I will put my conflict of interest right out front here: I’m good friends with Stephen Nicholas “Nic” Stoltzfus, son of Elman Stoltzfus.

This is going to matter because I’m reviewing in this “Roots & Branches” column the new book from Masthof Press by the elder Stoltzfus titled “Amish Family Records, Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Fraktur & Needlework — 1800 to 1900s.”

In the book, a compilation based on copies of family registers on paper and in needlework captured by the late Jack Parmer, the younger Stoltzfus writes biographies of several of the artists whose work was preserved by Parmer.

The Stoltzfuses have collaborated on earlier projects, all centered on their ancestor Nicholas Stoltzfus’s homestead in Berks County, of which Nic was the caretaker and Elam

and his wife Esther are the current ones.

In a nod to how tightly knit are the Amish families of Lancaster County, Elam talks about his third-great-grandparents Stephen and Hannah (Miller) Mast had 10 children, including three daughters who all married Stoltzfus men — and you probably can guess where the story goes form here: Elam is a descendant of all three of those couples!

And Elam’s interest in producing the book is made clear immediately: As he worked with Parmer on his collection, he realized that he had five generations’ worth of needlework samplers with his family information embroidered upon them.

Which brings to my mind how this book expanded my mind on the subject of family registers.

While I knew, in passing, that such family needleworks existed, I truthfully had never given them much thought as genealogical records; this book proves the necessity of including searches for them by genealogists.

But while the needleworks were a novelty to me, most of the registers in this book are done by artistic scriveners on paper in family Bibles or song books.

Elam comments and shows in the book’s prefatory information how some of the registers included have been subjected to the ravages of time, and how digital computer processes have been used to preserve (he uses the word “enhanced,” but I take slight issue with that — they are not doing anything but restoring the colors and legibility of the originals).

Also pleasing to me is that the Stolzfuses brought in Emily Smucker-Beidler, one of the

very best of modern fraktur artists, to do chapter heading titles with fraktur flair (Conflict of interest No. 2: Although I’m not related to Smucker-Beidler’s husband — he’s from Anabaptist Beidlers and I’m from Reformed ones — I have taken a fraktur art workshop with her and consider her a friend, too!).

Amish Family Records, Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Fraktur & Needlework — 1800 to 1900s by Jack Parmer and Elam Stoltzfus with fraktur titles by Emily Smucker-Beidler is available for $25 from Masthof Press, www.masthof.com.

Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to jamesmbeidler@gmail.com. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler).