The Death Certificate My Scanner Would Not Copy

Genealogy rule: make digital copies of all records, mementos, pictures, letters.

(And make backup copies.)

The death certificate for my recently departed paternal aunt was issued by the local town. The document was printed on 8 1/2 by 14 inch legal-size paper, which is awkward to store and scan.

New Jersey certificate of death
Issued May 2026

I have an older, no-frills scanner that is too short for fourteen inch documents. I tried a newer, more sophisticated scanner that could accommodate legal size paper. The scanner refused!

Modern New Jersey death certificates contained security features that some scanners detect and block from copying. Sometimes these security features cause the word "VOID" to appear faintly in scanned images. I would have been satisfied with such a result, but this scanner refused to scan the document at all.

Example of "VOID" appearing if document is copied

An iPhone 17 ultimately captured the image.

New Jersey offers a "certification" of a death record for genealogy, which can be copied; however, the Social Security number and causes of death are redacted. I prefer unredacted records when possible.

New York City Records Online

Images of New York City vital records are now online- for free!

The included years start in the mid 1860s or upon creation of the five boroughs in 1898. The final years for each type of record:

Births through 1909

Deaths through 1948

Marriages through 1937

The records for earlier years are available elsewhere. To obtain records for subsequent years, you need to jump through the hoops of the Department of Health.

Also not included are affidavits for marriage, usually issued between 1908-1937. If your couple of interest married during these years, obtaining copies of the affidavit from the Municipal Archives might provide additional information.

Search or browse birth, marriage, and death records for New York City
Website as of this writing: https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/search

The digitized images are in color. Compare the digitized versus paper copy of the marriage certificate of my great grandfather, Howard Lutter, and his second wife, Fiorita Lorenz, in 1928.

The affidavit for a license to marry provided details about the divorces of both parties.

Ancestry has an index of these vital records, including copies of the indexes.

I will note a caveat I uncovered when trying to find a marriage record in the new digitized records.

I was looking up a couple, George Stegman and Charlotte Taylor. They were born in the 1890s in New York. Ancestry's index of licenses has the date as December 30, 1913, which corresponds to the images of the indexes. This is not the marriage date. This is the date the license was issued.

I sought the marriage record to discover the names of the parents of the bride and groom. The record was not found in 1913. I expanded the search and found the record in 1914. The ceremony was January 4, 1914 in Manhattan.

George Stegman and Charlotte Taylor married January 4, 1914 in Manhattan, New York County, New York.
Groom's parents- Henry Stegman and Martha Tuthill.
Bride's parents- Edmund Taylor and Catherine Sweeney.

It is understandable that the marriage ceremony occurred a short time after the license was issued. When the license is obtained at the end of a year, the couple might not marry until the following year. This is an important distinction when reporting dates of events or looking for subsequent records.

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

Irish Catholic Records: ODonnell and Gallagher in Donegal

If you have not heard, you can now access digital images of Catholic records on the website of the National Library of Ireland.

A lot of these images are not (currently) indexed.  Some parish pages have links to potential indexes.  You need to know where in Ireland you want to search.  The map is great.

For my maternal grandmother's Irish lines, I only know the origins of her paternal grandfather, Patrick Francis ODonnell:  County Donegal.

I clicked on Donegal and the parishes appeared.  I had to make a further selection.

I chose Ardara based on a poem written by a cousin.  In the poem, Father Charles Leo ODonnell (1884-1934) wrote that his father (Cornelius ODonnell, a brother of Patrick Francis) was from Ardara and his mother (Mary Gallagher) was from Killybegs.  I hoped that Margaret Gallagher, the mother of Cornelius and Patrick ODonnell, was from the same area.

Before you jump into a batch of records without an index, you should map out what it is you are looking for.

Over the years and through many research efforts, this is the little family cluster so far discovered.

Parents:  Peter ODonnell and Margaret Gallagher.  Born suppose about 1820.  (No direct records of them.)

Five Children born in Ireland from around 1840 through 1860:
*Cornelius "Neal" ODonnell, married Mary Gallagher; lived in Indiana.
*Kathryn ODonnell, married Charles Mason and Mr Kennedy; lived in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and California.
*Patrick Francis ODonnell, married Delia Joyce; lived in Bayonne, New Jersey.
*Rose ODonnell, married James Kenny; lived in Bayonne.
*Charles Mhici ODonnell; was living in Altnagapple, Ardara, County Donegal in 1923.

All of the children, except Charles, were probably in the United States by 1880.  I do not know if Peter and Margaret left Ireland.

The records for review for Ardara were:  Marriages 1867-1875 and Baptisms 1869-1880.  These were not years conducive to my little group, but I looked through all the images anyway.  Nothing jumped out at me.  There were lots of entries for ODonnells and Gallaghers, but little information beyond names of the parties and sponsors.

Neighboring Killybegs was my next choice.  These records were for Baptisms 1850-1881.  I was more excited for this collection because these years would contain the five children of Peter and Margaret.  Yet I found no children baptized with parents named Peter ODonnell and Margaret Gallagher.  Again, plenty of people with these surnames.

I found two baptism entries for the year 1855, listing Peter ODonnell as a sponsor.  Margaret ODonnell was also a sponsor for one; Margaret Byam for the other.  "Peter" is not a common name in this collection.

March 23, 1855:  James, son of Patrick Mc[?] and May [?Boyle?];
sponsors Peter ODonnell and Margaret ODonnell.

September 9, 1855:  Mary, son of Denis ODonnell and Mary Byam[?];

sponsors Peter ODonnell and Marg Byam.

From this information, we don't know if we have the correct Peter ODonnell and Margaret Gallagher.  These records may place the couple in the area.  Perhaps their marriage record and their children's baptismal records are in a neighboring parish, if those years are available.

Of note is that these records from Donegal did not contain any entries for some of the other Irish surnames in my lines:  Preston, Joyce, Sheehey, reflecting Ireland's areas of surname concentrations.

Albany Research Trip: Sorting through the Finds

The research trip to Albany, New York lasted three days.  I found a lot of useful information.  I was unable to post because Internet service was spotty.  I refueled the car in Albany and set out for home, where electric service was coming back after Hurricane Sandy.  I was wise to stop in Albany for gasoline.  The entire way back home was dotted with lines at gas stations, growing larger and with more police cars as I approached Northeastern New Jersey.  My home suffered no real damage and the electric and heat had returned Saturday morning after going out on Monday.  The food stores were slowly receiving new shipments of perishables.  Schools were closed because they either had no electricity or were too damaged.  More people were out riding bikes or walking to their destinations.  Traffic lights were out at many intersections and large trees blocked roadways.  At this moment, many blocks in town are still without power, heat, and water- while the first snowfall, Winter Storm Athena, is blanketing last week's destruction.

One of my goals in Albany was to uncover more information about Mary or Margaret Campbell, wife of Patrick Joyce.  I have not found either of them in the 1860 census and the earliest child I can find was born in 1861.  In the 1870 census in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York, Patrick Joyce is head of a household of four children under the age of ten; no wife.  Mary Joyce is listed on the Mortality Schedule, having died in May of 1870, "Railroad run over by cars."  She is a tail in my family tree- I do not know her parents.  Growing up, I heard the story often about how the train caught her skirts and dragged her to her death- after she threw a baby from her arms to safety.

At Albany, the index of deaths for New York State begins in 1881, or eleven years after Mary's death.  No luck there. A consultation with a researcher from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society raised an important point:  A death by train could have occurred anywhere there was a railroad- not just in Pawling.

I expanded my search of digitized newspapers at GenealogyBank (you can access from home for a subscription or use Ancestry.com) and found a small article about the incident.

According to The New York Herald-Tribune [actually called the New York Herald in 1870], Margaret Joyce died in June of 1870, not May.  The researcher was right:  She was not killed in Pawling, but about 25 miles south, in Katonah, Westchester County, New York.  She was not killed instantly, probably lingering a few days after the train severed her leg.  I can only hope she was unconscious for those last days.

It is interesting (and fortunate) that she appeared on the Mortality Schedule because only deaths before May 31st of that year should be listed.  The newspaper article places her death in June.  So we have two dates of death.

My plan of action:
Contact St. John's Cemetery in Pawling where her husband was buried in 1905.
Contact the local historical society and town clerk for records they may hold for this family.
Search through more online newspapers using keywords of "Katonah" and "Harlem Railroad."

Frame your search in the context of the times

When searching newspapers online, keep in mind that most search options do not distinguish keywords from proper names.

GenealogyBank.com
Advanced search screen

Searching for last name COOK in the Palladium of Liberty at GenealogyBank provides us with these unfortunate results with "cook" indicating a job, not the last name.

Palladium of Liberty, Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey
27 May 1813
GenealogyBank.com

Palladium of Liberty, Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey
23 November 1820
GenealogyBank.com

Slavery was legal in New Jersey at least through the 1840s, so do not be surprised if you find this situation among your New Jersey ancestors.

Good Times Searching the Deutsche Zeitung

Someone sent me newspaper clippings from the New Jersey Deutsche Zeitung- "German Times."  These articles are invaluable to my research.  More in later posts.

So much is available online now that I did not realize that Deutsche Zeitung is digitized and available at GenealogyBank.  Years 1880-1898 are digitized and searchable.  These years cover a lot of my lines in Newark, New Jersey.  The problem is that the newspaper is written in German (naturally) and the elaborate typeface is hard to read, especially when smeared.  German was one of my minors as an undergrad [useful after all], so I jumped right in.

Searching for "Lutter" in English newspapers produces hits for "butter" and "letter."  Searching this German paper produces results for "Mutter."  [German for "mother."]  By limiting the date, I managed to find the announcement of the nuptials of my great great grandparents, Herman Lutter and Clara Uhl.

Married 24 January 1888 in Newark by Reverend William Rieb.

The names of the witnesses can be compared against the actual marriage return filed with the state of New Jersey.

It looks like the witnesses were Henriette Ebbede [or Ebbecke?] and Pauline Freemann for the bride, Clara Uhl.  Note that Pauline's signature has only one N in Freemann.  The N has a line over it, a short-hand way of noting a double consonant.  The witnesses for the groom were Alex Lutter and Henry Uhl.  Henry Uhl was the brother of Clara Uhl.  I am happy to see this other version of the witnesses because I was not sure if the name was Alex Lutter on the marriage return.  I do not know who this person is.  I find no trace of Alex Lutter in Newark.  He possibly shows up in Chicago, gets married, and has a few children.

The moral of the story is to collect as much information as you can about an event.  Don't just look for the birth, death, and marriage certificates.  Dig up the local newspaper and look for an announcement.  Look for the church record.

Fold3 Beta Search

Fold3 sent me an invitation to review its new search capabilities.  The version is still in its Beta form.  Fold3 is a pay site that offers United States military records, some census records, and some city directories.  Among the current offerings, pension records from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War are helping me the most because of the detailed lineages required to collect a pension.  The Newark, New Jersey city directories are also fantastic.

Beta search at Fold3.
Using a soundex search for the first name Eliakem uncovered one result, whereas the original search turns up no matches.
At this time, searching for a location within a state is not useful.

Results using the currently available search engine.

The Beta search uncovered this document, a Revolutionary War Roll from 1776.
Eliakem Marsh was not on the page, though.
The "Marsh" was John Marsh.  The "Eliakem" was Eliakim Crane.

The new search results offer easier to view expanded categories, dates, and states.  I found the new format easier to navigate and sort the results.

1940 Federal Census

I have not written about the 1940 United States Federal Census that became available in April.  Frankly, I was waiting for an index.  Not waiting.  Working on other projects until an index was available.  The sites froze often in the beginning and my eyes tired quickly looking at page after page.  Volunteers are still indexing and I thank them for their work.

New Jersey is not indexed yet.  You can browse the images for free at FamilySearch.  I saw what I wanted to see from New Jersey (thank you J.D.I.) and will view the rest when the index is available.



FamilySearch.org

The index as well as the images will be free to all through FamilySearch.  The index is free at Ancestry, but the images are not free.  Quivering leaves on my family tree indicated that New York's index is available, so I looked for some people.



Ancestry.com
1940 United States Federal Census
Lewisboro, Westchester County, New York

Ancestry has quite a few bells and whistles.  The person of interest is highlighted in yellow and the rest of the household is green.  You should always review the neighbors, and Ancestry makes this easy.



Ancestry provides a typed name as you scroll through neighbors,
and highlights the neighbor's line in peach.

As you stroll along the page, the names are still viewable in a typed format.
The highlights continue.
The names of columns are visible at the top.
This ensures that you gather information from the correct line.

Spring Seminar 2012 in Newton, New Jersey

Saturday (May 19, 2012) was the Spring Seminar of the Genealogical Society of New Jersey at the First Presbyterian Church in Newton, followed by a tour of the Sussex County Historical Society.

The Presbyterian Historical Society told us about their physical repository in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 425 Lombard Street. The records are not indexed, so you will need to know names, dates, and specific churches to conduct an effective search.  Records may also be maintained at the original location, so check before driving to Philadelphia.

Joseph R Klett discussed how to use the records of the East and West Jersey Proprietors, which were incorporated original landowners.  These early records are now housed in the Archives at Trenton.  Some are searchable online, but most are not digitized, indexed, or abstracted.  (You can't find everything online!)  I did not realize that in the 1600s, Burlington County stretched as far north as the New York State border; or that the East Jersey Proprietors dissolved in 1998 while the West Jersey Proprietors is still an active organization.


Online link to the index for some early proprietor records at the Archives.

Gerald H Smith advised us to use a property description in a deed to draw the lot and then use land maps to locate ancestors and the neighbors that they often married.
 

Typical property description.  Although the trees are likely long gone, use the lengths, angles, and neighboring properties to draw out an approximate shape for the lot.  Main roads and rivers as borders may still exist.



Old property descriptions use a length of "Chains." The Historical Society had such a measuring device on display.

The Historical Society has files on many local families from Sussex County and neighboring counties of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Your original family photographs could be waiting for you here.

Presentation: Military Records by Craig R Scott

On April 21st at Monmouth University I attended a presentation on military records by Craig R Scott, hosted by the Monmouth County Genealogy Society.  I was especially interested because I am focusing on such records to help me further trace several lines.  I have a few points to share.

--  Records are available in a variety of places:  Different branches of the National Archives, on microfilm, and online at Ancestry and Fold3.  Some are digitized; most are not.  Some are indexed; most are not.

--  Not everyone who served will be found in the pension files.  Several laws were passed over the years that qualified the soldier or the widow.  Your ancestors may not have lived long enough to qualify.

--  Research the captain, the colonel, and the other members of the unit.  This is especially useful if you cannot find a compiled military record or pension application for a particular person.  By discovering where the unit was at specific times you will compile your own idea of your ancestor's service.  Also, members of the unit were probably neighbors and maybe relatives.

These are points that apply to other records as well:
--  Spelling of names varies.  Do not be rigid.
--  View the original record whenever possible.  Use indexes to guide you to the actual record.

War of 1812 file card available at Ancestry.
Note that the full names of all three wives were included.  This is a great find.

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.