You may want to look at this new web page that has Birth Records of Doctor Abdiel Bliss Carpenter (1841 – 1865) because they haven’t been available before now.

But first let me tell you how I was able to get these birth records…

In September of 2022, as part of their “bicentennial snapshots,” the Greece Historical Society had this video on Doctor Carpenter that practiced medicine in Greece, NY.  There was a brief mention that he had recorded births that he attended.

Dr. Carpenter’s collected records ended being housed in the Edward G. Miner Library at Strong Memorial Hospital, part of the University of Rochester.

In January 2023 I sent emails and called the library to see if I could get in to index the birth records. I didn’t get a reply to the emails or phone calls. In February I had medical follow-up at Strong. I decide to also visit the Miner Library. Met the director of the library. She said that the library was going to start renovations within the next couple of weeks and might be finished by the end of the year. So I made a mental note to try again at a later date.

First of this year started trying again. But this time, I noticed on the description of the collection, that it said that in Dr. Carpenter’s records that there were only 10 pages of births records. So I tried emails to the library and those failed. Started phone calls and eventually I did connect to the director. I mentioned that there were only 10 pages. She had someone in the department scan the pages (which turned out to be 18 pages) and then I was able to download them.

Just like any old records, it took a little while to get used to Dr. Carpenter’s writing style. He made his “e” like a backward “3.” And look at the “s” on end of “Hayes.” That is strange, too. I am not perfect; there are some names that I probably didn’t get right.

In the end I have 737 records of births that the Doctor attended. His practice seemed to cover the northern part of Greece and some of the Town of Parma. You know that there are some births that he wouldn’t have been able to get to in time. So those births would not be in these records.

Doctor Carpenter recorded the name of the mother, the date of birth and then had two columns for the number of boys and girls. There were some twins recorded and a couple of sets of triplets.

I also must note that there are some births of children that probably died young. One record is the birth of triplet girls to Mrs. Samuel Bull on Dec. 22, 1844. But in the 1850 census Samuel  and Emeline Bull only had one daughter, Cordelia, aged 5. So the other two girls must have died before 1850.

That brings up the last column that I added to the web page. I looked up some of the families and found them in census records. What I added are just clues or suggestions for further research.  You know from your research that there are those people that are recorded with a different name in the census from their legal name. This is just a starting place for family research.

There is another collection of birth records by another doctor that has been online for a long time. Those are the records of Dr. Samuel Beach Bradley. His records cover from 1821 to 1876. He also lived in Greece but he covered the south part of Greece, and also parts of Parma, Ogden, and Gates.