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Archiver > MD > 2001-12 > 1007237204


From: "Nancy Atkinson" <>
Subject: [MD] CD: The National Gazetteer of the United States 1884
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 15:06:44 -0500


I saw this on another mailing list and thought that some of you may be
interested. I have no affiliation with this organization other than simply
being one of their customers. From their website: "The Project is all about
making CDs of old and rare books available to genealogists and historians at
a reasonable price. It is a "user supported" project."


========================================================================
Hi folks,

A fabulous new CD released today: The National Gazetteer of the United
States 1884.

A comprehensive account of every State, territory, county, city, town and
village throughout the Union, with populations from the last
national census (1880). Incredibly useful information about railroads,
navigation, lakes, rivers, rivers, canals, mountains and valleys as well as
the physical and statistical geography of the country.
========================================================================

This CD complements another earlier 1854 USA gazetteer which we released
some time ago.

When we released the 1854 we expected it to do quite well, but to our
*amazement* we have managed to part
with very, very few indeed. :-(

Now, these books contain details of *every* place in the United States. As
an example one of my wife's relatives emigrated from Scotland in the 1870's
and fetched up in a place called Cobham Va, growing grapes. The entry in
1884 for the place says

'Cobham Va., p.v. (post village) Co (county), 15m. E. of Charlottesville.
Pop 85.' (note that the population figure is taken
from the 1880 census).

Using this information I can tell you that Mr Bird and family accounted for
more than 10% of the whole village! Obviously, being such a tiny place it
only gets a tiny mention but the fact is that it *is* in the book.

I also looked up Tombstone, Arizona and was amazed to find that it was even
smaller than Cobham was, with only 80 people there in 1880! I did a bit of
digging and found out that Tombstone's population just a year later was
estimated to be up to seven *thousand*, and around fifteen thousand in 1885!
Today it is about 1500.

The entries for some of the bigger places though are just fantastic, with
lots of history and interesting facts about each place. Plus
details of the population numbers in 1880.

So why did the 1854 CD apparently appeal to so few people? The truth is
that we did not effectively promote the CD on the American genealogy mailing
lists because we simply did not know which ones to mention it on.

This is where you wonderful supporters of Archive CD Books really can make a
difference. There *must* be some of you folks out there who are active on
American Lists and I would like to appeal to those of you who are to try and
give this new CD a bit of a push, it really does deserve to reach a wider
audience.

I was told earlier this week by an American supporter of The Project that
this 1884 CD might prove more popular, simply because there were more and
more people pouring into the USA and creating new towns and villages all
over the country. Time will tell.

The web pages are at http://wwww.acrchivecdbooks.com

Use the online catalogue and the site map to get to the USA pages

You all might like to take a look at the latest releases page as well (I've
updated that three times *already* today).
========================================================================

The Project is all about making CDs of old and rare books available to
genealogists and historians at a reasonable price. It is a "user
supported" project.

Some of these books have been kindly lent to the project by various
individuals, some from County Record Offices, museums, family history
societies and libraries, and some which we have purchased. All of them are
old and rare. Many of those books purchased from book dealers (no matter how
expensive they were) are subsequently given away to one of the above
organisations.

We all gain
========================================================================

Best wishes to you all
--
Rob Dewsall
ARCHIVE CD BOOKS - old books for genealogists reproduced on CD
Mailing list : (for discussions)
Weekly News : (weekly announcements & news)
E-mail :
Web : http://www.archivecdbooks.com


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