Vital Records

Unless you are already 72 years old you will not likely find any census records that your are enumerated in. Therefore, I would begin with your birth certificate. Get the actual certified long form and see if there might be a surprise or two in terms of where you born or your parents’ names.

Vital records are an excellent resource and you should try to obtain the birth, marriage and death certificates for your immediate family members. This might be sensitive for living family members so tread lightly and do not press to get a look at an official record unless you have reason to.

One can only be born and die once so everyone most likely has but one certificate for both of those events. A person cannot only marry more money in a minute than he can earn in a lifetime, he can also marry several times over the course of his life. Aim to obtain every civil marriage record that your ancestors and close collateral relatives created over their lives. 

Marriage records often predate the other vital records by several decades. Marriage records come in a variety of forms from one line ledger entries to full page certificates. There might also be a license before a wedding took place. There may only be a certificate to record that the wedding occurred. Bonds, banns and other unique marital tools might be created. They will vary from the very informative to the barely helpful and everything in between. Be mindful of duplicate and competing marriage records that may be kept within a municipality. Two city offices may have collected marriage records during the same timeframe. 

If you are trying to determine when a couple married consider birthplace and year of their first child. Was there a newspaper announcement of the engagement? Sometimes plans change and the Episcopal wedding in the rectory is instead actually a courthouse wedding by the Justice of the Peace. A very helpful but ironic place to learn of a wedding location is the first few paragraphs of a divorce petition. Pension files are a potential resource to discover where and when a couple married. Lastly, obituaries and personal interviews can reveal wedding dates and places.

There are multiple indexes available that may assist you in your quest. Both FamilySearch and Ancestry have indexes online. These will not reveal all there is in the full record but it will point you in a certain direction for success. 

Once localities required them, death certificates are a user friendly, straight forward record to track down. There are multiple indexes available. Compliance with the law is almost universal. Apparently it was simpler to regulate and supervise a fixed number of funeral directors and cemetery offices than the inordinate number of pastors, physicians and midwives at marriages and births, especially in large urban areas.

Determining when someone died is not always simple but we will all die and our ancestors mostly have all died off by now. There may not be a death certificate before a certain year but obtain each and every one that you can because of the helpful information to be potentially found there; birthdate, birthplace, parents’ names and birthplaces, spouse’s name, marital status, cause of death, burial location and date to name but a few. 

Birth registrations may not begin in certain states until after 1900. This can be a challenge but again work with what vital records one can. Births provide the names of the parents including mother’s maiden name. The location and date of birth is standard. The ages of the parents and the birthing history of the mother may also be included on a birth record.

Be mindful of what the record keeper was asking. Number of child born to this mother and number of previous children born to this mother necessitate different replies because the former includes the subject of the birth certificate while the latter specifically ignores him. 

This record also helps to track our families social history and shows when the pregnant woman brought to bed surrounded by female friends and relatives to deliver was replaced by a delivery run by a physician and later in a hospital with physicians and nurses. Doctors are more likely than midwives to record a birth with the state. Also be mindful that delayed birth certificates can be issued for a variety of reasons. Sometimes there may be a birth certificate submitted by a midwife and then a second one submitted by the doctor. Make sure to obtain both and compare their answers. 

There will be a lot of cross referencing between records sources. Once you know where an infant was born you might have an easier time finding a baptismal record. If you are able to establish where a person is buried you may be able to find out who else from the family is buried in that grave or that same cemetery.

Out of One Rabbit's Hole and Down the Next

I finally found my grandmother’s uncle’s wedding details from 1890. It verified that the names of his parents were the same as a couple I had stumbled upon years earlier.

Now I want to clean up the life details for his widow, Mary Cunningham Goodwin(c.1865-1903). Her death certificate stated that she was the daughter of Patrick and Ann Cunningham. He marriage record from 13 years earlier listed them as Owen Cunningham and Ann Martin. Martin seems a rather straight forward name easy to spell. 

Upon checking both the civil birth registry through Ancestry and the baptismal registers through both Ancestry and RootsIreland, no Owen Cunningham and Ann Martin appeared as parents. I did however find an entry for a Mary Cunningham baptized on 24 Jul 1859 at Crossmaglen, Upper Creggan, County Armagh the daughter of Owen Cunningham and Anne MARRON. 

The marriage record from 1890 is a transcription. I await the digitized scanned image that FindMyPast will post in the future. 

In the mean time I did discover that Owen Cunningham and Anne Marron/Marrin lived at Monaguillagh townland. From townlands.ie we learn Monaguillagh is in the Civil Parish of Creggan. Monaguillagh is in the Barony of Fews Upper. Monaguillagh is in Co. Armagh

The Irish name for Monaguillagh is Móin na gCailleach

They baptized 5 children there from 1859-1870:

24 Jul 1859 Mary Cunningham Pat Cunningham & Ann Boyle sponsors

18 May 1863 Bridget Cunningham Michael Corrigan & Mary Cunningham sponsors

25 Jun 1865 John Cunningham Hugh Kelly & Bridget Kelly sponsors

25 Jul 1868 Ann Cunningham Thomas Murphy & Jane Cunningham sponsors
19 Mar 1870 Patrick Cunningham Edward Callaghan & Bridget Cunningham sponsors

Owen Cunningham died 25 Aug 1896 at Monaguillagh

Ann Cunningham wed Felix Morris((1865-1905) on 11 May 1897 at Crossmaglen

Anne Marrin Cunningham died 17 Sep 1904 at Monaguillagh

Patrick Cunningham(1870-1907) appeared in the 1901 Irish census. He died 29 Dec 1907 with his sister Anne Faughey(1868-after 1910) as informant, Monaguillagh. The widow Anne Cunningham Morris wed Peter Faughey on 30 Aug 1906. She hand no children in either marriage. 

If this is the right family for Mary Cunningham Goodwin it would move her age up 7 years. She would be older than her sister-in-law by 6 months and the following ages when she married and delivered her six children: 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39 and 42. Her reported ages were: 24, 25, unknown, unknown, 29, 32 and 35.

Exhilaration

Recently, I was excited with two new updates in my genealogy research. First, Ancestry DNA has updated their testing pool and the significant updates were made to their ethnicity percentages provided to clients.

Initially, my results indicated 77% Irish, 12% British, 4% Scandinavian, Caucasus 3%, Iberian Peninsula 2% and Finland/NW Russia 2%. The newer stronger ethnicity results stated 100% Ireland/Scotland. This does agree completely with my paper family tree; 8 great-grandparents born in Ireland between 1849-1870.

The more significant finding was thanks to FindMyPast’s Catholic Heritage Archive for the Archdiocese of New York. The initial upload was in March and another huge upload just occurred. I have spent several years painstakingly trying to prove that Hugh Goodwin(1842-1926) the son of Patrick Goodwin and Catherine Rogers was the full brother of my great-grandfather John Goodwin(1860-1897) and his brother Peter(c.1853-1901); sons of Patrick and Catherine Goodwin.

I had found numerous circumstantial connections and never a shred of evidence that challenged my supposition. Finally, I found a transcription for Peter Goodwin’s 1890 marriage to his wife Mary Cunningham. They wed at St Paul the Apostle, 6 Jul 1890. The priest recorded that the groom was the son of Patrick Goodwin and Catherine Rogers. Exhilarating to finally have the answer and have conclusive and solid evidence to support my claim. 

Keep Looking

Recently I have been checking the FindMyPast website hoping to find new transcriptions or scanned images to check. I thought to check and see if children of Robert English might have shown up and I hit pay dirt.

Robert’s younger son, Martin, married two Catholic women and baptized all 6 of his children with them in Catholic ceremonies. Martin, his children and wives were buried at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside. I had not been able to find birth or baptismal records for Martin or his siblings and half-siblings. 

I had found an 1854 marriage between Martin’s parents at Twenty-eighth Street Presbyterian. Robert’s first wife died and he wed a widow, Fanny Wilson Mulligan. Mrs. Mulligan had married in Ireland in 1856 in a Presbyterian ceremony. No record of this second marriage has been found. 

Robert and Fanny had three daughters. These daughters and their half-siblings(two English brothers and four Mulligan siblings) were often found in Episcopalian records. 

One, Sarah, married John Rogen in 1890 at St. Raphael Catholic and baptized their daughter in the Catholic rites there in 1891. This little girl died in 1893 and was buried in Evergreen, a non-Catholic cemetery. 

Sarah’s second marriage to John Baker was at St. Chrysostom Episcopal in 1901 but their children were baptized at St Raphael in 1905 and 1907. Despite a Catholic baptism, the little boy born in 1905 was buried at Evergreen in 1906.  

Sarah had been a baptismal sponsor in 1893 at St. Chrysostom for her nephew.(Interestingly, this nephew would enter a mixed marriage and marry a Catholic woman in 1915 at St. Raphael. Their sons were baptized at St. Raphael in 1917 and 1919.)

It had been unclear what religion Martin English was raised in. He joined the Catholic Church on 27 Apr 1884 by being baptized at Holy Cross. It neighbors St. Raphael in Hell’s Kitchen. This entry recorded his middle name as Francis. He was formerly a Presbyterian. His parents were Robert English and Lizzie Morrison. He was born in 1857. His sponsors were Patrick Sweeney and Maggie Healy. This provided a tidy bit of information all because he was an adult convert to the Catholic Church. There is no notation that the baptism was conditional. It is possible that a Presbyterian ceremony may be found earlier in his life but it might be that he had never been baptized previously. He remained a practicing Catholic. He married in the Catholic Church in 1888 and 1900. His children were baptized Catholic in 1889, 1891, 1893, 1895, 1901 and 1903. He was buried in a Catholic cemetery in 1908.

Baptismal Proximity

Not surprisingly one will find family groups living, working and worshipping near each other. As I eagerly await the further uploads of the rest of sacramental transcriptions of the Archdiocese of New York at FindMyPast, scanned images of the original registers are slowly appearing online. As I compiled my family details I realized that my paternal grandfather and both his maternal and paternal first cousins frequented primarily just the Church of the Immaculate Conception and St. Gabriel.

Grandpa’s father and uncles were Joseph, Patrick and Michael Cassidy. Joseph and Michael married McKeon sisters at Immaculate Conception in 1878 and 1882. Their wives bore children that were baptized there in 1882 and 1883. Patrick Cassidy arrived in America already married but he and his wife baptized their American-born children at Immaculate Conception in 1882, 1884, 1889, 1891 and 1895. 

Joseph remarried twice more. His daughter by his second wife, my grandfather and 5 of 6 of Grandpa’s maternal cousins were all baptized at St. Gabriel in 1882, 1886, 1888, 1888, 1890, 1893 and 1893. The one Benson cousin not baptized at St Gabriel was christened at nearby St. Stephen in 1884. 

I realized too that my paternal grandmother was baptized at St Raphael in Hell’s Kitchen along with her half-brother, three paternal cousins and three maternal cousins. The Goodwins were baptized in 1894, 1896, 1896 and 1898. The Gormley half-brother in 1905. The McGinn cousins were baptized in 1903, 1907 and 1912. 

The neighboring parish is Holy Cross just blocks away. Not surprisingly Grandma’s Goodwin cousins and brothers were baptized there in 1890, 1891, 1892, 1892 and 1894. Her widowed mother remarried there in 1903. Three McGinn cousins were baptized there in 1902, 1905 and 1914. Three of the Goodwin siblings were godparents to their McGinn cousins in 1905 and 1914. 

Sacred Heart, also in Hell's Kitchen, was the site of baptism for a Goodwin baby in 1901 and a McGinn baby in 1905. A McGinn baby was baptized at St Ambrose in 1909.

It is important to check and identify the witnesses to weddings and sponsors at baptisms.  

Cousins and proximity to baptism

Cassidy Benson

Immaculate Conception

1882 Mary 

1882 Mary 

1883 Joseph M 

1884 Joseph A 

1889 Patrick 

1891 Edward 

1895 Francis

St Gabriel

1882 Dominick 

1886 Mary 

1888 Ann 

1888 George 

1890 James 

1893 Joseph 

1893 Edward

St Stephen

1884 John

Goodwin McGinn

Holy Cross

1890 Patrick 

1891 Owen 

1892 Francis 

1892 Owen 

1894 Hugh 
1902 Patrick

1905 Catherine 

1914 Mary 

St Raphael

1894 Peter 

1896 Sarah 

1896 Thomas 

1898 Catherine 

1903 Johanna 

1905 Francis 

1907 Margaret 

1912 John

Sacred Heart

1901 John
1905 James

St. Ambrose
1909 Alice

Catholic Marriage Notations at FindMyPast

FindMyPast is slowly but surely adding scanned images of the actual sacramental registers to their Catholic Archives collection. Recently I was able to view the baptismal entries for several cousins and uncles at both Holy Cross and Holy Rosary. It is crucial to always view as close to an original source as a researcher can.

The registers vary in legibility and organization from period to period. Compliance with canon law was not complete which is rather bothersome. There are several examples where children that later married in a Catholic ceremony after 19 Apr 1908 did not have the appropriate notations next to their baptismal entry. 

This notation is an excellent way to track a potentially missing relative through the years. I did find a woman who was baptized in 1874 marrying a second time in 1945. This marriage notation helped to discover her last married name and a possible death certificate. Her second husband was recorded in the register as Cornelius Hayes. The civil marriage index listed him as C. Griffin Hayes. They applied for their license on 20 Aug 1945 and wed 29 Aug that same year. 

Waiting Patiently for New Databases and New Uploads

Genealogy research has its ups and downs. Currently, I am treading water waiting for a few databases to be expanded and released for public access.

There are a few marriages I hope to find when the rest of the Archdiocese of New York's sacramental registers are released hopefully later this year. About half their holding were released recently in transcriptive form. I await the rest of the transcriptions and also the full release of the scanned images of the baptismal and marriage registers.