Over the years our unique genealogy books have led the way in the field of genealogy and have become classics in their own right. Our catalogue of publications now contains hundreds of unique genealogy books, but it wasn’t always that way.

By 1973, after twenty years reprinting 19^th- and early 20^th-century source records and county histories, it had become clear that there was a growing need among genealogists for access to new collections of source material. Accordingly, we entered into agreements with scores of expert genealogists who agreed to transcribe the genealogical content of courthouses and other repositories. In this fashion, we were able to publish hundreds of unique county-wide marriage, vital record, will, land and other source record volumes, which usually commenced with the oldest extant records for a given county. As we gained more experience as publishers of original material, we issued broader, statewide or regional books reflecting years of scholarship and encompassing everything that could be found on a topic; for example, we published the leading book on South Carolina patriots in the American Revolution, the definitive dictionary of early inhabitants of northern New England, and comprehensive indexes to Virginia and North Carolina wills—each one the sole source for the information contained therein.

Guided by the objective to expedite the researcher’s task, we ventured into new areas of publishing. We extracted the contents of the most prestigious genealogy periodicals, re-arranged and indexed them, and published them in multi-volume sets. We were the first publisher to transcribe and publish 19th-century U.S. passenger lists. More recently, we were selected to publish the lineage records of some of the most distinguished lineage societies in America; so researchers hoping to make a connection to the founding families of Virginia or Maryland, for example, will find their answers in our utterly unique publications on those respective topics. Still other unique reference works concern records for English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and German genealogy.

In conjunction with our reference books program, we have issued about 100 original manuals or textbooks on genealogy methodology. Our U.S. genealogy textbook, Val Greenwood’s Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy, first published in 1973 and now in its third edition, while far from being the only book of its kind, is still regarded as the best in its class by many experts. Groundbreaking works on state census records, U.S. county boundary changes, Hispanic, Italian, Polish, and Chinese family history, to name a few, are today the leading books on their subjects.