Cadet William Lowry Lyman (1923-1943)

Picture of gravestone for William Lowry Lyman, Jr
Montclair Public Library Online Photo Collection
https://www.digifind-it.com/montclair/pages/P3642.php

While scrolling through the online collections of the Montclair Public Library (Essex County, New Jersey), I found a picture of the gravestone for William Lowry Lyman, Jr. No details, such as a cemetery, were provided.

The inscription:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

WILLIAM LOWRY LYMAN JR

CADET MIDSHIPMAN U.S. M.M.

MARCH 25, 1923 - JULY 13, 1943

KILLED IN THE INVASION OF SICILY

The Lyman family plot is in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Montclair.

The stone from the photograph was in this plot. It is a flat stone, still fully readable.

See William's entry on Find A Grave, linking his family

William registered for the draft on June 30, 1942 in Montclair. He was 19 years old. (You can view these cards in Ancestry.com's collection, United States World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947.)

The first article I found about William appeared in the Montclair Times on September 9, 1943. He was reported as Missing in Action. He was a cadet in the Merchant Marines. His ship was sunk during the Invasion of Sicily. His picture was printed next to the article.

On September 30, an article referred to William as one of four who had made "the supreme sacrifice."

One November 11 (Veterans Day), William was listed as "missing."

For Decoration Day (now known better as Memorial Day) of 1944, May 25, William was listed among those dead from World War II.

What may have happened was the William was onboard a ship that was sunk on July 13, 1943. His whereabouts were initially unknown. As time passed, he was not located. This could be how this date became his date of death.

Family Files at Albany

A gem to find in any library or depository is a family file.  The New York State Library at Albany houses boxes of research deposited over the decades, oftentimes not indexed or otherwise accounted for, I was told on the tour.  Contents of the files varies greatly from self-published genealogies to newspaper clippings and family bibles.  Records end up deposited at the Library for a number of reasons, such as the family historian last living in the Albany area, and not necessarily because the family had any ties to New York.

Boxes containing family files
New York State Library, Albany

Custer Family Genealogy
Self-published

Copy of hand-written notes and
Copy of marriage certificate from 1859
John Rorbach to Harriet Cook in Albany

Posterior of actual photograph of Elting Family Bible

Photograph of Elting Family Bible written in Dutch
Dates in the 1700s

Hand-written family notes concerning a Connecticut family including Bishop.
This family historian recorded information on whatever paper available.
I think I will transcribe this set of papers.

Albany Research Day 1

Today was the introduction to the New York State Archives and Library by the helpful staff.

I concentrated on vital records indexes.  New York City records are kept in New York City.  Beginning in 1881, the rest of the counties were supposed to report births, marriages, and deaths to the State.  Compliance was spotty at first, so I did not find a lot of records.  At least I was able to look for myself to make sure.

Indexes to New York State vital records.  Microfiche.

Each calendar year contains an alphabetical listing of names.
Counties are combined.
These are deaths for the year 1900 reported to the State of New York.
The number in the right column is the certificate number.

Once you have located a potential record of interest in the index, you cannot readily obtain the corresponding record.  You need to submit a completed application and $22 to the New York State Department of Health and wait for the certificate to come in the mail.  This costs time, money, and effectively prohibits you from exploring common names.  As an alternative, you can try the registrar of the county or the town where the event took place and see if they can provide the record faster or at a lower cost. 

If you cannot find a record at the state level, you will want to try the local registrar anyway.  Not all counties and cities reported events to the state in any particular year.

This is a nifty paper I saw hanging.
The genealogy of New York Counties.  Great resource.

New York Public Library, Map Division

On Tuesday I visited the New York Public Library with the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.  We were tutored on use of the Library's website and we toured the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division.

The map division a huge collection of maps, with a concentration on the New York City area.  You can view several maps online, but maps that are too large, delicate, or recent are not online.  You will want to view farm maps for the area in which your ancestors lived.  Individual properties are labeled with names of the owners, thus enabling you to locate your family of interest and their neighbors.  You can also find local churches and cemeteries that may not exist today.

NYPL.org

You can search holdings online.  From the home page, click the "Research" tab and explore some of the options.  For a genealogy angle, search "Classic Catalog" and then do a keyword search for a surname followed by "family."  Searching for "Duryea Family" resulted in eight hits.

NYPL.org

Duryea family miscellany is the listing for the file folder from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.

Family files from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society now housed at the New York Public Library.

Manuscript found in the Duryea family folder.  Note the delicate paper.

The Library has its own family files that can be located under the classic catalog call number search of APT-F.

NYPL.org results for family file holdings.

If you locate a family file of interest, you need to visit the library to view the contents.  As I previously wrote, checking a family file can yield little or a lot, including pictures and research notes from long ago.

Picture found in the Cook family folder at the New York Public Library.

1813-1814 New York City city directory by Longworth.  Rebound.

Morristown and Morris Township Library

Last week I attended a tour of the Morristown and Morris Township Library’s North Jersey History and Genealogy Center, organized by the Morris Area Genealogical Society.  The collections include resources local to Morris County, such as microfilmed church records, as well as resources that cover all of New Jersey and some neighboring states.  Morris County newspapers are digitized and available on the library computers only.  Indexes of these newspapers were compiled over the years and are in book form.  (Palladium of Liberty 1808-1822 and Genius of Liberty 1798-1811 are online and searchable at GenealogyBank.com with a subscription.)  Tens of thousands of photographs are being scanned and are appearing online gradually.

The church collection includes microfilmed records from the First Presbyterian Church of Dover.
Events of the church, such as christenings and marriages, are some of the records you can find.
If a cemetery was attached to the church, burial records may also be included.

Sample page contained in the microfilmed records of the First Presbyterian Church in Dover.
This is a page from the listing of marriages performed by Reverend Burtis C Megee from 1840-1876.

Church recordings of events may provide additional details not contained in an official government record.
In this 1872 marriage record of Andrew Erickson to Mary Halstrom, Rev. Burtis mentions the full names of all four parents and adds that the bride has been "only one month in this country, from Sweden."
Note that Andrew Erickson's last name is not his father's last name, but rather his father's first name followed by "son."

Over the years, authors and researchers sent their genealogical manuscripts to the Library.
You can search for books on a particular surname or family.
This find was not a book, but rather a series of newsletters about the Ayars family, with a catchy title, "Ayars Heirs."

City Directories Online through Millburn Library

I previously wrote about researching in Millburn, Essex County, New Jersey.  I highlighted an interesting coincidence of similar names.  Someone took me up on my offer of further investigation, causing me to again visit the website of the Millburn Public Library.  I was most pleasantly surprised.  In addition to the local paper and other archival information, the city directories are online!  The earliest year is 1850.  The primary collection is 1889-1981.  I have not viewed every edition, but towns besides Millburn and Short Hills are included in the directories.  For example, 1918 included Irvington, Livingston, Millburn/Short Hills, and the Oranges [West, East, South, and Orange- no North Orange in Essex County for those of you who were wondering].  The search function picked up every word I tried.

City directories are an invaluable tool for researching families.  By analyzing names associated with an address, you can link individuals as part of a larger family.  Later years can include death dates, new spouses, and moving information.  Someone who may have worked in town may be included, even if he/she lived elsewhere.

1918 The Price & Lee Company City Directory
Oranges, Irvington, Livingston, and Millburn
Essex County, New Jersey
Online through the Millburn Public Library Archives

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.

Road Trip: Warwick, New York

For years, I had searched for the date and location of death of Rene Marion Duryea, wife of Eugene Cook.  They were living in Caldwell, Essex County, New Jersey in the 1930s.

1933 The Price & Lee Co. Directory
Montclair, Bloomfield, Caldwell, Essex Fells, Glen Ridge, Verona, Cedar Grove

Eugene died in Florida in 1979, survived by a second wife.  So where was the record of Rene Marion’s death?

One hindrance was the name.  She was known as Marion, but the family was surprised to discover that she was Rene for the first few decades of her life.  Rene was a popular female name on her father’s side; Marion was from her mother’s side.

The family story was that Marion died, was cremated, but not buried until her father died a few years later; they were buried together at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, Westchester County, New York.  Marion’s father was buried in March of 1944.  The problem was that the cemetery had a record of his burial, but not hers.  “The cemetery didn’t know we slid her ashes into his arms,” was the reason given for not finding a record.

Burial record from Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  The year is 1944.
When the century is omitted, the records can become confusing.

Until recently, New Jersey death records were not searchable for my target time frame of the early 1940s.  I had to request a search by mail, which did not uncover a death certificate.  I did not know if this was because of a mix up with “Rene” versus “Marion,” or if Cook was spelled with a final E.  The slightest variation from your request could result in no record found.

An index for Florida death records is available online at Ancestry.com for the years 1877-1998.  There is no shortage of Cook findings, but nothing seemed like a good match for Rene Marion.

This year, New Jersey death records for the years 1941-1946 became searchable at The Archives in Trenton.  I looked under Duryea, Cook, Cooke, Marion, Rene, but found nothing.  It’s best to search yourself because you are aware of name variants and the little details that distinguish your records from others.

Then an observation by a relative gave me the lead I needed.  We were going through a box of family pictures.  The pictures are mostly of houses, buildings, cars, animals; few people.  A large picture of a house on a lake caught my eye.  The back of the picture was blank.

“Oh, that’s the house in Warwick,” was the answer to my query, which prompted more queries.

I hopped online to see what I could find out.  Warwick is in Orange County, New York.  It’s not where I would have thought to look for Rene Marion, but it’s close enough to Caldwell that I should try it.  The Albert Wisner Library website had an online index of obituaries from local papers that covered my target time frame.  There was a good match for Rene Marion’s death.

Online Index to Obituaries

So to Warwick I went.

The Albert Wisner Library had two local newspapers and both carried an obituary for Rene Marion Cook.  I had finally located a date and place of death.

Warwick Advertiser
3 June 1943

Next I visited the town clerk for a copy of the death certificate.  If you have to travel a great distance or you have limited time, you may want to call ahead to make sure that the town possesses death certificates and if someone will be available to retrieve the information.

No specific address was listed, so I can’t tell you if the house in the picture was Rene Marion’s house.

The Local History Room

Today I had the opportunity to visit the Albert Wisner Public Library in Warwick, Orange County, New York.  I was researching an event that took place in Warwick- that post is forthcoming.  The staff was helpful and knowledgeable.  (And so were the other patrons with directions!)  I made use of the local history room.  I recommend asking for and visiting such a room whenever you visit a library.  You never know what you may find.  I found a 1924 book with grave inscriptions from Dutchess County, New York.  You probably would not expect to find Dutchess County material in Orange County, but that is why I recommend browsing the "local" history collection yourself.

I found a listing for a small, private cemetery in Pawling for the Campbell family.  This may or may not be the same Campbell family that I am following in Dutchess County, but now the possibility has entered my mind and can be explored further.  A check of findagrave reveals that someone else has already ventured through the vegetation and photographed these stones, saving me from adding this cemetery to my ever-growing to-do list.  In due time I may have come across this cemetery through other means, but that is true of so many of the treasures that we find.  So check those local history rooms!

I take these pictures with an iPhone.  This enables me to go paperless.  I have boxes of genealogical papers and welcome not having to add to the overflow as more and more genealogical resources become available.  I also tend to copy more items.  It's free and saves me the hassle of requesting permission to photocopy, locating a working copier, and finding change or acquiring a copy machine card.  Once saved on my computer, I can easily search for files instead of rummaging through boxes.  I can also email an image immediately if the find is so wonderful that it needs to be shared quickly.