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Help! Hitting brick walls due to NYC record restrictions #usa #records
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SUE KAHN
Hitting brick walls with my NY family ancestors. Does anyone know if there is any way to get NYC vital records of ancestors without paying for them? I hate to pay for records if I'm not even sure I have the right person. Transcriptions are sometimes inaccurate and it helps to view the actual record. It used to be that you could view the images at a Family History Center but I noticed that now that FamilySearch.org is saying "no image available" for the same record that used to say "to view these images do one of the following: Access the site at a family history center." Some of the death record indexes are only giving name, death date and place which is not too helpful. Any other suggestions for resources? I've been able to obtain some photos of headstones which have helped with some ancestors but lately have not had any responses from findagrave requests.
Sue Kahn Researching SCHIFF/SHIF, BLOOMGARDEN/BLUMGARTEN, BASS, KAHN/KAGAN, GRODEN/GRODENSKY/GRODZINSKI
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ELIAS SAVADA
You basically need to be inside a Family History Library on one of their computers to see the images from those records for which FamilySearch has scans. FamilySearch has done a good job of transcriptions on many of those, but it is still nothing like seeing the image.The FHL centers have been closed for nearly a year — I suspect many of us are awaiting their doors to reopen! I have posted over 1,200 NYC marriage documents attached to people on my Ancestry tree, and many hundreds of births and deaths. More will be added once those doors allow the public in. I do hope that Reclaim the Records helps free the NYC vital records.
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Elias Savada Bethesda MD esavada@...
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Moishe Miller
Dear Sue,
Perhaps if you shared the details related to who you are looking for, like the name, date, and for death, the cemetery, you might experience a RAOGK. Stay safe, -- Moishe Miller Brooklyn, NY moishe.miller@... JGFF #3391
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Michele Lock
There is a Facebook group that is able to provide the original images of NYC birth, marriage and death records. The group is called New York City Genealogy, and they have volunteers called Parking Lot Angels, who go to the centers and log onto the centers Wifi network, which is still turned on, so they can pull up the images. The process for doing this is in the Announcement section of the group discussion page. There is no cost for this, and it is not breaking any regulations that the centers have.
I've gotten about 20 of these images over the past 6 months or so. From the FamilySearch extracted records that you can find via SteveMorse.org, I've found that 80% of the information in a record is already extracted, enough that I can tell with about 80% certainty that I have the correct person or couple. What the images do give are addresses of the persons of interest, who the informant is and sometimes their address, cause of death, place of marriage and name of rabbi, etc. The Facebook group also has experience with ordering more recent NYC records that FamilySearch does not have, and how to do this with Covid restrictions, etc. Sometimes, ordering a record for a fee is the only way to resolve a question. Whenever I've paid for a record, I have found that 90% of the time it has been worth it. Sometimes a record has unexpected information, like having a midwife writing down what gubernia the parents are from, when 95% of the time you simply get 'Russia'. The Facebook group is also very experienced with finding other records that are unique to New York City, like how to deal with gravestones located in the enormous cemeteries in Brooklyn and Queens. -- Michele Lock (who thought she had no NYC relatives, and has found out she is wrong) Lock/Lak/Lok and Kalon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland Lavine/Lewin/Levin in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus
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sharonrf18@...
I too, was having the same issue with Family History Center records since the lockdown. I joined the Facebook group New York City Genealogy and solved the problem. They have “parking lot angels” who will go to FHC parking lots and get the records and they will be messaged to you. You can request up to two at a time. Also according to the group some FHC’s wifi is available in their parking lots. I haven’t tried it at my FHC yet. Ordering records from NYC is a long process now taking months according to the group. Before the pandemic it took 2 months for them to send me a 1989 death certificate so I can only imagine it’s gotten worse.
SharonFleitman Atlanta, Georgia
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Yes, the parking lot. I've spent hours sitting in my car.
A lot of the images that say No Image can be found, they just aren't indexed. The record can tell you which film to look in and you can find it by date. If it's a just a couple, PM me. If you have your own parking lot, "Liahona" is a good word to know. -- Phil Karlin Hartford, CT USA
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SUE KAHN
My original post: "Hitting brick walls with my NY family ancestors. Does anyone know if there is any way to get NYC vital records of ancestors without paying for them? I hate to pay for records if I'm not even sure I have the right person. Transcriptions are sometimes inaccurate and it helps to view the actual record. It used to be that you could view the images at a Family History Center but I noticed that now that FamilySearch.org is saying "no image available" for the same record that used to say "to view these images do one of the following: Access the site at a family history center." Some of the death record indexes are only giving name, death date and place which is not too helpful. Any other suggestions for resources? I've been able to obtain some photos of headstones which have helped with some ancestors but lately have not had any responses from findagrave requests."
Thanks for responding. Thank goodness for Mr. Google. I had to look up RAOGK. For those other fairly newbie genealogists I will share www.RAOGK.org Sue Kahn Researching SCHIFF/SHIF, BLOOMGARDEN/BLUMGARTEN, BASS, KAHN/KAGAN, GRODEN/GRODENSKY/GRODZINSKI
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Michele Lock
Just so it's understood what I mean by a Family Search Death Record Extract, below is one from 1905, found via SteveMorse.org, using his 'New York City Marriage Records (1829-1937) option:
- Most of them have this amount of information, though some older ones don't list the cemetery or have the parents' names. But there is enough information in the extracted record that you can tell if it is for the correct person or not. The actual image for a death record will include addresses which are very useful, and the name of the informant. For obtaining the image via a 'Parking Lot Angel', they need the Certificate number, which is the bottom number with the 'cn' in front of it. - Michele Lock Lock/Lak/Lok and Kalon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland Lavine/Lewin/Levin in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus
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Stephen Weinstein
On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 06:49 AM, SUE KAHN wrote:
now that FamilySearch.org is saying "no image available" for the same record that used to say "to view these images do one of the following: Access the site at a family history center."If it's not urgent, you could just wait until normalcy resumes. I think this is a temporary situation due to COVID and that they will be available at Family History Centers again -- someday. -- Stephen Weinstein Camarillo, California, USA stephenweinstein@...
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Diane Jacobs
I would guess that her parents were Cohen not Colon.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Diane Jacobs
On Mar 8, 2021, at 3:51 PM, Michele Lock <michlock77@...> wrote:
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Diane Jacobs, Somerset, New Jersey
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Michele Lock
I believe the above comment about a possible mis-transcription of Cohen as 'Colon' is in reference to the FamilySearch record image I posted above.
When I began to first look into my paternal family's history, in US records I found Colon numerous times, but also occasionally Collins and a few rare times Cohen. Jewishgen records have solved this mystery. The name in Lithuania was originally Kalon or Kolon. It is pronounced like Collins, but without the 's'. -- Michele Lock Lock/Lak/Lok and Kalon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland Lavine/Lewin/Levin in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus
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