About Higginson Book Company
The photo below shows the poor condition of an original copy of "Sherman's March Through the South" (1865) and the new, archival-quality hardcover reprint which is sure to last much, much longer!
Orders containing hardcover books can take up to 3 weeks to ship. Softcover (only) orders ship out within 3 work days. Mixed orders containing both hardcover and softcover may ship separately.
As of March 2022, Higginson Books is under new ownership. Printing specifications such as color of cover or trim size of books may change slightly due to different printing processes. Please contact us if you have any questions.
OUR HISTORY
In 1969 Robert Murphy of Salem, Massachusetts started Higginson Book Company. He ran the company out of the historic Joshua Ward House at 148 Washington Street until he passed away in 2013. During this time, the company had several employees. They published both new and out-of-print genealogies, local histories, and Civil War regimentals. Many of the books were scanned from local libraries and archives. The company had an strong focus on Salem and Massachusetts history at this time.
Laura Bjorklund (later Laura DaSilvia), an employee of Robert, took over the company following his death. She managed the company for several more years, and even spoke to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding one of their cases involving copyright law (even today, copyright restrictions heavily impact which books Higginson may reprint, as there is a huge wealth of genealogical information published by companies that no longer exist and written by authors who are long-dead, but nevertheless may not be reproduced because of the lengthy copyright). In 2015, Laura moved the company to a new location in Salem, selling the Ward House and then later to her home in Bristol, Connecticut.
After Laura’s passing, in March 2022, the family had sold the business to its current owners, Dan Mast and Liz Petersheim, owners of Masthof Press and Bookstore in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. The current manager, Mitchell Peiffer, began his work there in April of that year to handle the transition. The Higginson printing operations were moved to the existing Masthof print shop. Masthof was already a multi-generation family book-printing business with a focus on history and genealogy, among other subjects.
Higginson currently has over ten thousand titles in their digital library and adding more yearly. We continue to produce high quality physical reproductions of the original editions upon customer order. We enjoy helping authors publish their genealogical work and assisting others in locating old, out-of-print books to make them available to the public once again.
FROM ARCHIVE TO BOOKSHELF
When Higginson first started, scanning physical copies of books from libraries and archival sites was a long and tedious process. Today, we have access to over ten thousand files and the ability to research and locate even more. Before listing a book as available, each file is properly cleaned up. Then they are listed for sale on the Higginson website and on Amazon.
Higginson also accepts submissions from authors who want their family history to be available for purchase. We are happy to help people turn their research into a book that can be shared with their family for generations to come.
At Higginson we print our books on 20-lb. white acid-free paper. Most of our books are available in either softcover or hardcover form.
Softcover books use 67-lb. cream paper (heavier paper similar to cardstock) for the covers. The pages are glued together and bound with an adhesive strip on the spine, and mailed out daily.
The hardcover books typically take 1-2 weeks to bind. Each Monday, the orders from the previous week are printed, trimmed to the correct size, and bound as seen below. Each Tuesday, the cloth material, which will be used as the book cover, is measured and cut to size, and a foil stamping machine is used to write the stamp the text on the spine. Each Wednesday, a glue machine is used to fasten the cover cloth to the boards, which protect the front, back, and spine of the interior pages. The result of this can be seen in the photos below. Each Thursday, the book pages are glued into the covers—the final step in the hardcover binding process. The books are mailed out on Thursday or Friday, and a new round of hardcover binding begins each Monday.
