Morris County Cemeteries: Cook

Last week I visited a few cemeteries in Morris County with Dave Peck.  He has documented many cemeteries in the area and was kind enough to show me the final resting places of some of my ancestors.

We visited the Cook Family Cemetery, which is now located on the golf course of the Rockaway River Country Club in Denville, Morris County, New Jersey.  The cemetery was not always part of a golf course.  The burial grounds were part of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Rockaway Valley, on land donated by John P. Cook.  The church relocated but the cemetery continued burials until around 1907.  The main surnames on the stones are Peer, Spear, Husk, and Cook.

Cook Cemetery in Denville, Morris County, New Jersey.
About 30 stones remain.

My great great great great grandparents, Stephen Cook and Elizabeth Vandroof.
Steven and John P. Cook were first cousins, once removed.
Picture by Dave Peck.

The rotting tree was taken care of . . .

. . . but blackened a nearby stone in the process.

We next visited two cemeteries on private property in Boonton/Powerville.  The land originally belonged to the Cook and Scott families.  A small portion was set aside for burial grounds.  The Cook stones are worn and there is no fencing.

Cook Family Cemetery in Boonton, next to the Scott Family Cemetery.
The taller stone is likely for Michael Cook, who died in 1803 and was an owner of the land.

The neighboring Scott Family Cemetery is surrounded by beautiful stones.



I think this was the first time I have seen such raised markers.
Dave explained that they are common in the Philadelphia area.

Although on private property, this cemetery is not immune to vandalism.

Dave explained that these small stones with only a first name are believed to mark
the final resting place of slaves of the Scott Family.

Thank you to Dave Peck for an informative tour!

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.

DNA update: Results arrived at FamilyTreeDNA

A few weeks ago I uploaded data on five accounts from 23andMe to FamilyTreeDNA during an introductory sale.  The results arrived a few days ago.  I am still learning to navigate the site and manipulate the findings.  As anticipated, I have fewer matches at FamilyTreeDNA (231) versus 23andMe (1300+).  The advantage to this smaller number, though, is that the names of my matches are not hidden.  I can contact them whenever I wish.  At 23andMe, I had to request contact from my matches and most never responded.  (Until a few weeks ago at 23andMe, you could only send out five requests to correspond per day.  That limit has been lifted.)

The other feature that strikes me at FamilyTreeDNA is that immediate (parents) and close (uncle and third cousin) relatives are immediately viewable.  They are not hidden until both parties consent to be revealed, as is the process at 23andMe.  I found no surprise relatives at FamilyTreeDNA, but if you are nervous about finding a close relative you did not know of, 23andMe seems to provide more protection.  You can use an alias if this is a concern.

FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder.
These three people and their names popped up as close relatives.
You can imagine someone's dismay if this was not welcome news,
or delight if someone had been searching for their birth family.

Perhaps the biggest time-saving features are the filtering options.  You can compare matches in common with other relatives or find matches with surnames that match yours through the drop-down menu.  At 23andMe, I have been spending considerable time requesting people to accept contact, keeping a log of who and where they match, and then comparing them to my other close relatives in the system to try to figure out which branch may hold the common ancestor.  At FamilyTreeDNA, this is a filter in their Family Finder (similar to Relative Finder at 23andMe).  In five seconds I can get a list of people who match both my mother and her half-brother, thereby narrowing down those matches to my maternal grandmother's side of the family.  Or I can compare my father and his third cousin and get a list of those genetic cousins who match both of them and are likely related through the surnames of Cook or Neil.

Filtering options in Family Finder at FamilyTreeDNA.
The "In Common With" function should be very useful in narrowing down branches.

At FamilyTreeDNA, as was the case at 23andMe, my mother's results are influenced by her Jewish ancestry.
At this point, I do not know how much this inheritance pattern dominates her matches at FamilyTreeDNA.

Locating your immigrant in the census

After locating the Alien File for my immigrant of concern, Joseph Regenye, I next turned to locate him in the United States Federal Census.  He stated that he arrived in the United States in 1901, so I sought him with renewed vigor in the 1910, 1920, and 1930 census.  Using his own last name, Regenye, turns up no good matches.  Immigrant ancestors can be very difficult to locate in a census.  We can imagine that his accent was too thick to be understood fully or that he changed the spelling of his name to reflect his neighborhood influences or many other reasons.  His first child was born around 1908 in New Jersey, so I was really looking for a family.  I managed to locate the growing family for three consecutive census years by searching for a child and a birth year.  The reported age of an adult can vary in the census.  A child's age should be more accurate.  A five year old would not be reported as 17, but a 50 year old man could be listed as 35 or 65.  A precise year of birth for "William" with no last name will limit the number of matches to a more manageable number.  If Joseph is in the 1900 census, it will be difficult to determine an exact match because he would be without his wife and children.
The most recent addresses I had were from the 1940s in Union County, New Jersey, so that is where I started for the 1930 census.  I found the family at the same address that Joseph used on his 1940 Alien Registration Form.  I did not have success locating the family in Union County in 1920 or 1910.  A shaking leaf in my Family Tree Maker alerted me to a christening record for one of the children in Newark in 1909.  So I transferred my census search from Union County over to Essex County and found the family in Newark in 1910 and 1920.

Here is the Regenye family in 1910, 1920, and 1930.

1910 Federal Census
26 Aleya [Alyea] Street, Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
Indexed as Reganr, Regane, and Regans at Ancestry.com

1920 Federal Census
94 Barbara Street, Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
Indexed as Rigner, Rizner, and Bigner at Ancestry.com

1930 Federal Census
2024 Ostwood Terrace, Union, Union County, New Jersey
Indexed as Regney and Regnery at Ancestry.com

Obtaining an Alien File

Last week I wrote of my visit to the National Archives in New York City and the instruction I received on Alien Files.  I located an individual of interest in the online index and requested a copy of the file last Tuesday evening.  On Wednesday, the NARA office in Kansas City, Missouri contacted me with additional information from the file, including a place of birth and date and port of entry to the United States, to verify that they had the correct file.  (This information did not actually verify anything; rather, it was such facts that I was hoping to discover.  This verification would be useful, though, for common names.)  For just $15, one week later I had in my mailbox the copies of the file.  The contents of this particular file were the two pages comprising the Alien Registration Form filed in 1940.  Other files may contain a lot more documents and information, but I still received a wealth of information from these two pages, including:

-Date and place of birth
-Entry date into the United States
-Ship name
-Physical description and marital status
-Current address
-Occupation and name and address of employer
-Signature

Alien Registration Form filed 1940 for Joseph Regenye.
Part of his Alien File available through the National Archives.

Page 2 of the Alien Registration Form.