Goodspeed Publishing was established by Westin Arthur Goodspeed (1852-1926) in the late 19th century and was based in Nashville, Tennessee, St Louis, Missouri and Chicago, Illinois. By the early 1880s Goodspeed had found 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 purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
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 of 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 race; as well as the stu ...
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 kinsh ...
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 data ...
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 Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present, (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1886)
*Industrial Chicago the Manufacturing Interests. 1894
*Memorial and Genealogical Record of Southwest Texas
*History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford, and Gasconade Counties, Missouri: from the earliest time to the present; 1888.
*History of LaClede, Camden, Dallas, Webster, Wright, Texas, Pulaski, Phelps and Dent Counties Missouri. 1889.
*History of Hickory, Polk, Cedar, Dade, and Barton Counties Missouri. 1889.
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Central Arkansas. 1889
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas (Chicago and St Louis: Goodspeed Brothers, 1890)
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas. 1889.
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas. 1890.
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Louisiana, in 2 vols. 1892
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1891)
*A Reminiscent History of the Ozark Region: Comprising A Condensed General History, A Brief Descriptive History of Each County, and Numerous Biographical Sketches of Prominent Citizens of Such Counties. (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1894)
*A History of Knox and Daviess Counties, Indiana; 1886
*History of Greene and Sullivan Counties, State of Indiana, (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers & Co. Publishers, 1884)
*Memorial and Genealogical Record of Texas, (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers & Co. Publishers, 1894)
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi, (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers & Co. Publishers, 1891)
*Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Adams, Clay, Hall and Hamilton counties, Nebraska, (Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1890)
*History of Pike and Dubois Counties, Indiana, (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, 1885)
*History of Warrick, Spencer and Perry Counties, Indiana, (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, 1885)
*Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, Historical and Biographical, (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1886)
The History of Southeast Missouri (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing, 1886)
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.
H ...
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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