Published compiled genealogies, whether they be books or journal articles, can move our genealogy forward by leaps and bounds. If the material is of poor quality, though, and if we accept it at face value and don’t pursue the research ourselves, it can jeopardize all our future work, sending us down the wrong roads and setting us up to build tree sections that are completely false. If you think about it, there is only one correct family tree for any of us; only one true sequence of events that led to the unique people we are. There is no “close” in genealogy. There is “correct” and “incorrect.” Which is not to say we should or could expect to ever know the full truth, going back a dozen or more generations; there are so many reasons why some “truth” just will not be found by us. But for the parts of the tree we are able to build, we as genealogists want them to be correct.
Published family genealogies – Books
I think one of the first things New England genealogists find are those family genealogies published in the late 1800’s. Googling the name, such as “Ballou genealogy” or “Ballou genealogy book” will usually pull up a pdf of the item, if it exists. My advice would be to download and save such books in folders on your computer, if they relate to your family, and always use the “Comments” feature in Acrobat Reader to mark each page that is significant to you. See more about searching for books on How to Build your Digital Library.
The quality of the genealogy in these books may be excellent, or very poor, and everything in between. My own judgment is that reported events and relationships that occurred within about 60 – 70 years of the publication date have a good chance of being true (or as true as the family wanted to put out there). Events farther back are often:
- limited to well-documented, wealthier branches who left behind lots of records, such as vital records, probate, and large and informative gravestones
- clustered mostly in the branch and geographic location that the author had access to, or had contacts in
- dependent on the genealogical expertise of the author, so look around for evidence of that.
A good genealogist like Adin Ballou (An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballou Family in America, 1888) may not have used proper footnotes (it was not the custom at the time) but he sprinkled every page with clues as to the sources of his information – deed books with page numbers, dates of probate documents, and many statements like “birth date not found.” If you use data from these books in your tree, always follow up by checking for the records used.
When using these books, always check around for supplements, addenda, and later corrections.
QUICK FACT – When approaching an indexed family genealogy for the first time, seeking information about a couple, a good shortcut is to search for the last name of the spouse instead of the person who holds the name featured in the book (there will be too many of those).
Wait, there are more books
Sadly, the search described above is where many genealogists leave off. Therefore, they miss the thousands of genealogy books, also of varied quality, published since 1923 and, in some cases, still under copyright. A book under copyright will seldom be found as a pdf online. It might be for sale somewhere, it might show up as a Google Book in which only a bit of searching is possible (no pdf available), or, more likely, it is sitting on a few library shelves here and there.
I’m not going to provide a master list of books on Rhode Island families, much as I would like to, and I may try that someday. But here is how I approach this problem.
To compile a list of books that have been published on your family names, try the googling mentioned above, then try these steps:
- Check out the online card catalog of the Rhode Island Historical Society’s Robinson Research Center. They have lots of compiled genealogies there. Try, for instance, Advanced Search for the subject “Ballou Family.” This catalog does not cover everything at the library.
- Try the card catalog of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. They have a Search Databases function, for members, but anyone can use the “Library Catalog” under “Search.”
- Always use WorldCat.org to search as well; each entry will come up with the libraries that hold the book, sorted by distance from you.
- FamilySearch.org also has a “Books” search.
- I like the card catalog of the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
- Try the Ocean State Libraries catalog to find out what is in Rhode Island’s public libraries.

Searching for “Ballou family” in the Ocean State public library catalog. The entry will tell you which Rhode Island libraries that hold the book.
My best advice for finding ALL the genealogies published on a certain Rhode Island family is to consult this book:
- Guide to Published Genealogies in the Library of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (Boston: NEHGS, 2012). I use this book a lot. No doubt the NEHGS online catalog, linked above, would provide similar information, but I find the book format very easy to follow.

Guide to Published Genealogies has a large alphabetical guide to family history books as well as a guide to town and local histories. Photo by Diane Boumenot.
Compiled genealogy sets covering many families
There are books which serve as guides to the literature of your family’s genealogy, or overviews of the genealogies of large areas.
- The most important: John O. Austin’s The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island; Comprising three generations of Settlers who came before 1690. I strongly recommend NOT using an older version of this; you need the 1968 or later version with corrections, published by Genealogical Publishing Company. This large black book is printed as a marked-up copy, providing references to all The American Genealogist articles correcting and expanding Austin’s work.

The Bennett entry in Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island. This is the way the book was printed. I know. It’s weird.
- For the earliest settlers
- It’s easy to forget that standard New England works will, of course, cover early Rhode Island families. First and foremost, try your early families, arriving 1620-1640, in The Great Migration Study Project (by Robert Charles Anderson and others) including The Great Migration Begins (3 volumes) and The Great Migration (7 volumes) (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995-2011.)
- For a reasonably priced way to access brief bibliographies of the settlers detailed in the 10 volumes of the Great Migration series, try The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1640, A Concise Compendium by Robert Charles Anderson (Boston, NEHGS, 2015). Another choice would be to access some of the material online through NEHGS membership – use Database Search – Category: Great Migration Study Project.

The Great Migration series and Directory. Photo by Diane Boumenot.
- Austin, John Osborne. One Hundred and Sixty Allied Families. Baltimore: reprinted Genealogical Publishing Co., 2009. [note: This was never that useful to me; it covers the author’s, and the author’s wife’s, families only.]
- Savage, James. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, in four volumes. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, Inc., 1998 (orig. 1860-62). The Great Migration is far superior to this source, and if you can use that, no need to consult Savage.
- Cutter, William Richard. Not much better than mug books, with lines of descent traced only to wealthy southern New Englanders, but still, I have a soft spot for Cutter. The entries are always fun to read and very interesting, but unsubstantiated.
- Torrey, Clarence Almon. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Volumes 1 – 3. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2011. [Torrey is essentially a bibliography of any mention of the married couple in various older sources. Consult the sources noted for specifics. Use the most recent edition of Torrey available to benefit from modern additions, corrections and proper indexing.]
Journals and periodicals
Have you ever thought, I wish I could hire one of the country’s top experts to find that elusive ancestor for me? Have you ever considered that you could possibly get such work for free? Here’s how. Do a thorough search of all the genealogy journals that cover the area in question. You need to be sure that your important question has not already been researched by someone really competent, complete with reasoned arguments and footnotes. Even finding an article in a quality journal about the county or town you are researching can be a treasure-trove of sources and strategies. I always read the footnotes first.
Most organizations do not give their journal away online. You need to belong to that society, or subscribe to something that will offer access, or seek out a library with subscriptions. Likewise, just finding an index to each journal is not a trivial problem.
Suggestion 1: If you want to try ONE thing with the biggest chance for success, go to the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s website AmericanAncestors.org and use Search — Databases — Category: Journals & Periodicals. You will need to establish a free guest user account; for some of these, you will need to be an NEHGS member, or find a library with a subscription. This allows you to search the following journals, among others (in many cases, only issues more than five years old are included, and many do not go as far back as the earliest issues.)
- The American Genealogist
- Boston Evening Transcript Genealogy Pages, 1911-1940 [note: seems not to have a working index, but you can get to the page you want if you know the date]
- Connecticut Nutmegger
- Essex Antiquarian & The Essex Genealogist
- The Maine Genealogist
- The Mayflower Descendant
- New England Historical and Genealogical Register
- New York Genealogical and Biographical Record
- Rhode Island Roots
Of those, of course, Rhode Island Roots is the most important for Rhode Island research, however, there are some outstanding genealogists producing articles for all the prestigious journals concerning Rhode Island topics. For additional journal suggestions, see this article.

Quality journals.
Suggestion 2: The second easy way to access some quality pre-1990 articles is to locate in a library the four volumes of articles published by the Genealogical Publishing Company, below. Each set contains a thorough index.
- Genealogies of Rhode Island Families From the New England Historic Genealogical Register, 2 vols. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1989. Specifically, see Gary Boyd Roberts’ brief bibliographies of 100 Rhode Island families, page xix – xxxiv. Remember, that was current in 1989. This set, and the set below, are very thoroughly indexed at the back of volume 2.
- Genealogies of Rhode Island Families From Rhode Island Periodicals, 2 vols. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1983.

The two sets of Genealogies of Rhode Island Families. Note there is a substantial index at the back of each.
Additional sources
- A huge number of local history and genealogy journals are indexed through PERSI, a database available through your local library and/or FindMyPast.com The indexing is not extensive; they are mostly indexed by general topic, but could be good if there was an article about your family or town. Once a citation is found, you will need to seek out the article itself. I am not sure about the current status of PERSI; consult your local librarian for help.
- Godfrey Memorial Library, comp. “American Genealogical-Biographical Index (AGBI).” Database on-line. Ancestry.com. http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=3599 Original data: Godfrey Memorial Library. American Genealogical-Biographical Index. Middletown, CT, USA: Godfrey Memorial Library. [A compiled index to many of the holdings of the Godfrey Memorial Library (a genealogy library in Connecticut); an index of names. Also available at larger genealogy libraries in hard copy (over 200 volumes). Once a citation is found, Godfrey has a photocopy service where they will, for a fee, copy the particular item that was cited. Content includes the Genealogy Column of the Boston Transcript, which is likely to contain a reader query about an ancestor and, possibly, in a subsequent entry, an informed response from a genealogist.]
- Narragansett Historical Register, 1-9, 1882-1891, published by James Newell Arnold. Facsimile reprint published by Heritage Books. [See all original copies online here: https://onerhodeislandfamily.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/the-narragansett-historical-register-free/ ]
- Rhode Island Genealogical Register. Volumes 1 – 20, 1978-1996. Rhode Island Families Association (founded by Alden Beaman). [not available online. Contains vital record abstracts, articles, and brief genealogies. Volume 16 “Rhode Island Will Index” is a compiled index of will abstracts contained in volumes 1 – 15.]
- Rhode Island History. Rhode Island Historical Society. [Search and access 1942-2010: Rhode Island History. http://www.rihs.org/publication_search.php ]
- Check out family genealogical materials at the Newport Historical Society.
- Index To Genealogical Periodicals, vol. I (1932) and vol. II (1948) , compiled by Donald Lines Jacobus.
- Index to Early Records of the Town of Providence, by Richard leBaron Bowen (Oxford Press, 1949). Mr. Bowen, a noted Rhode Island genealogist, realized the potential of the Early Records index to help descendants of early Providence families to trace their ancestors, even if they were otherwise poorly documented, so he added a list of families included in Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (listed above) on page 87-93, plus a brief bibliography of articles on Rhode Island families in the decades leading up to 1950, on pages 93-97.
My favorite 10 Rhode Island family genealogies
Of all the genealogies that actually have helped me, these are the ones I recommend most highly. If I had different ancestors, the list would be different. These selections make it clear that helpful genealogies are not always online, and are not always found in book form.
- ALDRICH – The Aldrich Family Genealogy – Descendants of George Aldrich of Mendon, MA, a manuscript compiled by Ralph Ernest Aldrich (1902-1984) and his wife Pearl Lillian (Marquis) Aldrich. 18 volumes.
- ANDREWS – Harriet Francis James had her untitled manuscript on the Kent/Washington County Andrews published as a newspaper column, later compiled in a three volume manuscript by Anthony Tarbox Briggs.
- ARNOLD – The Arnold Family of Smithfield, Rhode Island by Richard H. Benson. Boston: Newbury Street Press, 2009. For advice on finding this book and on the other Arnold lines in Rhode Island, see “Meet the Arnolds“.
- BALLOU – An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America by Adin Ballou. Providence: E.L. Freeman & Son, 1888.
- BOWEN – Richard Bowen (1594?-1675) of Rehoboth, Massachusetts and His Descendants by William B. Saxbe Jr. 3 volumes, Hope, Rhode Island: Rhode Island Genealogical Society, 2011-2015. What I would say about this set is ALWAYS seek out the highest quality work in an area to see if it can help you. This one is exceptionally well done. Another such example – Thomas Clemence of Providence, Rhode Island by Jane Fletcher Fiske and Roberta Stokes Smith. Greenville, R.I.: Rhode Island Genealogical Society, 2007.
- DARLING – Dennis Darling of Braintree and Mendon, by William and Lou Martin, 2006. In addition to genealogical information on the Darlings, the book contains brief sections on the intermarried families of Cook, Southwick, Thayer, and Thompson. There are about 5000 footnotes which will help you find specific records concerning your ancestors. This book can sometimes be accessed through FamilySearch.org – Search – Books.
- LAMPHERE – a series of articles in New England Historical Genealogical Register:
- Scott Andrew Bartley. “George Lanphear of Westerly, Rhode Island and his Descendants.” New England Historic Genealogical Register 153 (April 1999): 131-140.
- Scott Andrew Bartley. “George Lanphear of Westerly, Rhode Island and his Descendants, Part 2.” New England Historic Genealogical Register 159 (October 2005): 333-340.
- Scott Andrew Bartley. “George Lanphear of Westerly, Rhode Island and his Descendants, Part 3.” New England Historic Genealogical Register 160 (January 2006): 47-59.
- RICE – a series of articles in Rhode Island Roots:
- Bamberg, Cherry Fletcher. “Major Henry Rice of Warwick and His Family.” Rhode Island Roots 24 (March/June 1998): 1 – 60.
- Bamberg, Cherry Fletcher. “John1 Rice of Warwick, Rhode Island.” Rhode Island Roots 24 (September/December 1998): 153-168.
- Bamberg, Cherry Fletcher. “John2 Rice, Jr., of Warwick, Rhode Island.” Rhode Island Roots 25 (September 1999): 81-118.
- Bamberg, Cherry Fletcher. “John2 Rice, Jr., of Warwick, Rhode Island.” Rhode Island Roots 26 (September 2000): 57-84.
- Bamberg, Cherry Fletcher. “John2 Rice, Jr., of Warwick, Rhode Island (concluded).” Rhode Island Roots 27 (March 2001): 1 – 26.
- SMITH – Farnham, Charles William. “John Smith, The Miller, of Providence, Rhode Island – Some of His Descendants” in Genealogies of Rhode Island Families From Rhode Island Periodicals, volume II, p. 1 – 150. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1983 [originally appeared in the 1960’s as a series of articles in Rhode Island History, v. 20 – 24]. It’s not that this work is so superb, although maybe it is, it’s just that it’s so hard to work with the name Smith.
- WILLIAMS – Descendants of Roger Williams, Book 1 – Book 5. The website of the Roger Williams Family Association allows you to peruse the first four generations of descent online. After that, it’s necessary to consult the books.
Should you find a book that you would like to purchase, I usually try Higginson Books, Genealogical Publishing, and Heritage Books for reprints. I also look on eBay.com and Amazon.com, although lately I find older books on Amazon to be overpriced, sometimes ridiculously so (often a more thorough search online for the tiny publisher’s website brings up a much more attractive price than anything you will find on Amazon.com.) In a pinch, my best advice for a local Rhode Island used bookstore is Allison B. Goodsell, Rare Books, also called the Kingston Hill Store.
In closing
Be sure to check out the post about sources of local town records since some of those offer genealogical information about specific families.
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A Providence Door-yard. From Sketches of Early American Architecture by O.R. Eggers, 1922.
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