Dodd Genealogy Books

The Dodd's were a very influential family in early America and are mentioned in many local history books and even have a few books just to themselves tracing the descendancy of the first Daniel Dod. 

Here are a few of them with snippets about Ambrose Dodd, my 4th great grandfather through his daughter Emily Augusta Dodd:


Genealogy and history of the Daniel Dod family in America, 1646-1940 
Available on familysearch.org and ancestry.com.  The ancestry version is easier to navigate though you likely need a membership to access it.  Ambrose Dodd is on image 107 (book pg 84) with some interesting tidbits about his migration west and family.  This book is the best of the three.  If can't access the one on ancestry.com go here on familysearch and type in the above title.  The book also includes a wonderful Descendancy chart from the original Daniel Dod.

Love the side note about Emily Augusta and her soiled pantalettes! Can you imagine that being the only personal story about yourself recorded in a published book?

Genealogies of the male descendants of Daniel Dod 
Available on google books It is not as detailed.  It includes Ambrose Dodd, no children.




The Dodd's (including Ambrose, no children) are also mentioned in Family Records Or Genealogies of the First Settlers of Passaic Valley a preview is available on google books. You can also find the entire book on familysearch.org

Google Books

I just discovered this exciting thing a couple of weeks ago through a family history blog. I've used Google books before, in fact I even linked to it in one of my early posts, but never realized the great potential it had for family historians.

Google Books is a great way to view and preview books that are on the market today. But even better are the books that are out of copyright or are public domain. Those books are available in their entirety and some are even available for download. You are acutally able to view the book in it's original format but are able to do electronic searches within the pages of the book. There are a lot of local and family histories out there that were published eons ago and I am excited to say that there are a lot of them available on Google Books! The possibilites are amazing!

Google Books has it set up so you can flag a book and add it to your own "library". Just in a matter of hours I was able to build up my own library with a wealth of family history information. You are welcome to browse through what I found in my library at Google Books. Even if the book isn't available for full viewing it is great to know that it exists somewhere. Some of the books that I am most excited about that are my ancestors specifically are:

The Corwin Genealogy

Genealogy of the Bigelow Family of America

I've found it also to be a great place to find local histories written during the era my ancestors were actually living there. A lot of them have biographical sketches (though I haven't been lucky enough to find an ancestor that has one, yet).

History of Pike County, Ohio 1880
History of Detroit, 1912
A Guide to the City of Chicago, 1909

Using another tool by Google called a Notebook, you can highlight snippets of a text and save them seperate from the book into your notebook. You are also able to add notes and labels. This enables you to then go back and find the actual page from the book that pertains to your ancestor through your notebook.

You can also highlight a portion of a book and imbed it into your own post like this one about my great great great grandfather Chester Mathews Bigelow from the Bigelow Genealogy:


Genealogy of the Bigelow Family of America From the Marriage in 1642 of John Biglo and Mary Warren to the Year 1890 By Gilman Bigelow Howe

Through doing this I was also able to find a reference (though sadly not a sourced reference) to my ancestor Joshua Bigelow who served in the King Phillips War as I mentioned last week:


In all Google Books has made it rather simple to do a search on your ancestors through a plethera of different books available for full view or not. They have made it easy to search, read and share what you find.

Check it out!
Do a search on your own family.
Come up with any questions? Just leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do to help.