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The New York World had a curious history. Philadelphia journalist Alexander Cummings launched the paper on June 14, 1860. A year later, Cummings absorbed the old Courier and Enquirer, one of the city’s oldest newspapers. Cummings, a Republican, then sold the World to a group of Democratic financiers that included banker August Belmont and New York City mayor Fernando Wood. During the Civil War, the World was an outspoken critic of the Lincoln administration. In May 1864 General John Dix, provost marshall for New York, acting under orders from the White House, suspended the paper's publication briefly because it had published a forged presidential proclamation purporting to order the military induction of 400,000 men. Railroad tycoon Jay Gould acquired the paper in 1879, only to sell it to "yellow journalist" Joseph Pulitzer in 1883.

Genealogist James P. Maher, who has published a four-volume index to the marriage and death notices that appeared in the New York Herald between 1835 and 1876, has now produced a similar index to the New York World for the years 1860 to 1865. During this brief period, the World's notices, unlike those of the Herald, referred mainly to persons living between Philadelphia and New York, rather than in New York proper. After the change of ownership, by 1865 the World's marriage and obituary notices essentially mirrored those published in the Herald. These are indexed in Mr. Maher’s other volumes--a fact that accounts for the brevity of this new book.

Mr. Maher has compiled an index to 3,500 marriages and about 8,500 obituaries for the period 1860 to 1865. The marriages are arranged in two alphabetical sequences: one for grooms and the other for brides. Each marriage entry gives the full names of the bride and groom and the date of the marriage. The death notices are arranged alphabetically, giving each deceased’s name and date of death. Persons seeking additional information from a particular marriage or death notice (age at death, place of birth, name of minister, groom's residence, etc.) may contact Mr. Maher, who has transcribed all the genealogically significant data from the notices and stored them in a separate database.