163 pages of genealogical material, with studies devoted to the families of each of the early settlers. These all end before the Revolution. There is a useful 39-page index. The reader interested in whaling will find a very complete study of this industry (pages 350 to 516), as well as 81 pages of tabulations of all recorded whaling voyages from 1788 to 1869, which give the catch and where taken. (Mr. Starbuck also wrote The History of the American Whale Industry.) The handsome dust jacket displays a color illustration from Incidents of a Whaling Voyage by F. A. Olmstead. The Middlebury history is one of the better town (and county) histories of Vermont. It is interestingly written, and though its tables and documents contain data of interest to the genealogist, there are no genealogical sketches, and the index is not adequate. It contains no references to the grantees of the town (p. 145) nor, for example, the tabulations of the elected officials of the County of Addison (p. 126-129). All three of these books are masterpieces of the printer's art, being clean and excellent reproductions on high quality paper, are beautifully bound, and individually boxed, Each volume includes a Publisher's Preface; in each case the Tuttle Company has taken the trouble not only to match the body type, which in some cases must have been rather difficult, but also the foundry type used for the headings, and even the ornate borders. It is indeed a pleasure to handle books that have been so carefully prepared. WALTER LEE SHEPPARD, JR. 133 134 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine Merion in the Welsh Tract, with Sketches of the Townships of Haverford and Radnor. Historical and Genealogical Collections concerning the Welsh Barony in the Province of Pennsylvarda, settled by the Cymric Quakers in 1682. By Thomas Allen Glenn. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1970. [Reprint of the 1896 edition.] x, 394 p. Illustrations, coats of arms, charts, facsimiles, appendix, index. $12.50.) Welsh Founders of Pennsylvania. By Thomas Allen Glenn. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1970. [Reprint in one volume of the two-volume 1912 edition.] xvi, 233 p., xii, 123 p. Portraits, illustrations, charts. $15.00.) At the turn of the century there was no better publishing genealogist specializing in Welsh families of Pennsylvania than Thomas Allen Glenn. His best work was Merion in the Welsh Tract which unfortunately has been out of print for many years. This book provides the background of the Welsh Quaker migration to Pennsylvania, and the settlement of the so-called Welsh Tract, primarily in the townships of Radnor, Haverford and Merion. It then supplies genealogical data on the principal families of this area. Unlike many other writers of his period, Mr. Glenn was not convinced of the correctness of the claim of the Herbert Earls of Pembroke to the male line descent from the early fit.Herberts, and he began his pedigree at about the same point as do modern students (p. 305). This work is of great value to anyone interested in the early Welsh settlers. Its usefulness is limited only by the weakness of the three-page index which gives only surnames. After the publication of Marion in the Welsh Tract, Mr. Glenn went to Wales to work and to study, principally in the National Library at Aberystwyth. He was much interested in the pre-colonial ancestry of the Welsh immigrants, but unlike many other genealogists who had accepted and adopted the old pedigrees, he subjected them to a critical examination. The two volumes of Welsh Founders of Pennsylvania, first published in Oxford, contain some of the results of his research. While all of this material may not be completely acceptable to modern scholars, yet this work is for ahead of anything that had been attempted when it was published, and still is a useful book today. The lack of an index forces the searcher to rely entirely on the descriptions in the lengthy Table of Contents. It is to be hoped that future reprints will include adequate indices, for both works are "musts" for libraries that deal with the Welsh colonists. WALTER LEE SHEPPARD, JR. Pennsylvania Place Names. By A. Howry Espenshade. [The Pennsylvania State College Studies in History and Political Science, No. 1. College Series, No. 1.] (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1970. [Reprint of the 1925 edition.] 375 p. Appendices, Indices. $10.00.) The author describes this work as "an historical commentary on the names of all the Pennsylvania counties, county seats, and towns with a population of five thousand or more, and on the most noteworthy village and township names" (p. 5). It is set up under three main headings: Part I, States, Counties, and County Seats; Part II, The Larger Towns; Part III, Villages and Townships. Each of these is subdivided into chapters. For example, among the fourteen in Part I are chapters on counties named for English shires, named for English noblemen, for American soldiers, and for natural tea- Book Reviews 135 tures. The four chapters in Part II are devoted to towns with borrowed names, such as Ashland in Schuylkill County, laid out in 1847 and named for Henry Clay's famous estate near Lexington, Kentucky (p. 176); towns that have Indian names; that were named for industries and geographical features; and towns that were named for persons. Part III not only covers villages and townships but has a chapter on "Oddities in Nomenclature" such as Bruin in Butler County (p. 300), Exchange in Montour County (p. 301), as well as a chapter on "Ninety Notable Names." In general, the names within each chapter are in alphabetical order, and while this seems an unduly awkward arrangement, an index to place names, as well as a general index help to offset the difficulty of finding a particular name quickly. These indices should be consulted before starting a search for a particular place name. There are three appendices. The first is a long list of some of the books the author umsulted, most of which were county histories. The second is a chronological tabulation of the formation and naming of Pennsylvania's counties. It includes the date of erection for each county, the parent county or counties, and the source of the county's name. The third appendix, entitled "Counties and County Seats," is statistical. Based on the 1920 census, the populations given in the table on page 350 are of course now out of date, but the area in square miles, and the names of the county seats are still valid. In this table the counties are arranged alphabetically, so that it serves as a cross reference to the chronological table in the second appendix. On the whole, this is a useful reference work which provides many interesting bits of information as to the founders of towns and the times of their establishment. But some of it should be taken with a grain of salt. Mr. Espenshade acknowledges his inadequacy with respect to Indian names, and had to rely on others for his information. The missionary John Heckwelder, frequently referred to by Mr. Espenshade as his source of information, was not always aware of the difference between Delaware and Seneca names. It is also to be regretted that the county map of Pennsylvania in the original edition is not included in this one. HANNAH BENNER. ROACH