NYC Records at Your Local Family History Center

I visited my local family history center this week and found that the vital records and 1890 police census for NYC previously filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah were now available for viewing, printing and downloading on site at the family history center. 

I had previously obtained these documents over the years through various methods; ordering from and/or visiting from NYC Municipal Archives, borrowing films from the Family History Library and making the copies here locally or ordering copies from the now defunct copy service formerly available through the FHL. A few years ago these Department of Health births, deaths and marriages were available as transcriptions through www.FamilySearch.org 

The transcriptions alerted me to a lot of relations that had previously been impossible to find. It also revealed several relatives that were previously unknown. This latest improvement makes it possible to find a record on FamilySearch and then go to a family history center or an affiliated library and viewed a cleaned up scan of that exact document from FamilySearch. No more ordering a $15 certified copy from Municipal Archives or a $2 copy from the FHL. 

I have now gone through and updated many previously xeroxed and scanned images for my slideshow presentations thanks to this new availability of records at FamilySearch.org It was amazing to have two images of the same document side by side and see how much crisper the digital images are online. 

There is a PDF going around by Ann Donnelly, New York City Vital Record Images Finding Aid UPDATED. God bless her. Ms. Donnelly details how this all works and that while you can find a birth entry for example James Mulcahy, son of Patrick Mulcahy and Bridget McGinn in 1905 at FamilySearch in the transcribed database, you will actually have to go to the FHL Catalog and go through the process of what one formerly did to order the FHL microfilm. At that juncture there will be an icon and by pressing it at the FHC or affiliated library, the digital images are opened and one can very easily navigate the images and quickly download the birth certificate for this little boy. Sadly, he was very short lived and one can repeat the process and find his death transcribed just a fortnight later the son of Patrick and Bridget Mulcahy. Repeat the process of identifying what film number the Manhattan deaths for 1905 are for his death certificate number which was listed in the notes at his transcription. 

Here is a good example  where two events involving the same three people just two weeks apart recorded vastly different information. The birth certificate includes the names of both parents including the mother’s maiden name. The death certificate includes the names of both parents but only lists the mother with her married name. Ten months later his first cousin died in NYC also and her death certificate and every one since then has also listed the maiden name of the decedent’s mother.

Lastly, one might hope to find a Department of Health marriage certificate for his parents but there is none. Theirs was one of many Catholic weddings that were never recorded in the civil records. Hopefully, this marriage date will be discovered in the near future when the Archdiocese of New York’s sacramental records become viewable online at www.FindMyPast.com in the near future.

Certified is not all it's Cracked up to Be

What does certified really mean? I recently received a xerox copy of a 1916 marriage license from a former elopement hotspot. The certificate part of these marriage records is not photocopiable so the office sends a typed transcription of the marriage certificate that is certified with a gold foil stamp. The clerk certifies that she has viewed the original and certifies that her reproduction is a complete and accurate copy. This gold stamped document would be accepted without much fuss in any court of the land. Certified is just as good as original after all. Or is it?

My certificate had the oddest contradictions. This was an elopement where the teen bride was pregnant by her active duty sailor boyfriend. They probably skipped away to elope on a day when he was on leave. The license was applied for on 29 Mar 1916. The marriage ceremony was performed by a Reorganized LDS minister named Henry Carr. He purportedly performed the ceremony on 9 Sep 1916 according to my “certified” marriage record with a xerox copy of the license and a transcribed certificate.

I thought the timeline seemed off because why would a knocked up woman want to get a license out of state, go home, deliver her still illegitimate child and then three weeks later return to the elopement zone and finally marry and legitimize her child and her relationship?

I posed this question to the clerk via e-mail and she was very helpful and explained her colleague had made a transcription error and that the couple had indeed married the same day their license was issued, 29 Mar 1916. She immediately issued a second certified and gold stamped record for my records.

This is not the first time this has happened with this specific family. The groom was my grandmother’s first cousin. He had 5 younger siblings from 1892-1901. The brother born in 1901 was baptized six days after his birth. The first baptismal certificate sent to me identified the wrong father and only one sponsor. Fortunately, the dates were right. Years later I visited in person and a xerox copy of the page was made available to me. It showed the entry was hard to decipher but I was able to make out the correct two parents and two sponsors. 

Certified does not mean it is a perfect reflection of what the original says. Take everything with a grain of salt. Remember the original may have inaccuracies in it as well.

Something Old Something New Something Afire Something Blue

Old Fulton NY Postcards found at http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html is a great resource for family history researchers. It allows access to over 40 million historical newspaper images from the USA and Canada. I have recently found two long sought after items.

The first was a news brief that described a man that fled his home ablaze. The 8 May 1905 Morning Telegraph from New York, NY described Michael Cassidy’s (1857-1905) story on page 10. I knew from this man’s death certificate that he succumbed to his injuries on 10 May 1905. The parents’ names listed that he was a son of Michael Cassidy and Mary Ravey. That made him my great-grandfather’s youngest sibling. He had immigrated by 1880, when he was enumerated with his brother and sister-in-law. He married in Jan 1882 and had one child in 1883.

Michael was a blacksmith by trade so I was not stunned when his death certificate listed that he had died from general burns parenchymatous degeneration of the heart, kidneys and liver, 3 days later. A fellow genealogy enthusiast is a retired physiology professor and she explained how the body develops and repairs itself and what broke down to cause his demise. 

The most startling aspect of this story was the quote that ended the very short news bit. He was asked by the officer that put out the fire that was burning him, how he had been burned. “I’ll tell no one but the priest,” was his reply. There are no follow up stories but I am very interested in learning what had transpired in his home before he fled. Not surprisingly the newspaper recorded him as 35, the death certificate as 46 but he was actually 48 based on his 1857 baptismal certificate from Newry in Ireland. 

I have been searching for my grandmother’s cousin’s marriage record to Alice Kuchinsky c. 1915. Their daughter, Alice, was born 21 Aug 1916 in Philadelphia and baptized at the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 Sep 1916. I found an item in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday Morning, 31 Mar 1916 page 7, Northeast Maryland Not(es). Elkton, Md., March 30-Couples mar(ried) in Elkton today included: ...Owen Goodwin, New York and Anna Smith, Philadelphia...

The majority of the records for this family show that Mrs. Owen Goodwin was the former Alice Kuchinsky. I was concerned that this was not the right couple because Anna Smith is not Alice Kuchinsky. The baptismal records for their three children offered a possibility that I had found the correct marriage. In 1916 the mother of the child was recorded as Alice Smith. In 1918 and 1920 she was Anna Kuchinsky. 

The prospect of Alice Smith, Anna Kuchinsky, Alice Kuchinsky and Anna Smith being 4 ways to identify one individual is questionable. However, there are no records or stories that Owen Goodwin was married to anyone else and their three children were born in a small window of time. 

I wrote to the Licensing Department for the Circuit Court for Cecil County in Maryland. I had been pointed to the possibility that they had eloped to Elkton, Maryland in that county years earlier by the Philadelphia Archdiocese archivist, but delayed action. She had indeed been correct. 

Over time marriage laws in the northern states had become more restrictive. Cecil County, Maryland is the northeastern most part of the state and provided an easy, quick place to marry for couples from Pennsylvania, New York and other destinations.  

Owen Patrick Goodwin, 24, a single white man, residing in New York City applied for a marriage license dated 29 Mar 1916. The bride was Anna Smith, 19, a single white woman, residing in Philadelphia, PA. I was almost certain this was the right couple but comparing the groom’s signature on the 1916 marriage license to his 1917 draft card confirmed it for me. 

Curious though was the set of dates and the timeline. They received a marriage license on 29 Mar 1916. A 31 March newspaper item ran that indicated that they had married on 30 March. Their daughter was born in Philadelphia on 21 Aug. The marriage certificate part of the record showed that they did not marry until the 9th of September. The minister was Rev. Henry Carr.

Further research revealed that the pastors of Elkton performed around 3,000 weddings in 1916 alone. I can’t imagine that a couple from Philadelphia would travel to Elkton, merely get a marriage license, return to PA, wait 5 months and then return to MD to marry. I am curious if the reverend forgot to register the marriage certificate on time and changed the date to avoid a fine. I have another e-mail note out to Cecil County. (Good morning Kevin.  The document you received is incorrect – Goodwin and Smith were married on 3/29/1916, the same date they received the license.   Just FYI that all records we have from this period are handwritten and – although the cursive is beautiful – it can be ridiculously difficult to read, and my coworker read the month as September instead of March.   The only document we have is the application for the license – the actual marriage information (when ceremony performed, by whom and date recorded) is contained in a huge index. Since it is impossible for this information to be copied and sent, we transfer it to a typed certification.   I have redone the certification and will mail same to this morning. I apologize for any inconvenience in the delay of the correct document.  Once you receive the new certification, simply replace the one you have with the one I send.  If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.)

This pastor was suspended by his superiors for marrying a couple where the groom was the guilty party in a 1915 NY divorce and forbidden to remarry there. Rev. Carr was their third choice; the Presbyterian and Methodist pastors declined to marry the divorcée and his gal. Not surprisingly the high society bride in this marriage filed for divorce in 1922. Apparently, adultery followed by divorce and crossing state lines to contract a new marriage with a known adulterer was no more successful in 1915 than it is today. If Miss Kelly and Mister Davis couldn’t make a marriage work is there any hope for the rest of us?

Talk to Your Relatives

Nora Riordan was born 13 May 1897 at Cork City, Ireland. She was her parents second child and was baptized at St Finbarr Catholic Church 16 May 1897 with John Buckley and Margaret Riordan as sponsors. These were likely her mother’s older brother and her father’s younger sister. She was enumerated at 4 St Finbarr Street twice in 1901 and 1911 with her parents and siblings. 

On 24 Nov 1925 at St Finbarr she married Joseph McLoughlin. They had two children. A daughter Marie Celine was born to them in the second quarter of 1927 and a son John was born to them in 1930. 

I was given a bit more information today by my own godfather. My godfather, like Nora’s above, is my mother’s older brother. My godmother is my father’s sister.

Uncle Dennis remembered seeing pictures of his cousin and thought she died around 12 years of age. I was able to find her death under Marrie McLoughlin in 1937 at age 10 which is now online at irishgenealogy.ie

Marie died at the fever hospital 6 Dec 1937 and was buried at St. Joseph Cemetery. Her newspaper notice mentioned she was the daughter of Joseph and Nora McLoughlin. She had lived at 6 St. Kevin Street according to the death register. 

I was also able to finally find her parents in the Cork Examiner death notices. Joseph McLoughlin died 11 Jun 1967 at Marlene Glasheen Road. His widow Nora died there 10 Jan 1968. 

Conversations can open doors to more and more research successes.

Unique Surnames Provide Unique Opportunities

Unique surnames can lead a researcher along many unexpected and uncharted courses. I stumbled upon a family called Tregoning in New York City. These pre-Famine Irish immigrants provided many challenging opportunities to sharpen my research skills.

I had never seen the name Tregoning before and wasn’t sure how to pronounce it. Based on the inordinate number of spellings and misspellings it must have been quite an earful as well.

1838 baptism Tergonin

1850 census Tragining

1855 census Treganan and Tragoning

1856 burial Teegoing

1856 burial Tragonin

1860 census Tearney

1870 census Tryoning and Fragannon

1875 death Fegonning and Fiegonnery in separate indexes

1880 census Tregonning

1881 birth Tregunning

1890 will Treguning

1890 census Sregoning

1900 census Legoning

1910 census Gregoning and Treganing

1920 census Teryornny

1867 marriage Tagonning

1881 death, 1915 marriage and 1915 death Fregoning

Richard Tregoning (1871-1931) married into a collateral branch of my family in 1891. I wanted to provide him with a fuller entry so I searched a bit for his parents, Thomas and Mary Tregoning. I was able to find them in the 1880 US Census living with Richard’s paternal grandmother. As I filled in the names and dates on my tree, I discovered that the elder children including Richard were the children of Thomas Tregoning and Mary Devine. The youngest child was the child of Thomas Tregoning and Mary Morgan. The 1880 Census also showed that the older childrens’ mother was born in New York while the youngest child’s mother was born in Illinois. 

It took several attempts to find them in earlier censuses. Each census revealed a new way to spell the surname. As the children aged and moved into their own homes, independent spellings were listed within the same census year.

Thomas was born in New York, to Irish immigrants in 1840. This was 5 years before the start of the Irish Potato Famine.  In the second 1870 enumeration of New York City, the Tryoning family of Thomas, Mary and Stephen were found at 517 West 39th Street. Nearby at 510 West 40th Street Bridget Fragannon and her son Richard were found. 

In 1860 Bridget, Thomas and Richard Tearney lived with Thos. and John Cleary.

In 1855 a state census enumerates John and Bridget Treganan with their sons John, Thomas and Richard Tragoning. Amazingly even within the same household the names of the parents and their sons differed. The relationships are specified in this census. The parents and eldest son were born in Ireland. They had lived in the city for 15 years. Both Johns had naturalized. 

In 1850 John, Bridget, John, Thomas and Richard Tragining were enumerated. The adults and the eldest child were all Irish born. 

Based on the census records it appeared that Bridget was widowed before 1860. In 1865 she opened an Emigrant’s Savings Bank Account for her son, Thomas. She was the widow of John and resided at 325 West 38th Street. She arrived in the US in 1840 aboard the Mayflower(sic). She was born in County Tipperary in 1815. She had 2 boys and was born a Cleary. This would indicate that the Cleary boys in the 1860 Census were likely relatives of hers.

Checking RootsIreland.ie Irish church records for Tregoning found scant results. In 1838 Patrick Tergonin was born to John and Bridget Tergonin in Toomevara, Tipperary.