Trend is to Release Records, Not Restrict

New York City is seeking to limit public availability of birth and death records to 125 and 75 years after the event, respectively, according to a news action email I received from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.

I sprang into action and so can you. I signed the petition to not further limit access.

I also wrote a letter. A form letter is already drafted.  I modified it to suit my needs, which swung much further than the NYG&B Society.

I requested:

- A free, online, public index of births, marriages, and deaths within one year of the event.

- Digitization of individual certificates of births, marriages, and deaths and digitization of the indexes and older ledger books AND free, online, public access with some restrictions on recent births and marriages.

I don't think this is shocking or unreasonable in today's digital age. People who do not do genealogy are horrified when I describe what I have to go through, in terms of traveling and paying, to obtain a vital record. You have to pay for a vital record in New York. At least in New Jersey I can browse rolls of microfilm (remember the 1960s? I don't because I wasn't born yet) for free, snap a picture with my phone, and then hurl the image six decades ahead into the year 2017. Too bad if you can't visit Trenton.

Navigation skills required to find marriage certificates in New Jersey microfilm

Back to New York City. The web address keeps changing for the Municipal Archives. Below is a screenshot of what records they will provide. The cost is $15 per record, plus $2 for each additional year or borough searched. The birth records have remained steady at "before 1910" instead of one hundred years. Reclaim the Records plans to file for the release of the birth certificates for the years 1910 through 1917.

Ironically, Ancestry.com recently released an index of births of New York City for the years 1910 through 1965. Some of the images are of very poor quality, so I recommend looking at the actual images of the index and not merely relying on Ancestry's index of the index.

If you think that this is shocking to release a "recent" index of births, it is not unusual.  Here is California's index of births, marriages, and deaths through 1980 at Ancestry.com. The images link to the index, not the actual certificates.

Pennsylvania released its actual death certificates through 1964. No need to travel to Pennsylvania and sit at a microfilm reader. No need to pay for a certificate, wait months, then find out it's the wrong person and try again. This is fantastic.

Am I really asking for the moon for New York City (and New York State and New Jersey) to digitize and release its birth, marriage, and death records? I think not. The information is creeping out there through many outlets. Genealogists need legitimate, reliable resources for our work in the form of official government documents. We have online obituaries with loads of information, such as decedent's date of birth, spouse, and the names of living children and grandchildren. Find A Grave is another growing resource whose only requirement for posting is that the person is dead (and not a duplicate memorial).

Maybe there is hope for my home state. Reclaim the Records has secured and released the New Jersey index to marriages from 1901 through 2016. Yes. Through last year.

https://archive.org/details/NJ_Marriage_Index_2016

Marriage, marriage, marriage

In researching the Bishops of Burlington County, New Jersey, I came across a marriage for William R Bishop in 1860 to Mary Lee at the State's online index.

Search results for a marriage between William Bishop and Mary Lee.
Online index 1848-1878 available for free from The New Jersey State Archives.

I wondered if this was the same marriage, recorded three times, or an error in the index, or something else.  I obtained the original ledger entries from Trenton.  (If you are unable to visit Trenton, you can write to the Archives or order the microfilm through your local FamilySearch Center.)

I located the three recordings and it does indeed appear that this was the same marriage recorded in three separate locations in Burlington County.  I do not know why the marriage was recorded thrice.  Names of parents are provided in two of the recordings, giving possible leads on people born in the early 1800s- from a record made in 1860.  (The year in the index is correct, as this index is not the same index available through FamilySearch or Ancestry.)

Book C2, page 190.
Marriage of William R Bishop to Mary L Lee, 16 February 1860,
recorded in Northampton, Burlington County, New Jersey.
Parents are merely listed by their surnames.

Book C2, page 241.
Marriage of William R Bishop to Mary L Lee, 16 February 1860,
recorded in Burlington, Burlington County, New Jersey.
Parents are listed as William and Eliza R Bishop and Samuel and Jane C Lee.

Book C2, page 194.
Marriage of William R Bishop to Mary Louisa Lee, 16 February 1860,
recorded in Westhampton, Burlington County, New Jersey.
Parents are listed as William and Mary Bishop and Samuel and Jane Lee..

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."

Marriage Redone

I had a poor copy of a marriage return from New Jersey for Newark in 1888.  Viewing the microfilm at the Archives in Trenton was no better.  The information that I really wanted was the birthplace of the groom and his parents.  My copy looked like this:

Some original records are kept onsite in the manuscripts area, currently open in the afternoons only.

The staff was able to find the original blue marriage return and copy it for me.  It's a much better reproduction than what is on microfilm.  The place of birth now looks like this:

This looks like Sachsen.  I have more work to do to discover the area within Sachsen and possible records.

As a bonus, the back of the marriage return contains signatures of the bride and groom.  The back of the document is not microfilmed and can only be obtained from the manuscripts room.

The marriage itself did not last the year.  Bridge and groom separated in November of 1888.  The details of the divorce will be in an upcoming post.

Drowning

The Preston family had many misfortunes and many family stories about these tragedies told through the years.  In addition to deaths by train, there were deaths by "drowning in the bay."  I have uncovered records that shed light on one such drowning.

John Preston, his wife, Bridget, and their ever-growing family moved to Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey around 1901.  They had previously resided in Warren County, New Jersey and before that, Dutchess County, New York.  Tragedy struck when their son, Edward, almost 18 years old, drowned in New York Bay.  The story is that he dove in and never came back up.  According to the newspaper account, Edward came back up to call for help, but drowned before his body was found.

Edward was buried at Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City.  I have a listing of Preston burials at this cemetery, so I easily located Edward's death certificate.  The cause of death promised an explanation in a local paper.

Preston deaths in New Jersey for the year 1903, all counties.
The death indexes for years 1901, 1902, and 1903 are on one microfilm reel.
The number next to a name is the death certificate number.

Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City, New Jersey

If you had Catholic family living in Hudson County, New Jersey, or even New York City, in the late 1800s through the 1900s, you need to check the burial records for Holy Name Cemetery.  Older death certificates refer to this cemetery as “Hudson CCC” or “HCCC,” which stood for Hudson County Catholic Cemetery.

Barely legible, this death certificate from 1893 indicates burial at Hudson County Catholic Cemetery, now known as Holy Name Cemetery, in Jersey City.

According to interment.com, there are over 264,000 burials at Holy Name.  You can view close to 20,000 of these burials at FindAGrave.com.  Plot cards are available on microfilm through your local family history center.

The cemetery is well maintained with an office on site, active groundskeepers, and current burials.  Locating a plot can be confusing because several sections seem to have the same lettering system.  This could be because more than one cemetery originally occupied the grounds now called Holy Name.  (If anyone wants to send me a reliable link about this, please do.)  I found a detailed map on one of the microfilm rolls that is useful in determining the correct section.



Map of Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City, New Jersey

Partial listing of burials for Catherine O'Donnell at Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City.  FHL #1412638.

 

In the above listing, the women named Catherine O’Donnell in plots A E 79, M 65 A, A 458 No, and 6 A 129 are not buried with or near one another.  You can imagine how confusing this becomes.

After discovering your plot of interest, the next step is to look up all burials in that specific plot.  Using the Catherine O’Donnell buried in grave A E 79 in 1921, we can find additional burials not named O’Donnell, as well as the grave owner.  We find that a woman named Mary Lee, age 58, was buried in the plot in 1876, as well as a baby named George Bundschub in 1877.  The owner was Edward O’Donnell.  Finding out all of the burials in a plot, even if they do not share the last name of your original inquiry, is necessary to map out a family.

Good luck using the above map to locate the grave!

O'Donnell plot at Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City.  Section G, row 10, plots 29 and 30.
The stones in the far background are in a circle for priests and nuns.
Picture taken 30 May 2007 by J. Lutter.

Map provided at the office of Holy Name Cemetery to find the above O'Donnell plot.

Two Deaths on Christmas

A recent study finds that Americans are more likely to die on Christmas Day, December 25th, than any other day of the year.  (You can read an article about the study here.)  This conclusion was based on analysis of death certificates from 1979-2004.

I have uncovered two deaths on December 25th, several years before the deaths studied.  (It would be interesting if someone expanded on this study and included deaths in the 1800s through the present.  Perhaps the commercialization of Christmas and the added stress increases deaths on December 25th.)

Stephen C. Duryea died on December 25, 1893 in Jersey City.  He was 21 years old, unmarried, and died of pneumonia.  He was the 7th of 12 children and the 5th to die.  This must have been a very difficult time for his mother, especially since his father died six years earlier.  I discovered Stephen's death date upon finding the family plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Tarrytown, Westchester County, New York.

Jacob Duryea died on December 25, 1899.  His death took a while to uncover.  He appeared in the 1880 census in Hoboken.  His wife appeared without him, widowed, in the 1900 census.  At a local family history center, I searched microfilm rolls of death indexes year by year, starting in 1880.  On the last possible roll was Jacob's death.  He was buried at Hoboken Cemetery.  I visited his grave to find a bunch of family members buried with him.  The stone had fallen, but right side up.

Hoboken Cemetery is not in Hoboken; it is in North Bergen, which is in Hudson County, not Bergen County.  There is a house by the entrance, but it does not contain a caretaker or records.  You may call Epstein Management for records at 201-867-0635.

James Kittson, where are you?

I am still trying to track the Kittson family mentioned in the will of Herman Lutter, probated in 1924 and mentioned in a previous post.

Gussie Kittson was a niece of Herman Lutter.  Figuring that Gussie has long passed, I have been attempting to find any living descendants of hers.  In the 1920 census for Harrison, Hudson County, New Jersey, she has one son, James, five months old.  In the 1930 census, she still has only one child, James, aged ten years.  The 1940 census is not available yet.  So what happened to James Kittson, born about 1920?

In the online Social Security Death Index (available from various websites), there are two potential matches for James Kittson, born about 1920.

Social Security Death Index through Ancestry.com

I favored the first James Kittson because of the New Jersey location.  I visited the Montclair Public Library for the obit from the local paper, The Montclair Times.  No mention of James Kittson.  (Thank you to the librarians for searching and searching for him- in several places!)  To be extra thorough, I manually searched the microfilm of the Star Ledger at Montclair State University.  No James Kittson.  Whether or not I have the correct James Kittson, I find it strange that I find no obituary.  (And if I am ever under surveillance, my watcher would find it strange that I go in and out of libraries, courthouses, and churches all day.)

Next I visited Trenton and found the birth certificate for James Kittson- under the name Kitzens.

The birth date, 11 August 1919, confirms that the first James Kittson in the death index is the James Kittson that I am looking for.  This person died 21 September 2003.  So where is the obituary?  Did he marry?  Have children?  Will I find living descendants?  The search continues . . .

Fatal Destination on the Evening Train

Michael Preston was the grandson of Irish immigrants, Michael Preston and his wife, Catherine Donnell, who arrived in Dutchess County, New York in the 1840s.  The family eventually migrated to Hudson County, New Jersey.  Many are buried at Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City.  The Preston family plot has no headstone, so information concerning their burials is based on the burial cards of the cemetery, available at the cemetery or through the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

Plot card for Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey
FHL microfilm #1412638

Michael Preston was buried at Holy Name Cemetery on 20 June 1918.  Like most of his immediate relatives, he had no obituary; however the circumstances of his death caused him to appear in the newspaper.  He was found almost dead on a train trestle at night and died shortly after arriving at Bayonne Hospital.  His injuries were not necessarily consistent with a train injury, but instead were perhaps caused by a physical assault inflicted by a human- not a train.  Further investigations were probably made, so I should have additional resources to consult.

This article may lend credibility to the family story of falling asleep on the train on the way home from work, missing his stop, and jumping out of the window, only to have been killed.  Or maybe that was someone else.  Railroad work was a common profession in the 1800s and 1900s and deaths and injuries were commonplace among the workers as well as the passengers.  This Preston family was no exception.

Researching in Millburn, New Jersey

Mary Drake was last seen in the 1920 census in Millburn, Essex County, New Jersey.  Her husband, John, was a widower in the 1930 census in Millburn.  I sought to find out when Mary and John died and where they were buried.

I visited the Millburn Library and went through the city directories.  The more recent directories sometimes list gems such as a date of death or a new husband.  Such was the case with John Drake.  The Price & Lee Millburn city directory for 1946 gives a listing for John Drake- his death on 2 November 1945.  With this date, I then went to the microfilm rolls for the local paper, The Item.  I located his obituary, which provided me with his place of burial, Saint Stephen's Cemetery, also in Millburn.  I visited the church office and was provided with a listing of the other burials in this plot: John's wife, Mary; and their two children and their spouses.  Sometimes, when you can't trace one family member, turn to a parent or sibling.  They might be buried together, providing you with dates of death for many people.

The Millburn & Short Hills Item
8 November 1845
page 12

In the meantime, The Millburn and Short Hills Item has been published online for certain years.  You may view the issues through the library's website.

After visiting the church, I headed to the cemetery for pictures of the gravestones.  On a confusing note, Edith Drake married John Wesley Bryant.  John Wesley Drake married Edith Knoller.  The use of the same first and middle names could indicate a further relation that must be further investigated.



John Wesley Drake, son of John Drake and Mary Duryea



Edith, wife of John Wesley Drake





Edith, daughter of John Drake and Mary Duryea





John Wesley Bryant, husband of Edith Drake



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.

Finding Missing Children (of the 1800s and 1900s)

Until recent times, deaths of young people, including babies, was not uncommon.  It is very easy to miss several children of a marriage if they their short lifespan was in between census years.  I try to collect all members of a family, even those who did not marry and have children.  They reveal naming patterns and can lead you to undiscovered family plots and addresses.  In New Jersey, birth records were not recorded until the late 1800s, and most births did not start to get reported to the state until the early 1900s.  The State of New Jersey has no official online index to search for these births, though familysearch.org does publish some births for New Jersey.

What does get reported are deaths.  Although you may not find a birth certificate for a baby, you should find the death certificate.  You may not know that the baby existed until you come across the death certificate.  One of the questions on the 1900 federal census (for married women, not men) was the number of children they had, and then the number of children still living.  For some people, I can prove this number; with others, it seems hopeless.

Johanna V. Bossert was one such child.  I did have an entry for her at Woodland Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey, but she was buried in the baby section with no headstone and no other family buried with her.  She had no death notice in the Newark Evening News.  I did not know whose child she was.  I found her death certificate by searching the microfilm reel for 1912 for another Bossert.  (Death certificates in New Jersey are mercifully filed alphabetically starting around 1900.)  Because she was only one year old at death, she was not around to appear in the 1910 census, and gone by the 1920 census.  Now I know that Johanna was an important name in this family, though she remains the only person discovered so far bearing this name.

Baby Girl Cook, born 1906

Bessie Cook appears in the 1910 and 1920 censuses with her father, Charles.  I have no other records for her.  I don't know if she married, moved, died, nothing.  Using an estimated birth year of 1906 in New Jersey, I searched for her birth certificate.

I probably found it.  I say probably because the birth certificate that I found is for a baby girl with the last name of Cook, born 4 March 1906 at 231 North 4th Street in Newark, New Jersey.  At some point, she must have been named Bessie, or Elizabeth- we don't know.  For some of the other babies born without a first name, they have an amendment to their birth certificate, giving them a first name.  Not Bessie.

Plugging this exact date of birth into the online Social Security Death Index gives us several possible matches for Bessie or Elizabeth.  Those who died 1997 or earlier in California can be eliminated when the names of the parents are viewed.  Others can be eliminated based on their information as listed in the 1930 census.  That gives us a shorter, but not definite, list of possible Bessie Cooks to choose from.  Or she may still be alive and not listed in the death index yet.  She will be located eventually.

Researching in Morris County, New Jersey

On Friday I did some research in Morris County, New Jersey on the Cook family.  So far, my tree for these Cooks reaches back to the couple Stephen Cook and Eliza Vandroof, both born around 1800.  I am hoping to find more children of this couple and to find out how they relate to the other Cooks of Morris County for this time period.

I visited the Morris County Courthouse, Surrogate's Office.  I was allowed to search the computer and retrieve the microfiche myself, which I think is great.  (If you aren't too computer savvy, or can't read the little microfiche labels, you may not find this conducive.)  I was told that the computer index starts around 1804.  The index is available online here, which is fantastic.  If you search for Stephen Cook, you will find the entry for his probate case in 1845.  This search will not turn up the will of his son, Stephen B. Cook, in 1843, unless you type in the B.  You can also just search for a last name and wade through the results, which is a more thorough way of searching.

These two men were not the Stephen Cook that I was looking for.  That's okay.  The wills provide me with names and relations, which I need to distinguish these Stephen Cooks from the Stephen Cook that I am looking for.



Will of Stephen Cook, probated in Morris County, 18 March 1845, Book F, page 42



The computer index is not necessarily accurate for the records of the 1800s.  The original index is at the beginning of the microfiche set for the older libers, or books.  The nominal fee for photocopies decreases after twenty copies, so you are encouraged to gather as much info as you can.  At least that was my interpretation.

Next I headed over to the Morris County Library in Whippany to explore their genealogical resources.  They have files on some families.  The Tuttle/Tuthill file contained dozens of hand-typed notes about the history of the Tuttle family, painstakingly assembled by someone before the computer age.  They are worth a look.  I don't know if they have been preserved elsewhere, but I hope so.

It's great to just be able to look around and see what you can find.  I came across a microfilm of Morris County Marriages.  This is a collection of marriages starting around 1795, or Book A, with a hand-written index.

Here is the marriage of Stephen Cook to Eliza Vandroof:



Morris County Marriages, Book B, page 83


Difficult to read and no parents listed, but this is what you need to find and copy for your records when researching.  You can find this marriage listed at pilot.familysearch.org.  That's nice, but it's not a reliable source.  The info on this website looks clean cut, all typed and everything, but without additional legwork on your part, the info is not worth much.  Who typed it?  From what?  Each time info crosses hands, it can be modified.  Don't rely on non-original records for your research.



pilot.familysearch.org search results for Eliza Vandroof



Microfilm

When I first started researching over ten years ago, I searched a lot of microfilm rolls for information.  The film was broken a little bit every time someone loaded it through the machine.  Machines broke; light bulbs went out and were sometimes too expensive for libraries to replace.  In the meantime, multiple newspapers have been put online, some free, others not, reducing the need to seek out microfilm.

I recently made a microfilm trip to the Montclair Public Library in Montclair, Essex County, New Jersey with success.  A potential match for the wife of a cousin showed up in the Social Security Death Index, which is available through various websites, some offering more detailed search criteria for an additional fee.  The information was:

     Name: Elsie Uhl
     SSN: 124-20-9815
     Last Residence: 07043 Montclair, Essex, New Jersey, United States of America
     Born: 29 Jan 1903
     Died: Dec 1978
     State (Year) SSN issued: New York (Before 1951)

I did not know that this particular branch lived in Montclair, so I could not be sure that I had the right person without additional checking.  I am close enough to Montclair to make the trip.  In the past, I would have ordered a copy of the application for the number, which was cheap enough- under $10.  A few years ago, the fee jumped to $27.  Ancestry.com used to generate the letter of request for you; now the link to order the record does not seem to offer this option, but rather directs you to VitalCheck to order a birth, marriage, or death certificate.  (If you are going to be researching your family history to any great extent, I recommend learning how to obtain vital records directly from the state of interest.  For an occasional record, VitalCheck can save you hassle- for a small fee.)  The days of showing up at town hall for a copy of the death certificate are over, as the death was too recent and I cannot prove direct lineage.

So I headed over to the main Montclair Library and requested microfilm for the Montclair Times for December 1978.  The local paper is published once per week, so I did not have much to search.  Elsie may have died on the 1st through the 31st, as the index does not report day of death until more recently.  No obit.  I had to request the next reel for 1979 and there it was.  Elsie Uhl died 30 December 1978; the obit appeared in the 4 January 1979 paper.  And she was indeed the wife of my cousin.  It felt great to make the confirmation.  From here, I would usually visit the cemetery, but none was listed with this obituary.


The Montclair Times, 4 January 1979, page 4.