Wedding Invitation from 1882

A wedding invitation from 1882 appeared on eBay. This family heirloom was offered at $150. Nobody purchased the item.

Picture of wedding invitation, 1882, for Charles Demarest and Martha Duryea
via eBay

The groom was Charles E Demarest (1859-1937). The bride was Martha Jane Duryea (1861-1950). Below is the marriage record filed with the state of New Jersey. They married on June 28, 1882 in Washington Township, Bergen County.

New Jersey Marriage Return from 1882
Groom- Charles E Demarest. Bride- Martha J Duryea.
This image is from microfilm housed at the New Jersey State Archives in Trenton.

Charles was the son of Peter J Demarest and Margaret Christie. With his son Percy, he operated a jewelry store in New York City.

Martha Duryea was the daughter of Benjamin J Duryea and Maria Williams.

Charles and Martha had nine children between 1883 through 1901. Three died in infancy. The family plot is in Westwood Cemetery in Bergen County, New Jersey.

1910 United States Federal Census
Delford, Bergen County, New Jersey
Charles E Demarest and wife, Martha.
Six children: Clarence, Maggie, Florence, Percy, Edward, and Vietta.
(In 1920, Delford became Oradell.)

Death Index Expanded in New Jersey

A wonderful thing happened for genealogy in New Jersey.

Reclaim the Records has secured indexes for deaths 1904 through 2017, with quite a few (temporary?) gaps.

You can view the images at Archive.org.

Index of deaths in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey
Surname H. Year 1928.

The actual death records are housed at the Archives in Trenton through 1955. Deaths after 1955 can be obtained from the Department of Health, but only by certain people, and the cause of death is often obscured.

New Jersey Death Certificate
Mary Agnes Walpole (1831-1915), wife of Jacob Duryea
Note that the Department of Health blocks the cause of death.

Mary died of chronic nephritis. The full certificate of death is viewable at the Archives.

Before publication of this index, to find a record of death you needed to search the microfilm at the Archives year by year. Certificates are filed alphabetically on the microfilm. This is a waste of time and a barrier to promoting accurate research in New Jersey.

Deaths 1848 through 1900 are indexed at Family Search. An overlapping index by the Archives covers the years 1878 through 1897.

The indexes for deaths 1901 through 1903 were previously obtained by Reclaim the Records. They can be searched at Ancestry.com.


David Lutter Verona piano gun

New Jersey Unseals Birth Certificates of Adopted Persons

This is not another ordinary request for a vital record in New Jersey.

This envelope contains a request for a copy of a birth certificate that was sealed because the child was adopted.

THIS IS BIG NEWS for New Jersey.  If your birth certificate was sealed because you were adopted, you can now request your original birth certificate, containing the names of your biological parent(s).  The certificates will be mailed beginning January 1, 2017.

New Jersey Statues Annotated 26:8-40.1 has been amended to:

   c.  The State Registrar shall cause to be placed under seal the original certificate of birth and all papers pertaining to the new certificate of birth.  Such seal shall not be broken except:
     (1)  by order of a court of competent jurisdiction; or
     (2)  upon request for an uncertified, long-form copy of the adopted person's original certificate of birth by a person 18 years of age or older who can establish himself as one of the following:
        (a)  the adopted person;
        (b)  a direct descendant, sibling, or spouse of the adopted person;
        (c)  an adoptive parent, legal guardian, or other legal representative of the adopted person; or
        (d)  an agency of the State or federal government for official purposes.


The Department of Health has a link to the form (REG-41) with instructions.  (The links for the State change often, so if the link does not work, turn to Google.)

The certificate that I requested is for a birth from 1936.  The court records about the adoption were not sealed, so the name of the birth mother was known.  (New Jersey sealed adoption records in 1940.)  Several women carried this name, so the exact birth mother was not identified with certainty and most candidates were dead.  A few years ago, DNA testing linked several close cousins of one possible mother, prompting an elderly family member to identify the birth mother and explain some of the story.

The biological father was not named in the court records.  His name may or may not appear on the original birth certificate; however, he has been identified through DNA tests submitted by some of his descendants and close cousins.  His identity may have never been uncovered if not for DNA testing.

Both biological parents are long deceased.

DNA testing influences the debate when deciding to grant access to original birth certificates of adopted persons.  As more people test their DNA, chances increase for an adopted person to figure out their biological family without the help of viewing the original birth certificate.  If a relative as distant as a third cousin of a biological parent tests his/her DNA, the adopted child can possibly figure out the identity of the biological parent.  As the pool of DNA testers grows, finding biological parents becomes inevitable.  Other states should unseal the birth certificates of adopted people.  The child was not a party to the decision to seal the certificate.

New Jersey Vital Records Index 1901-1903 is Online

Indexes for New Jersey records are online for the early 1900s!

A year ago I wrote about the efforts of Reclaim the Records to obtain copies of indexes for New Jersey vital records in the custody of the State Archives.  The group received microfilm rolls of the indexes for:
-Births 1901, 1902, and 1903
-Deaths 1901, 1902, and 1903
-Groom index 1901, 1902, and 1903
-Bride index 1901 through 1914.

Previous acquisitions of New York City records appeared (for free) at Archive.org.

This New Jersey collection is also at Archive.org; however, I found the collection on Ancestry.com also.

To view the vital records indexes at Archive.org, you need to browse page by page to find a desired entry.  Ancestry.com has indexed the names- an index of the index.  (Records earlier than 1901 are indexed at FamilySearch.org.)

Remember that you are viewing an index and NOT the actual record of birth, marriage, or death.  To acquire a copy of the certificate, you need to order it (for a fee) from the Archives in Trenton.  (You can place your order online for records through 1915.)  Also remember that indexes are not exhaustive and names may be spelled as interpreted by the typist.

I already found an entry for a marriage certificate from 1908 that should help a brick wall.  The bride's name is listed in the index as "Blaney."  If I have the correct couple, the name should be "Birney."

Online Index to New Jersey Vital Records 1901-1903 Coming Soon

New Jersey indexes of vital records from the early 1900s will be coming online.

This is great news from a group called Reclaim the Records.

The covered years and types of records:
---Birth Index 1901, 1902, and 1903
---Marriage Index, Grooms, 1901, 1902, 1903
---Marriage Index, Brides, 1901-1914
---Death Index 1901, 1902, and 1903

According to their announcement, Reclaim the Records purchased copies of the microfilm rolls from the New Jersey State Archives.  The images will be digitized soon and posted online for free at Internet Archive.

These are indexes and not the actual certificates of birth, marriage, and death.  You will still need to request a copy (for a fee) from the Archives or someone who does research on site.

Before a trip to the Archives, I use the online indexes so I can jump directly into the rolls of certificates.  Adding years 1901-1903 will be a great help.

Why these years?  Well, New Jersey has had funny ways of organizing their vital records over the centuries.  A proper discussion requires more than a paragraph, so for now, I'll just write that it can be confusing.  Below is an example from the Index of Births covering June 1, 1878 through June 30, 1890, just so you get an idea of what we're dealing with.

[You can search online indexes of events prior to 1901 online at Family Search, Ancestry, and the State Archives index (Google it- the URL keeps changing).  Remember that these online indexes are not records unto themselves.  The dates are wrong sometimes.]

Around 1900, New Jersey decided to organize its vital records using a different system: Year by year, from January 1 through December 31, in order of date received.  In 1904, the birth and death certificates are organized by year, then surname, eliminating the need for a yearly index.  To find a birth or death, you search the actual certificates for a surname year by year.  [1923 is the final year of births currently housed at the Archives.  The death certificates now reach to 1955, but the alphabetical organization gave way to dates starting in 1949.]

Marriages are different because there are two parties, usually with different surnames.  When marriage certificates became organized by surname ahead of date, the groom's surname was used; hence, an index of brides was needed.  This is why the Index of Brides extends into 1914 while the other indexes are only from 1901-1903.  [The Index of Brides at the Archives extends into 1938.]

1903 Index of Births, New Jersey

1901-1903 Index of Brides, New Jersey

1902 Index of Deaths, New Jersey

1903 Index of Deaths, New Jersey

1910-1914 Index of Brides, New Jersey

Personalized Maps

Inspired by a genealogical blog post, I crafted some ancestor maps of my own.  Using the ancestors of my father, I created two maps:  1- Place of Birth and 2- Place of Death.

2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great grandparents
16 great great grandparents
Total:  30 ancestors

The outlier in the birthplaces is my grandfather, Clifford Lutter.  He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1915.  All of his other events are in New Jersey.  A family story explains that Clifford was born in Philadelphia because his father was performing there at the time.

These maps show where to find the bulk of my recent family records.  The three unknown places of death are likely New Jersey and Germany.