Ancestry's Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources has an advantage over the Handy Book because it has river ways and major cities in each county in its maps. Some of its descriptions differ, as well.

All three books are excellent and used every week by this author. Take the opportunity of becoming acquainted with all three of these books.

There are other genealogy how-to books done by individual regions or states that provide the starting dates for towns and cities where records are kept at that level, e.g. in New England, for example.

One genealogy computer database program has a locator feature built in so that if you enter a place of birth, for example, for an ancestor in a county that was not formed at that time, the program will stop you and tell you to look at the master list of county names and put in the correct one. The program is called Legacy.

A favorite tool is the animated mapping program called Animap. If you are a United States researcher, you should own this program. It is available to use at Family History Centers, but since it is used constantly, it is valuable to own. It gives you a visual image of the counties, territories, railroads, etc., for the United States for every year. Then the image can be sent as an electronic file. This file can then be pulled into client reports in order to explain to clients where records are and how this knowledge was obtained. It can be purchased from www.goldbug.com.