author

M. T. (Moses Thurston) Runnels

1830–1902

Best remembered for preserving family and local history, this 19th-century minister wrote one of the early major books on the Runnels and Reynolds families in America. His work also captured the story of a New Hampshire church at its centennial, giving modern readers a window into community life of the era.

1 Audiobook

Soil and Water Pollution : Presented to the American Public Health Association at New Orleans, Dec. 1880

Soil and Water Pollution : Presented to the American Public Health Association at New Orleans, Dec. 1880

by M. T. (Moses Thurston) Runnels

About the author

M. T. Runnels, or Moses Thurston Runnels (1830–1902), was an American writer and Congregational minister whose surviving published work centers on history, genealogy, and community memory. Library and catalog records identify him as the author of A Genealogy of Runnels and Reynolds Families in America (1873), a substantial family history that has remained widely cataloged and reprinted.

He is also credited with compiling Addresses and Proceedings at the Centennial Anniversary of the Congregational Church, in Sanbornton, N.H., November 12 and 13, 1871. Contemporary catalog listings describe him as the church's pastor, suggesting that his writing grew directly out of his work in ministry as well as his interest in preserving local and family records.

For readers today, Runnels is notable less as a literary figure than as a careful collector of names, stories, and historical details. His books reflect a practical 19th-century impulse to save the past before it disappeared, which gives them lasting value for genealogists, local historians, and anyone curious about everyday New England life.