Goodspeed Publishing was established by Westin Arthur Goodspeed in the late 19th century and was based in Nashville, Tennessee, St Louis, Missouri and Chicago, Illinois. By the early 1880s Goodspeed had success with a series of state and regional histories in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other northern states, and went on to repeat that success in other areas of the U.S.
The publications were primarily divided into sections for each
county
A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...
they studied, and included descriptions of each area's geography, history, government, and religious institutions. Each edition included biographies of prominent citizens. Local industries, businesses, and agriculture were also described, providing a glimpse of late 19th century life in places often ignored by other histories. Goodspeed's attempt to include Native American history in many of these volumes was unusual at that time.
While Goodspeed publications have frequently been cited by American
historians
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
and
genealogists
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kins ...
because they contain
economic data
Economic data are data describing an actual economy, past or present. These are typically found in time-series form, that is, covering more than one time period (say the monthly unemployment rate for the last five years) or in cross-sectional dat ...
and personal biographies of both well-known figures and those who played less famous but significant roles in their communities and states,
readers should note that the editor's Preface typically makes this statement: "The publishers disclaim responsibility for the substance of the matter contained in the Biographical Appendix, as the material was wholly furnished by the subject of the sketches."
Selected publications
*''History of Greene and Sullivan Counties, State of Indiana'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers & Co. Publishers, 1884)
*''History of Pike and Dubois Counties, Indiana'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers & Co. Publishers, 1885)
*''History of Warrick, Spencer and Perry Counties, Indiana'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers & Co. Publishers, 1885)
*''History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1886)
*''A History of Knox and Daviess Counties, Indiana'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1886)
*''Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, Historical and Biographical'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1886)
*''The History of Southeast Missouri'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1886)
*''History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford, and Gasconade Counties, Missouri'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1889)
*''Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1889)
*''History of Hickory, Polk, Cedar, Dade, and Barton Counties Missouri'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1889)
*''Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Central Arkansas'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1889)
*''Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, 1890)
*''Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Adams, Clay, Hall and Hamilton counties, Nebraska'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1890)
*''Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1890)
*''Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi'' 2 vols. (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1891)
*''Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Louisiana''. 2 vols. (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1892)
*''Industrial Chicago the Manufacturing Interests'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1894)
*''Memorial and Genealogical Record of Southwest Texas'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1894)
*''A Reminiscent History of the Ozark Region'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1894)
*''Memorial and Genealogical Record of Texas'' (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1894)
See also
*
Books in the United States
As of 2018, several firms in the United States rank among the world's biggest publishers of books in terms of revenue: Cengage Learning, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill Education, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley.
...
References
External links
GeneaLinks: Goodspeed's HistoriesTennessee Records Repository: Goodspeed's Tennessee
published in 1886/7
Defunct book publishing companies of the United States
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