Researching your family's history

I recently purchased a copy of the now-rare history of the Montagues, one of the original settler families of Hadley. The book, with the incredibly long title History and Genealogy of the Montague Family of America, Descended from Richard Montague of Hadley, Mass., and Peter Montague of Lancaster Co., Va..., was published in 1886 following a meeting of Montague descendants in Hadley in 1882. It is an invaluable volume, with interesting pictures, drawings, anecdotes, and, of course, excellent genealogical lists.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, historians, writers, and genealogists--professional and amateur--produced countless volumes on various American families--far more than I would have thought before I began researching. There was an index to genealogies of American families printed in 1900 and written by Daniel Steele Durrie that runs to over 350 pages. It was the fifth edition of a work first published in 1868. At first it had 10,000 references. At the fifth printing, it had 50,000, giving some idea of how popular genealogical research was at this time.

For Hadley and surrounding towns, there are other genealogies of families that lived in the area other than that of the Montagues. In addition, Sylvester Judd included some genealogical notes in his History of Hadley, first published in 1863. First editions are, not surprisingly, rare and hard to come by, but it has been reprinted numerous times. Lucius Boltwood used some of Judd's notes for his own Genealogies of Hadley Families (published in 1862), which, in later editions of Judd's work, was tacked on as a supplement. Editions published more recently include both works in one volume.

For people interested in researching their genealogy, there are obviously the online sites, such as ancestry.com. But there is a certain satisfaction--and, dare I say it, romance?--to sitting down in a library with a musty old volume and looking up your ancestors by hand. In western Massachusetts, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum in the Springfield Quadrangle has an excellent genealogical library--including over 20,000 genealogical books--and would be an excellent place to begin research.

If you'd like to purchase genealogy volumes, Higginson Book Company of Salem, MA specializes in reprinted volumes. For old editions, I recommend abebooks, eBay, Barnes & Noble's used and out of print section, etc.