Biographical Sketches

Biographical sketches were compiled in the nineteenth century by subscription publishers, Goodspeed most visibly. They gathered their accounts of local men from the men themselves. Each one summarizes parentage, marriage, land, service and local standing in a few dense paragraphs. The detail is genuine even where the tone is flattering.

The bias is built in. Whoever paid was written up, so these cover a county's landowning and professional families far more fully than anyone else. Read them for the relationships and dates, which are usually specific, and read the praise as the advertising it was.