New York State Birth Certificates: Genealogical Research Fact of the Day

Researching genealogy is often complicated if you don’t know how or where to look for information. If you are doing research on someone born in New York State, your first thought might be to look at their birth certificate for information. However, it is important for you, the researcher, to know that New York State did not institute birth certificates until 1881. Therefore, if you are researching someone born before 1881 your best chance of finding information, such as parents’ names, would be in church records. The census records might be another place you might want to look, but the early census records only list head of house by name. It isn’t until the census in 1850 that you would find all members of a household listed by name.

Here at the Schenectady County Historical Society we do hold church records (not for every church or all years), and we may be able to help you locate those records for which we do not hold copies. We also have access to census records through ancestory.com and have census indices among our collection.

The Grems-Doolittle Library, How to Get Involved

The Grems-Doolittle Library, as part of the Schenectady County Historical Society (a non- profit corporation, unaffiliated with Schenectady City or County). As a non-profit we do need help, and are not too shy to ask. There are many ways you can become involved with the Grems-Doolittle Library and help preserve the history of Schenectady County.

1.       TIME- We are always looking for volunteers, whether you are only able to commit weekly or monthly, or not sure if you want to commit at all, there are always plenty of projects for volunteers at the Library. We have tasks for a range of skill levels from photocopying and re-shelving books, to conducting research and organizing collections. We would appreciate and welcome your help.

2.       RESEARCH- If you are not free to volunteer at the Library, but you have conducted historical research relating to Schenectady County, whether it be on the history of your house,  the genealogy of your family, or a paper on local history, we would be interested in possibly adding your research to our library collection, providing future researchers with as much information as possible relating to the County.

3.       MATERIALS- If you have documents or books pertaining to Schenectady County, we are open to donations. People bring us old family scrapbooks, letters, certificates, yearbooks, etc. and we are grateful for an addition to the collection. No donation is too small. We do ask though, if you are considering making a donation, particularly if it is larger than a box of materials, that you do call ahead and schedule a meeting to discuss your potential donation. It is always good for us to talk about a collection, who collected it, identify people in pictures as ways of better understanding the nature of material.  (We will not always take every document offered to us and we don’t usually accept duplicates of material we already have or materials which are in poor condition.)

4.       THINGS- The library is always accepting new materials, which means we are also always in needs of basic office supplies for their protection and organization. We use a large quantity of archival quality boxes and folders. We also have a wish list of expensive items, such as a larger flatbed scanner for scanning early documents (which are often oversized) or video equipment to assist in our oral history collecting.

5.       DONATIONS- As part of a non-profit organization, the Grems-Doolittle Library is also always open to monetary donations. Donations can be given to Society operations, specifically to the library or directed at a particular project, such as the conservation of a document or map, or the maintenance of a collection.

Close-up on a Volunteer: Ann Eignor

Ann Eignor is another of our dedicated volunteers whose friendly face can be found in the Grems-Doolittle library at least twice a week. Ann has been volunteering in the library for over eight years. She originally began volunteering with us because she was looking to fill in her free time after retiring from being a school librarian. We seemed like the perfect fit, both because she was familiar with libraries and because she was interested in history. But the reasons she was first attracted to the library are not the only reasons she has stayed a volunteer for so long. Ann continues volunteering because she likes the people here.

Over her time with us, Ann has been involved in many projects. Mainly she has been responsible for the organization of the society’s original documents collection, which she works on with Mary Liebers. This is a never-ending task which involves filing documents into folders, organized by topics. Once a document is physically filed, it must also be added to our computer database. By putting the documents in the database, we can search for a keyword or topic, such as Union College or Proctor’s theater, and the database tells us about books and documents involving these topics.

Now that the documents collection is mostly organized and only needs to be maintained as new documents come into the collection, Ann and Mary have begun working with the maps collection, organizing the maps by location and also entering them into the database. Ann told me that besides the people she is working with, she most enjoys the satisfaction of being able to find library materials more easily because of all the time she and the other library volunteers have put into organizing the library collections in a more user-friendly way.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad provides an interesting and sometimes mysterious part of the history of the United States, which as interested adults and children of all ages for generations. The story of the Underground Railroad includes stories of compassion, daring, and lawbreaking in a period of American history fraught with conflict and tension.

On April  8-10 the Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region is hosting its 10th conference, entitled “Abolishing Slavery in the Atlantic World: the ‘Underground Railroad’ in the Americas, Africa and Europe and its relationship with us today.” The conference will be held at Russell Sage, in Troy NY and you should go to www.ugrworkshop.com for more information and registration.

However, the URHPCR conference is only one way for you to learn more. Here at the Schenectady Historical society we also have material on the Underground Railroad relating to both the city and County of Schenectady, including newspaper articles, original documents, maps and several books dedicated to the topic.

If you or your child is interested in the Underground Railroad, stop by the Schenectady County Historical Society and learn more.

Ghostly Images

Ann Aronson is one of our library volunteers who is involved with our photograph collection. For the past few years, Ann has been scanning the Schenectady County Historical Society’s photograph collection, folder by folder. Having scanned the images, Ann then added them to Past Perfect, our digital database software. In many ways this is a very slow and tedious process. However, occasionally Ann stumbles across something interesting.

Last week she brought this picture to my attention.  The picture is of the old ferry which was in the Stockade. The ferry went between Schenectady and Scotia, led by a guy wire strung from shore to shore. Ferry Street in Schenectady takes its name from this ferry. The photograph probably dates between 1874 (when the “iron bridge” or “Scotia bridge” was built) and 1900. It was most likely from a glass plate negative.

But it is the image itself which is most interesting. If you look closely you will see the ghostly images of two children, a little girl on the left and a little boy on the right. The reason that the children look ghostly has to do with the primitive nature early photography. Early film needed a long exposure to light. So what most likely happened is that while shutter was open, the kids moved enough, and fast enough that they only made a partial image on the film, which is what created their ghostly look.

Kiss me I’m Irish

Feeling inspired by St. Patrick ’s Day? Interested in Irish heritage? Come the Schenectady Historical Society and learn more about Irish immigration into the city and county.

We have family files on many traditional Irish last names including O’Connell, McAlister, O’Hara and Flannigan to list only a few! And if your interest tends more toward general information about immigration we also have twelve books involving Irish history and genealogy as well as files on the Irish in Schenectady.

So come and try your luck…maybe you will find of pot of genealogical gold!

A Few Simple Tips for Doing Family Research

We research all kinds of questions at the Schenectady County Historical Society, however genealogy queries probably make up more than 50% of our research. Not only do we receive requests for information over the phone and through email, but we also have many researchers come to the library to use our resources themselves.

As a result of so much genealogical research, we have developed some strategies for effective and efficient family research.

Tip 1: Decide what questions you want answered about your ancestors. It is often easy to say that you would like to know everything about everyone, but it is easier to start off small, and build. Often people begin by wanting full names, dates of birth, marriage and death and sometimes the place of birth, marriage and death.

Tip 2: Start your family tree with yourself. Often people are looking for a link to colonial America, and they try to trace a family tree, from say George Washington, down to themselves. Often these people are not actually relatives. Instead, it is easier to start with yourself, work backwards, and fill in as much information as you know. Once you have something to build on, you can work backward more easily.

Tip 3: From personal experience, at least in Schenectady, religious affiliation often has no bearing on where two people get married, or have their children baptized. This is especially true for the early citizens of Schenectady. So just because someone was Catholic, don’t give up if you can’t find them listed!

Tip 4: Ask your relatives for help. Even if your living relatives are from the same generation as yourself, you never know what stories they might have heard or what they remember. It is often a good idea to keep track of confirmed facts and information passed on in stories. If you know someone was born on a certain date, but you only think the place was Schenectady, indicate this on your family tree by using different colored inks or a special symbol.

Tip 5: Share what you know. If you compile a family tree or collect information, don’t forget to share it with your family and your local historical society. Even if the information you collect does not go far back in time, it may still help researchers in the future to track down their relatives.

Hopefully these tips will help you in your search for information about your ancestors. Please contact us at the Society for more tips, or with more specific questions. And please remember to share your findings.