This ten-year supplement lists 10,000 titles acquired by the Library of Congress since 1976--this extraordinary number reflecting the phenomenal growth of interest in genealogy since the publication of Roots. An index of secondary names contains about 8,500 entries, and a geographical index lists family locations when mentioned.
Folklorists and lovers of folk songs will delight in this collection of the lyrics of songs sung by settlers of western New York in the middle of the nineteenth century. The manuscript on which this book is based is the most important collection of traditional song-texts, British and American in origin, to survive from its period. Discovered in the 1930s in the attic of Harry S. Douglass in Arcade, New York, it was written by Julia S. and Volney O. Stevens, who transcribed nearly ninety of the songs with which their father, Artemas Stevens, so often entertained them. The Stevens family had come to Wyoming County, New York, from New England in 1836, bringing with them traditional songs and ballads. The Stevens-Douglass manuscript contains the texts of 89 songs. In A Pioneer Songster, these are organized first by their origins (36 are from the British Isles; 53 were composed in America) and then according to themes and subjects, including love, history, politics, the pioneering life, politics, murder and shipwrecks, minstrel songs, spirituals, Indian legends, temperance, and satire. The book features a general introduction and shorter introductions to each themed section. In addition, each song is accompanied by an informative headnote detailing its history, meaning, and significance. A Pioneer Songster has been edited for the enjoyment of the general reader, but in their annotation, the editors have aimed at assisting students and scholars of folklore, musicology, and American history. While preserving the manuscript's original punctuation and spelling, they have succeeded in creating a resource that will be of interest to all who care for the American folk tradition and the history of New York State.
Like leaves in the wind, the lives of seven generations of the Elwell Family were driven by early American history to progress and peril. Fourteen years after the Mayflower, Robert Elwell landed at the Massachusetts Bay Colony and prospered in one of the first settlements in the New World. His children fought in the first Indian War and endured the Salem Witch Trials. A new frontier in West Jersey became a refuge and starting point for a westward migration that lasted for over a century. Patriot Thomas Elwell sought his fortune on the Allegheny frontier. He survived eight years of Revolutionary War service including combat in northern battles, a winter at Valley Forge and the southern campaign leading to Yorktown. Thomas married and moved west to Fort Cumberland to welcome troops mustering to put down the Whiskey Rebellion before homesteading in Ohio's Knox County. His children pushed westward to build lives in the new Northwest Territory before their children fought in the Civil War.
