California Genealogical Society blog: CGS Library Collections: Georgia

One in a series by CGS member Chris Pattillo, highlighting some of our holdings at the Library in Oakland. For a fuller listing of our books, journals, and more, consult the CGS Library catalog. Our catalog is also included in WorldCat.

Some of the 24 volumes of The Colonial Records

Now that I’ve gotten to the CGS library collection for the State of Georgia I feel like I want to find a Georgia ancestor – because our collection is so extensive. Our books start with twenty-four volumes of The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia by Allen D. Candler. These volumes have vibrant royal blue covers and cover the fifty years between 1732 and 1782. Frustratingly there is no table of contents or an index so I cannot easily share with you what is covered in the set. You will just have to visit our library and peruse these volumes on your own.

A few of the journals in our collection

When you come to the library you will be thrilled to find six full shelves of books for Georgia including several county books. We have three sets of journals for the periods 1968 to 2015, 1971 to 1998 and 1964 to 1972 – these no doubt cover the period when the donor was actively researching his or her genealogy.

There is a three-volume set titled The Georgia Frontier: Colonial Families to the Revolutionary War Period by Jeannette Holland Austin. Published in 2005, this book provides hundreds of family histories listed by family name and county. It starts with the Adams family of Chattooga County and provides short bios for Edwin and Hopewell Adams and each of their children. The entire text of how Hopewell’s estate was to be distributed is transcribed. These volumes are well indexed.

One of our more unusual books

Cover page of The Georgia Black Book

One book that intrigued me is The Georgia Black Book: Morbid, Macabre, and Sometimes Disgusting Records of Genealogical Value by Robert Scott Davis, Jr. That title alone should be enough to draw you into the library if you have Georgia ancestors, and maybe even if you don’t have Georgia ancestors. The table of contents lists chapters on Horse Thieves and Other Charming People; Liars; Convicts; Murders, Murderers, and Murder Victims; Convicts; Insane Asylum Inmates; Racial Incidents; More Murders, Murderers, and Murder Victims; and finally Other Sources Equally Disgusting. Out of curiosity, I read the “About the Author” chapter suspecting he was the great-grandson of a notorious Georgia criminal who went insane but instead learned that he is simply a passionate historian who is concerned about preserving historical records – just our kind of guy.

We have several volumes of Historical Collections compiled by the DAR. There are bible records, a will index, marriage and church records, tax records, censuses, and one book on intestate records published in 1986 – this is an excellent collection of resources.