Ebay Mitchill Family Documents

Ebay auction listing for papers of the Mitchill family of Long Island, New York

Ebay has a listing for what appears to be a collection of papers of the Mitchill family of Cow Neck, Long Island, New York.  Included are the family bible with names and dates of birth, marriage, and death; deeds; wills; ledgers; and more.  The price is rather steep at $1,500.

Picture of Mitchill family paper collection at ebay.

The Mitchill Family Bible containing important life dates.

Cow Neck, Long Island, New York is a peninsula on the northern coast of the Island.  When these records were made, Cow Neck was in Queens, but now lies in Nassau County.

1848 map of Long Island, New York by J. H. Colton
LongIslandGenealogy.com
Cow Neck is circled.

The Mitchills are an old Long Island family.  I hope that the possessor of these old papers donates the collection to a local repository if these items do not sell.

Local Repositories

Today I visited the Denville Historical Society and Museum in Denville, Morris County, New Jersey.  Someone told me (thank you MT) that some papers of a family of interest were housed at this location.  The Museum is a cute little house with artifacts from the area.  Books and papers are kept in a separate room.  I found great treasures in the binders:  notes from researchers, original photographs, and memorabilia.  Most of these items and the information contained in them are not digitized or online.  Although so much invaluable information has appeared online in recent years, there is so much more that is not online and will not appear online soon.  You still need to physically search for information.  This information could be anywhere, but start with the area in which the family lived and check all libraries, museums, historical societies- any possible repository.  And don't be surprised to find documents and pictures sitting unmarked in a box in a backroom.

Original family photographs

Death certificate from a researcher

Notebook

Copy of Vanderhoof family record book

One of several branches of the Peer family tree

Visit to the National Archives

Yesterday I visited the National Archives in New York City at 201 Varick Street.  (They plan to relocate this year.)  The tour was sponsored by the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.  The National Archives' main genealogical holdings include federal census records, naturalization records, and military records.  You can view census records at home now, so you may find the repository more useful for the naturalization records and military records.  The presentation focused on Alien Files, or A-Files.  Such a file was created for an immigrant, or alien, who was not naturalized as of April 1, 1944.  Individuals who were born before 1909 and who have A-Files are indexed online.  I have few recent immigrants in my family trees, but I managed to find a match in their online index to show you an example.  After locating someone in the index, you can then order the Alien File from the Kansas City office.  Locating an individual in the online index can provide you with a date of birth and location, as well as other names used.  The file itself may contain information such as parentage and copies of original documents, perhaps birth certificates and marriage records.

Only result for "Regenye" from the online Archival Research Catalog of the National Archives.
You can use the "Scope & Content" tab to possibly identify if the entry matches your person of interest.
If you think there is a match, go ahead and order the A-File.

Over at Ancestry.com, a check for Joseph Regenye provides us with his draft registration card for World War II.
The date of birth on the draft registration matches the date in the A-File, so we know we have the same person.

NARA will also offer the 1940 federal census on April 2, 2012.  There is no name index yet.  You can search the digitized images for a place name for guidance.  If your subject of interest was at the same address in 1930 as 1940, you should not have too many enumeration districts to view.  If you have no address for your subject, then you may have to wait for a name index.  You can also identify enumeration districts at SteveMorse.org.

Archival Research Catalog result for digitized image of "Verona" to identify enumeration district
in the (unreleased) 1940 federal census.

In the 1930 federal census, the Newark City Home for Boys in Verona, Essex County, New Jersey
was in enumeration district 7-615.  In the 1940 census, the Home was in district 7-366.
Note the decreasing population of the institution from 252 in 1930 to 71 in 1940.

Monmouth County Archives Day 2011

Today I attended Archives and History Day at the Monmouth County Library in Manalapan, New Jersey.  Table after table was filled with helpful people and information from various municipalities in Monmouth County.  I was treated to a tour of the Archives, located in the bottom of the library, which is a wonderland for someone who loves to research old records.

I previously touted the digitization and free online availability of the Red Bank Register Newspaper.  In this spirit, the Archives are busily digitizing the myriad of records in these boxes.  Some are already done and are available online for you to search and view for free.  I was told that if a record is not viewable online yet, you may request a paper copy.  I recommend doing your research online first and then making an appointment to visit the archives to retrieve copies and search for yourself all of the paper copies that are not yet digitized.

http://www.visitmonmouth.com/page.aspx?ID=1990

If you search in the Coroner Inquests for last name "Wall," you come up with listings such as this:

The Archives holds the Coroner Inquest papers regarding the death of Maud Walling.  Death by murder could provide more details about your family than other modes of death, so it's definitely worth checking out.  (Do not overlook the people in your tree who did not marry or have children.  They also left a paper trail that might be more discoverable than the breadcrumbs left by your direct ancestors.)  The actual papers are not available online yet, but you can request them.  This goes beyond merely reading the articles concerning the death in the Red Bank Register.

Maud's abrupt ending provides us with some great family information.
She was the daughter of Wyckoff Walling; her cousin was Clinton H Walling, son of John H Walling;
John's wife was married previously and had a daughter named Bessie Blauvelt.
You can also research Maud's death and what became of Clinton Walling in the Archives.

If you have branches of your tree that lived or worked in Monmouth County, New Jersey, you have a lot more records to find.

Family Tree

Family tree of Ellis Cook by C. W. Holland, as submitted to the Morristown Library.

This beautiful drawing of a family tree resides at the Morristown/Morris Township Library.  (Physical address is One Miller Road, Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey.)  An extensive genealogical collection is in the lower level.  You can read about it online, but I recommend visiting if you have research to do in New Jersey.  The drawing of the Ellis Cook family tree was found in a file for the surname Cook.  Some libraries keep files on local families and fill them with documents and donated matter.  You won't know what is there until you sort through the contents.  The Cook family folder contains compiled genealogies by individuals, copies of indexes from books, and letters of inquiry from researchers to the library staff, some dated in the year 1906.  You can scan papers of interest and then either print them onto paper or save them on a flash drive.  Most libraries do not offer electronic copying.

Pound Ridge Trip: following up

Following up on my excursion to Pound Ridge, New York, I ordered the book, “Images of America, Pound Ridge” by Richard Major and Vincent Manna.  Two items in the book are of particular help for clarifying my findings from my summer trip to Pound Ridge.

A map from 1906 was reprinted from “God’s Country” by Jay Harris, showing a plot owned by Mrs. Eyre.  Relaxing on my couch, instead of navigating the almost dirt roads straddling the New York and Connecticut border, I was able to study this map and the modern-day map of Pound Ridge and figure out where the property is.  I think I was in the correct place.  It appears that Conant Valley Road is either a newly made road or was just not codified on early maps.  That is what was throwing me off.  I was mistaking Conant Valley Road for the nearest cross street, when actually Eastwoods Road was the cross street, at least back around 1900.

  

The second useful item was an explanation of Southwestern Farms.  Mrs. Eyre sold the property to this entity in 1910.  According to Images of America, Southwestern Farms was owned by Artemus Ward for expansion of the reservoir, and “most of the land is underwater . . . .”  I don’t think that the area owned by Mrs. Eyre is underwater.  There are small ponds on the property, but it’s not underwater.  I find little online about this man and his Southwestern Farms, so I am glad to have found the explanation in this book.

New Images Online: Smithsonian Frazee papers

I previously wrote about discovering a connection between John Frazee to the Duryea line.  The actual link is John Frazee's second wife, Lydia Place.  John Frazee lived about 1790 to 1852 and was a sculptor and architect.  His papers were donated to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.  Descriptions of the papers included genealogical information, which is exactly what I was looking for.  Copies were available through microfilm, but I had not gotten around to ordering them yet.  Yesterday was the day to order the microfilm.  I visited the website for the microfilm call numbers and poof!  The papers are now scanned and online.

As hoped, the papers provide some great genealogical information.

This information is of great help to my research on the Place/Frazee line.  I now have additional documentation that Lydia Place was the daughter of Thomas Place and Lydia Rogers- and she was their only daughter.  We have birthdates for both Lydia and John, plus their marriage date.  The diagram provides us with names and spouses of John Frazee's children.  Not only are these papers a wonderful resource, but their ready availability online makes them that much better.