Harlow Book Book Review

by The American Genealogist

This book review is reprinted in it's entirety by written permission. This review written by Robert Charles Anderson appeared on page 80 in the January 2000 issue of The American Genealogist.

Harlow Family: Descendants of Sgt. William Harlow [1624/5-1691] of Plymouth. Massachusetts. compiled by The Genealogy Committee of the Harlow Family Association, edited by Alicia Crane Williams (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1997). cloth, vi+686 pp., index, $45.00.
Order from The Harlow Family Association, Winfield Harlow, 483 Grange Road, North Smithfield, RI 02896-8169. $45.00 postpaid. Published 1997.

This tightly woven volume traces five generations of descent from the immigrant William¹ Harlow, to include the births of the sixth generation. The committee of authors follow all lines of descent, male and female, as completely as possible. and employ the modified Register style of numbering the sketches. The individual sketches provide all the usual genealogical information. along with abstracts of wills and deeds. and information on office holding. (A few additions and corrections were published in the January 1997 issue of The Mayflower Descendant.) Each item in each sketch is footnoted, with two principal varieties of notes. First are the straightforward citations to volume and page of primary sources; throughout the volume there is a strong emphasis on best evidence, although in the later generations of the female lines there is a tendency to include more references to secondary sources. Second are very brief explanatory notes which explain the rationale behind a particular statement. For example. when the sketch of Judith² (Harlow) (Church) Barnaby tells us that she "died, after 13 April 1728," the footnote ex-plains with "Mentioned in her husband's estate" (pp.22-23). Notes of this sort are especially val-uable, as they leave little ambiguity in the reader's mind as to the reason for any given statement. Beyond its demonstrable value to the Harlow family. this excellent genealogy should be exam-ined by anyone contemplating a similar project.

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