Author Description

A GOOD manual for the use of beginners in American genealogical work has been needed for a long time. Only a slight examination of any large collection of American family histories is needed to convince the most skeptical of the truth of this assertion. In no other division of the entire fund of printed information is it possible to find so many methods of arrangement of similar data, such a variety of sizes, shapes, and styles of volumes, pamphlets, and broadsides, and so low a standard of scholarship. The prevailing idea among family historians seems to have been the production of genealogies differing from all previously printed. Dr. Stiles's book deals in an able manner with most of the problems which sooner or later confront the novice, and it should be thoroughly studied by every person engaged in compiling a genealogy of an American family. -The Genealogical Advertiser: A Quarterly Magazine of Family History, Volume 2