Dick's Genealogy & History Corner

If you want to order a certificate, you first have to know that there are some exceptions. The State Department of Health does not have vital records from the Cities of Albany, Buffalo and Yonkers prior to January 1, 1914. To obtain records from these cities for those dates write to:

• Albany City Clerk, Room 202, City Hall, Albany, NY 12207
• Buffalo City Clerk, Room 1308, 65 Niagara Square, Buffalo, NY 14202
• Yonkers City Clerk, Room 107, City Hall, Yonkers, NY 10701

You then have to decide if you want to write to the Town or the State. The Town is going to be faster but they are going to send you an extracted record which sometimes doesn’t include all the information. Plus the record might not be recorded in the place of residence. The only way to be sure of where it is recorded is if you have checked the vital record index. If you order from the State Department of Health, you will get a copy of the original but currently they are taking 5 months or more to reply. At one time they were a year behind in sending certificates so they have been getting better. A certified copy is $30 but there is an uncertified genealogy copy that is slightly cheaper. The current price structure for a search for the State is $22 for search of 1 to 3 years; $42 for searching 4 to 10 years and upwards from there. There is an online order form (in PDF format) that can be used to order a certificate.

What if you want a certificate more recent than the 75 years for birth certificates and 50 years for death and marriage certificates? You may be able to get them but it is difficult as you have to have proof of relationship. To obtain a birth certificate, you have to submit a death certificate. To obtain a marriage certificate, you have to submit death certificates of both the bride and groom.

Since about 1995 or 1996 a death certificate was required to be filed with all probate cases brought in Surrogate Court. That is the court in NY State that deals with estates. Those courts will make uncertified copies of the death certificate for $1 or less. The main problem is that you would have to go to the Court Clerk in person as that Court charges a fee of $90 for searches via mail.

With all the hurtles that New York State puts on you it is possible to obtain vital records if you spend the time and money to go through the process correctly. For further research see the NY State Department of Health web page.

Most people will tell you that the final attempt at recording vital records in New York State started in 1880. The truth is that some cities began recording vital records before 1880. The City of Albany started in 1870. Syracuse and Utica started in 1873. Rochester and Yonkers started about 1875. Buffalo started in 1878.

Statewide recording of vital record began in 1880 but you may not find the records you want for the first 20 years as compliance was still very spotty. Some people say that only 50% of events are recorded for the years before 1890. I don’t know how they could arrive at that percentage. Vital records were and still are collected under the NY State Department of Health. There is a copy of the record in the Town or Village that the event was recorded and the original record went to the State Department of Health in Albany. Unlike some other states, the records are not open for inspection. You used to have to contact the Town, if known, or the NY State Department of Health. That was the only way to obtain a record until the early 1990s. It was at that time that the NY Department of Health announced that they had microfiche indexes that could be searched. There were restrictions. You could only see the indexes for births over 75 years old and marriages and deaths over 50 years old. Still, it started flood of people heading to Albany to do a search for records that they had not received before. The microfiche have the name, date of the event, where it occurred and the record number. For a while, if you gave the Department of Health all that data, they would give you a copy of the record for $1.50. That soon ceased. For some people that aren’t my direct line all I wanted was on the index. I had a year of death but the index filled in the month and day. Plus you can search many spellings by using the indexes.

The vital record indexes were moved to the NY State Archives (also in Albany) in 1992. That started genealogists begging to have the indexes in other places. It wasn’t until 2001 that the Department of Health granted the Rochester Public Library the first copies of the indexes. Now there are currently nine places that have the vital records indexes:

• Albany – New York State Archives
• Buffalo – Buffalo & Erie County Public Library
• Elmira – Steele Memorial Library
• Glens Falls – Crandall Public Library
• New York City – National Archives (Northeast Region)
• Patchogue – Patchogue-Medford Library
• Rochester – Rochester Public Library
• Syracuse – Onondaga County Public Library
• Watertown – Flower Memorial Library

The vital record indexes are organized in three sets; births, marriages and deaths. Then each set of those records have a subset by year. Each year has records in alphabetical order. The set for 1880 has some of those records for those few cities that started recording vital records earlier.

An announcement from the Department of Health in mid August 2009 says that they have added an index of delayed birth records from before 1881. These are mostly from people that filed a birth record so they could prove their age to receive benefits under the Social Security Act of 1935. The records are alphabetical by the person, also alphabetical by mother’s maiden name and also by year. That sounds like a great source until you read that part of the announcement that there are only 1,048 records for the years 1823 – 1881.

So what if you want to search the indexes and don’t live near New York State? You can try asking for help from someone on one of the message boards on RootsWeb.com. There are people that are in the libraries that will search for you if they have free time. If that fails you may want to pay someone to do a search.

For some unknown reason, New York State had an extra copy of marriage records created for the years 1908 to 1935. Those were placed in each county courthouse. In some counties those records are still on open shelves. In my home county of Monroe and other counties they have been hidden for years. Some years ago, prior to the stringent state regulations on vital records, the LDS Family History Department filmed a good share of those marriage records and the indexes. Check the LDS online catalog to see if those marriage records are available for your county of interest.

First, I must say that vital records in the present New York City are not included here. I never have had to try to get any vital records from NYC. Check elsewhere on the net for NYC vital records.

Most people assume that since New York State was one of the original thirteen colonies that there should be vital records beginning in the 17^th century. That is not the case. When New Amsterdam (later New York) was a Dutch colony, the government didn’t record vital records. Instead, the Dutch assumed that vital records would be recorded by churches in their records. The English took over in 1664 and renamed the colony; New York. They did have a law that said churches should record vital records but never enforced that law. Colonial vital records are very rare. A few towns on Long Island did keep some vital records for a while but slowly over time they discontinued the practice. There is a book; New York Marriages Previous to 1784, which appears to contain marriage records of people that were not married in a church. The book was originally published in 1860 but Genealogical Publishing has republished the book with an additional 100+ pages. The book is currently of print but you should be able to find a copy in larger libraries or online used book stores.

There was an early attempt to begin vital registration in 1847, when the clerk of each school district was to collect the birth, marriage, and death records and report them to the town clerk. That system failed as many communities did not comply because there was no enforcement of the law. The entire system was abandoned about 1851. Some of those records have survived. New Horizons Genealogical Services has this web page with links to those records which are online. More of those vital records are in county courthouses, town historians, historical societies and other places. Finding them is difficult to say the least but might be worth the search if you are looking for those few years.

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Forty years ago this weekend was one of the greatest music festivals; Woodstock. I was supposed to graduate from Alfred State College in May of 1969 but my cumulative average was 0.03 below what you needed to graduate. So I had to go to summer school to re-take some courses and get better grades the second time around to bring my average up. The summer session was compressed down to just 6 weeks. I was fairly sure that I was doing well in the two courses that I was re-taking. It was on a Friday morning in mid August and final exams would be on Monday.  A guy from down the hall in the dorm came down and said: “There is a big concert this weekend down toward New York City. You want to go?” And I said; “No, I better stay here and study.” And away he and some other guys went to history.

Do I have any regrets? Yes and no. It was probably the best line-up of musicians ever assembled. But I did end up graduating and I have this short story to tell of how I just missed being there.

I get mad when some websites (genealogy and non-genealogy) offer free trials and the first thing they ask for is your credit card number. Plus they make you call to discontinue before they automatically charge you. If you can sign-up on the web why shouldn’t you be able to discontinue using the web? Let’s hope that they get the message and make a free trial really free.

A couple of websites are offering really free trials right now. Footnote has free access to their 1930 census records until the end of August. You do have to create an account by giving them a valid e-mail account but no credit card number. I already had all my direct line ancestors but I started searching for other “cousins” and came up with more people than I expected.

Also World Vital Records is giving free access to ALL their records but only until the end of the day on August 13th. Again you need to create an account with a valid e-mail address. World Vital Records is available for free at the LDS Family History Centers but it was nice to be able to search at home when I could spend more time searching. Update: The free trial is extended until the end of the day of August 18th

These websites know what the word “free” means.

Lisa Kudrow was on the Today show this morning. She was plugging a new movie named Bandslam which opens this weekend. Meredith Viera also mentioned that Lisa is producing a show for NBC. That would be Who Do You Think You Are? which back in April NBC had said that be on this fall. Lisa said that it is a genealogy program and she mentioned that there would be programs on herself and Susan Sarandon. What is more important is what was not mentioned. No air date was mentioned. There is a very brief web page on NBC that hasn’t been updated since April. The web page only mentions three people. If this series is going to happen in the fall, there should be at least a dozen people interviewed and profiles begun. I’m wondering if there is a problem finding celebrities that want to be profiled. So don’t expect this series anytime soon.

Do you have old family photos protected? Do you have any old family letters in a shoebox? You should be protecting all your family treasures. There is a local company that sells archival supplies to protect just about anything that you want to save for future generations. Bags Unlimited sells many more products than its name suggests. I have bought storage boxes, photo pages and a few different sizes of bags. One size of bags is for my postcard collection to keep them clean and protected. I also bagged some old maps and magazines. I put photos into photo pages made of polypropylene, which is archival safe. Some pages are for 4X6 photos and others are for 3.5 X 5. Odd size photos I mount to cards using archival safe photo corners and then put into a pocket. Then I put the photo pages into a binder called the “UniKeep” that seals up to keep the photos save. Those binders also work well for paper items like old ticket stubs and programs. I use photo corners to hold the items onto a 8.5 X 11 sheet of archival paper and use what are called “top loaders” that fit perfectly into the “UniKeep” binder.

Bags Unlimited also has archival storage containers for records, stamps and sports cards. If you collect just about anything, they probably have something to protect that collection.

You will quickly note when looking at the website that archival supplies aren’t cheap. I think they are well worth the price to keep family heirlooms protected.

Bags Unlimited are located at 7 Canal Street near downtown Rochester. If you live in the Rochester area you can go and pick-up your order. They are only open weekdays. I’ll tell you a secret that they don’t mention on their website nor in their catalog. If you pick up at their office they give a 10% discount. Also be sure to pick up a catalog while you are there.