Free genealogy books online

Quietly the Internet Archive texts is adding newly scanned books.

Just online from the Allen County Public Library are:

The Bethea family of Marion County, South Carolina, One line of the Burritt family, The Small-Bundy family, The Harris family : Thomas Harris in Ipswich, Mass, in 1636, and some of his descendents, through seven generations, to 1883, and A genealogical history of the descendants of Peter White, of New Jersey, from 1670, and of William White and Deborah Tilton his wife, loyalists

Although there are the usual caveats about believing everything you read in a published genealogy, especially an old one, don't you wish one of these included one of your lines?

The two largest Internet Archive test sub-collections are 198,907 items from American Libraries and 117,775 items from Canadian Libraries.

I've previously mentioned some of the city directories to be found, including several for Ontario communities. There`s Might's City of Ottawa Directories from 1909 to 1916, Toronto directories for the 20th century to 1922 and many others. I noticed directories for communities in Australia, the UK and USA.

A publication that caught my eye is The romance of the London Directory by Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley, 1843-1898. Bardsley is the author of the 1875 classic Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations. The Romance, published a few years later, provides yet more information on the origins, and misunderstandings thereof, for the surnames of the people of London. You may want to search it for a name, but in reading it I found it told me rather more than I care to know.