Hello again from Reclaim The Records!

We've just released the first-ever online copy of the New York City
*Geographic* Birth Index. It's a new tool to help find people born in
New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
especially if their birth records had spelling variants or poor
handwriting.

This record set is an index to all births in New York City from
roughly 1880-1912 (or 1917-ish in some cases outside of Manhattan).
But unlike a typical birth index arranged by surname or by date, this
one is arranged by the child's place of birth, the actual exact street
address.

We think there's about 2.8 million names in here, maybe more, in over
half a million images. They've never been available outside of New
York City before. And now they're all online, and all free!

Read all about it in our latest newsletter:
https://mailchi.mp/reclaimtherecords/introducing-the-new-york-city-geographic-birth-index

But you can also jump right to the records themselves, which are
available online at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/nycgeobirthindex
(Note that you can even download some or all of the half a million
images from the Internet Archive, if you really want -- although the
.zip files are pretty big!)

And the records are also online at FamilySearch:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/3023263?availability=Family%20History%20Library
And that's because FamilySearch generously donated the microfilm
scanning work for us again -- thank you, FamilySearch!

So if you already know the address of a New York City family from
another source, such as a census record (US Federal Census, New York
State Census, or the 1890 New York City "Police Census") or a city
directory or a vital record, go check that same address through the
years to see if any other kids with a similar surname were born at
that address, too. You might find some previously-unknown births where
the names might have been misspelled or mistranscribed in the
"regular" New York City birth index. Check out our newsletter, linked
above, to see an example of what we mean.

Reclaim The Records is a 501(c)3 non-profit, independent from
JewishGen, but we appreciate their letting us use this lovely new
discussion group to mention some of our ongoing activities. ;-)

To learn more about Reclaim The Records, and the kinds of work we do
to acquire new historical records and put them online for free public
use -- sometimes with the help of Freedom of Information lawsuits that
we file against government agencies, archives, and libraries -- please
check out our website:
https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/

Special shout-out to Jewish/NYC genealogist Jordan Auslander, who
first alerted us to the existence of the microfilm records at the New
York City Municipal Archives -- at an IAJGS conference session he
presented a few years ago.


- Brooke Schreier Ganz
Mill Valley, California
President and Founder, Reclaim The Records
https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/