Vgreig@wowway.com

20th Century History of Berrien County, MI, 1906

I have available a hard copy of the book "A 20th Century History of Berrien County, Michigan". This book was published in 1906 and its 1000+ pages contain a short history on each of Berrien County's townships, villages and cities. It also contains several hundred biographical sketches of some prominent citizens. Many of whom paid the publisher to be in this book.

HOWEVER, this book is now on line at University of Michigan's web site:

If you click the link you'll find a search engine that lets you search the book. For example you can search for "Murphy" and find several references to "Murphy" in many of the biographies, etc. Then you can click on any of those pages and view a PDF of the page and even print it out. So anybody who could use my help could "help themselves". Over the past few months I've sent all fellow researchers there and most of them seem very appreciative of that direction. The alternative, as I usually explain, is to send me a snail-mail letter stating the page and containing a self-addressed, stamped envelope and I'll make a copy and send it to them. Most are very eager to find their ancestor in the book. Plus since every word is indexed, you can often find a reference to a surname that appears in a different person's biography (a neighbor, business partner, in-law, brother, offspring, parent, cousin, etc.) Otherwise the only way I can find a name like "Murphy" is to look in the book's index for the main subject of a biography. Needless to say that leaves a lot of good information out.