Geneology in WNY

Has anyone used ancestry.com to do geneological research? I started a trial membership and I'm not sure that I will pay to keep it because I think that their database only contains the last census record for a first name/surname.

I have found both of my parents' families on the 1930 census, but ancestry.com doesn't seem to have their 1920 or 1910 census records. I know my father's parents permanently entered the US on July 19, 1905 at Ellis Island. I have copies of their records from the ship's manifest, so I even know the name of the ship that they came on. However, they are not in ancestry.com's 1910 or 1920 census records.

The same with my mother's family. Although I don't have the exact dates on when they arrived in the US, my grandfather came between 1910 and 1913, so he should be in the 1920 census. He's not. My grandmother came to the US in 1919 or 1920. She's not anywhere, either, until 1930.

I suppose if all you want to do is find names and birthdates/places, I guess ancestry.com is okay, but I'm looking for more than that. Census records contain tons of information. The 1930 census asks respondents if they owned a radio and if they were employed in the past year. It also gives their race, their naturalization status, their ages when married, and occupation. One interesting thing that I found out about my father's family is that one of my aunts and uncles rented the apartment in their house to a black couple as well as took in two of my single uncles as boarders. Italians and blacks living on the same block or in the same house wasn't all that uncommon in the Ellicott District as I found a several black families among the Italians on this aunt and uncle's street.

Both families moved around alot. My father's family moved from Seneca Street in Buffalo to Niagara Falls (my dad was born there in 1918) to at least 2 different farms in North Collins (unless the roads had different names then). My mother's family moved around Black Rock and Grant/Amherst prior to 1950: Clay, Churchill, Kail Streets, and then Greeley and then Marion. The family folklore says that my grandmother was a little Polish real estate flipper who bought houses and then sold them to buy better houses. She ended up a grocery store proprietor. If I have to drive into Buffalo or use inter-library loan to get the rest of the census data, then I can't see paying $150 plus for ancestry.com for a year.

My Family ancestry was pretty interesting and took YEARS to uncover everything. We found our Irish Family came through Canada.. and were involved in the Underground Railroad.. we were completely shocked because my Great Grandparents went to great lengths to keep those facts a secret. I will ask my Aunt what resources are good for finding info.. she helps people who are adopted find their birth parents and did our geneology too.

One of the hardest things to deal with is how surnames got misspelled because of either poor handwriting on the part of the clerk/census worker recording immigration or census data or the difficulty of the same in spelling foreign names from non-English speakers. My Polish grandfather and his brother are in the US Census under 2 different names. The Ellis Island database has my Italian grandparents' surname transcribed totally wrong because of the poor handwriting on the ship's manifest.

I think that Polish and other Eastern European names are probably the worse. The phonetic spelling of many Polish names by American/Canadian officials often makes it virtually impossible to find your ancestors.

Then there are the name changes that happened here. My Italian surname begins with "Di". Some relatives have kept that but others have dropped it. Some have kept the Di separate and others have run it together. The Irish and Scots had similar issues. The O' and Mac/Mc got dropped from lots of names.

My dad did some geneology. He found some information through the Mormons, this was 15 years ago though.

My grandma tried finding Irish ancestory and had a really hard time finding stuff because many of the records are just gone.

It's a waste of time and money.
Spend more time with your family (contemporary ancestors) rather than worrying about the dead ones you never met.

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Originally Posted by Stevenco

It's a waste of time and money.
Spend more time with your family (contemporary ancestors) rather than worrying about the dead ones you never met.

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I'm an historian by training and by avocation even if I don't earn my living at it. I like knowing where I come from. I like knowing how people lived 60 or 100 years ago. Moreover, since two of my cousins (one of whom lives in Toronto) are also researching our family history, we get in touch frequently to compare our finds, so I AM spending more time with my family!

BTW, I found my maternal grandfather's entry record into the US on the Ellis Island website last night from the ship's manifest of the SS Finland. He entered the US on 5/31/1910 after boarding the Finland in Antwerp. They listed his town, too, in the Russian part of Poland, but I haven't been able to find it on a map or anywhere on the internet. It's Piskozny.

My grandfather was hard to find because the Ellis Island transcription records had his name spelled without an "M" in the middle but with the "P", which would change the sound of the name completely. Luckily, my grandfather's first name was Kasper, an uncommon first name, and I knew what year he arrived and how old he was because I had discovered a copy of his WW I draft registration card on-line.

My maternal grandmother may be impossible to find. She came into the US under another name, taking the place of another young woman who died before she could embark. Hey, those frugal Poles weren't going to let all that paperwork (and probably a few marks/rubles, too) go to waste, so they offered another girl to go in their dead daughter's place (again, probably for some marks/rubles), and my great grandparents were what passed for prosperous in rural Poland (they probably owned a couple of acres and a cow) plus they had daughters to spare (5 or 6), so my grandmother came to the US. Once here, of course, she went back to using her real name.

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Originally Posted by DomesticatedFeminist

My dad did some geneology. He found some information through the Mormons, this was 15 years ago though.

My grandma tried finding Irish ancestory and had a really hard time finding stuff because many of the records are just gone.

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I used to think that was so, too, but it's not true. Most records aren't really gone, but they are some times hard to get at (sometimes impossible as in the case of the 1950 census which won't be available until 2020). Except for the 1890 census, which was destroyed by fire, all the US census records between 1790 and 1930 are available on microfilm. Your dad probably used the Mormon Family History Center, which is located out on Maple Road in Amherst. I believe that UB and/or BECPL also has the censuses on microfilm, and I believe that you may be able to get copies through inter-library loan. The 1940 census is scheduled to be "opened" (made available) some time this year.

I believe that the parish registers that record baptisms and marriages for Catholics are kept by the Diocese for closed parishes. Existing parishes keep their own records IIRC. Since your family is Irish, they're probably in closed parishes like St Columba or St Brigid. I believe you can also get birth and death certificates from either the county or city. You have to prove that you are related to the people whose records you are seeking, however.

The Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society also has tons of city directories that list all the heads of households and their addresses. Some of these are on line.

If you'd like to get started in geneology, a good place to start is to collect your family's oral history from older family members who can be links back to life back in the Great Depression, World War II, the Fifties and the Sixties. You can record it on tape to transcribe later or you can just take notes. Old people frequently love to talk about the past. Even your own reminesces (sp) about your own childhood, teenage years, young adulthood will be fascinating to your adult children and grandchildren one day because their lives will undoubtedly be very different from yours.

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If you'd like to get started in geneology, a good place to start is to collect your family's oral history from older family members who can be links back to life back in the Great Depression, World War II, the Fifties and the Sixties. You can record it on tape to transcribe later or you can just take notes. Old people frequently love to talk about the past. Even your own reminesces (sp) about your own childhood, teenage years, young adulthood will be fascinating to your adult children and grandchildren one day because their lives will undoubtedly be very different from yours.

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That is a really cool idea. Stories are much more interesting than reading through all the names and dates of ancestory. Not to say the names and dates aren't important, but I am a sentimentalist and perfer the emotions in stories.

My wife and I have used Ancestry.com for the last year to trace our ancestors. I have had mixed results on the 1900, 1010 and 1920 census. I think, at least in our case, it is a result of participation. For example my second-great-grandmother died in 1901 and on her death certificate it gave an address. I could not locate that address being enumerated in the 1900 census.

I talked to every old man and old lady in my family and my wife's and had them write down any imformation they could think of. to my surprise I got marriage licences, birth certificates, pictures, wills, and many writings . a book of Sermons from a great great grandfather who was a pastor. One aunt gave me a notebook mr grandmother had during the depression describing how she managed to feed and cloth 8 children.
I found the first three or four generations to be the hardest you have to go to the town halls where the lived and the county clerk for their records. then check out the church they went to. it surprised me how much the church records contained. I have to many names now but I want people not just names so I have been finding out what they did during their lives.
And if you think you have trouble try Ericson. the name changes often.
anders Flod, Erick anderson, John Erickson, August Johnson, Eric Augustson, and then finaly they moved to the USA where Anders Ericson established the Ericson name. this I found only because a friend was Going to Sweden to look up his relatives and said he would try mine too. I got lucky the first church he checked in Vegersburg Sweden had my family record.
I found my German records at fourteen Holy helpers in W.S. and St Boniventure in Olean. the internet will fill in some Imformation but leg work still is needed. It makes for interesting weekend trips to reunite with my wife or a two week trip to the Boston area for my Pilgrim ancesters.

My mom's side came from England and my dad's from Germany. My English grandparents emigrated from England to Canada but unable to find their emigration records. Have found my grandfather's birth record in Surrey, England. The 1881 English census lists my great grandfather's occupation as "LUNATIC ATTENDANT". I did find their marriage record in Welland, Ontario in 1911. My grandfather's Canadian World War I draft registration is marked "DESERTER" in December 1915. But I found that they crossed the border into the US he on Christmas 1915 and she with their 2 boys on Chriatmas Eve 1915 and my mom was born in March 1916 on Seneca St. My grandfather did register for the World War I draft in the NY, US in Nov 1917.

My grandparents on my dad's side were born in Clarence. Was able to find my great grandparents emigration records and many lineage records from Germany. My one great grandfather emigrated from Germany in 1856 and was the Town of Clarence assessor from 1892-1912. Found my one great uncle's Civil war NY infantry registration in Feb 1864.

Had no problem with the 1910, 1920 or 1930 census. There are many transcription errors but the 4 surnames of my grandparents only contain 4 letters- Hain, Raps, Dodd and Webb are kind of hard to botch.

Familysearch.org, I have found helpful in finding some of the old German births and marriages in English.

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Originally Posted by gorja

My mom's side came from England and my dad's from Germany. My English grandparents emigrated from England to Canada but unable to find their emigration records. Have found my grandfather's birth record in Surrey, England. The 1881 English census lists my great grandfather's occupation as "LUNATIC ATTENDANT". I did find their marriage record in Welland, Ontario in 1911. My grandfather's Canadian World War I draft registration is marked "DESERTER" in December 1915. But I found that they crossed the border into the US he on Christmas 1915 and she with their 2 boys on Chriatmas Eve 1915 and my mom was born in March 1916 on Seneca St. My grandfather did register for the World War I draft in the NY, US in Nov 1917.

My grandparents on my dad's side were born in Clarence. Was able to find my great grandparents emigration records and many lineage records from Germany. My one great grandfather emigrated from Germany in 1856 and was the Town of Clarence assessor from 1892-1912. Found my one great uncle's Civil war NY infantry registration in Feb 1864.

Had no problem with the 1910, 1920 or 1930 census. There are many transcription errors but the 4 surnames of my grandparents only contain 4 letters- Hain, Raps, Dodd and Webb are kind of hard to botch.

Familysearch.org, I have found helpful in finding some of the old German births and marriages in English.

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My maternal grandfather supposedly left Russian Poland to avoid being drafted into the Russian army. Since he was 18 when he landed, that's certainly plausible. His father (my great-grandfather) was supposedly a Polish nationalist and revolutionary who was frequently in trouble with the Russian army.

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Originally posted by Linda_D:
My maternal grandfather supposedly left Russian Poland to avoid being drafted into the Russian army. Since he was 18 when he landed, that's certainly plausible. His father (my great-grandfather) was supposedly a Polish nationalist and revolutionary who was frequently in trouble with the Russian army.

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Is that where you inherited all that spitfire? :D

I wish that I was fluent in German. The only thing I can do in German is count to 99 and that's when my brain is working. I wouldn't understand anything written or spoken in German, so looking at German records is out of the question.

http://www.footnote.com/institution-index.php

put your name in here:rolleyes:

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Posted by me:
My mom's side came from England and my dad's from Germany. My English grandparents emigrated from England to Canada but unable to find their emigration records.

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UPDATE-
Found my maternal grandmother on a passenger list from Liverpool to Montreal in 1901 at age 10. She was a British Home Child. There were 102 young girls and 1 boy that were on that ship from the Dr Barnardo homes in England going to the Hazelbrae childrens home in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. The children were given an education. Boys were trained in farming; the girls were trained to be servants (domestics). I still haven't discovered whether my grandmother was an orphan or from a poor family that needed to give up their children so they could survive.

Rus Thompson has always stated on his blog that he dates back to the Mayflower and Julius Cæsar.

The only relationship I see is between himself and Antoine Thompson. They have to be kissing cousins..

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Originally Posted by PickOranges

Rus Thompson has always stated on his blog that he dates back to the Mayflower and Julius Cæsar.

The only relationship I see is between himself and Antoine Thompson. They have to be kissing cousins..

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YOu can research your geneology for free if you know the right resources. It takes more time but I would trust my own research than a company that makes money out of telling me something about my background... Knowing me I would re check all that info anyway so why bother paying for it in the first place?

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Originally Posted by PickOranges

Rus Thompson has always stated on his blog that he dates back to the Mayflower and Julius Cæsar.

The only relationship I see is between himself and Antoine Thompson. They have to be kissing cousins..

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Since Julius Caesar had no children, that would be hard to do.

I have been doing my Genealogy for many, many years and no I do not pay for Ancestry.com Website. I have found everything in census records at the Library and at the LDS. What I can't find and here is where Ancestry.com comes into play is other people links and ship records or land records. Our own Historical Society downtown charges too much money to look through there records.

Also there is really no local Genealogy group other than the one in Hamburg NY again your dues go out of state ? I never understood that at all. I know there is a east side genealogy group only facing on people living on the east side like Broadway area etc.. But we really don't have a good local Gena club here at all.

Anyway with this all said I guess Linda-D your main point is MONEY paying for general information through Ancestry.com. It is easier to start up a Gena group then trade info with Ancestry.com in stead of paying for but this takes many, many years of collecting and years of leg work to build a nice data base to trade with. After 20 years of Genealogy work I still have only gone back as far as my grandparents but I still have years of more work to be done. I may need to pay for a professional to help me finish my genea work before I die.

Note: It is 3:30 AM any misspelling sue me

I use a mix of free and pay sites for my research Ancestry being one. There is a good free search at: http://pilot.familysearch.org/record...art.html#start

I have traced some of my lines back to the late 1700's and I started 18 months ago.

The Ellis Island site is free (Ellis Island).

There's also a number of free ethnic sites, including one called ItaliansRUs (Italiansrus) that has some useful geneological info.

Ellis Island has been in finacial trouble for over a year now, they may go to a charged site. You can see ship records until you want to copy it the you are charged.

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Originally Posted by Linda_D

The Ellis Island site is free (Ellis Island).

There's also a number of free ethnic sites, including one called ItaliansRUs (Italiansrus) that has some useful geneological info.

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Originally posted by DTWarren:
I use a mix of free and pay sites for my research Ancestry being one. There is a good free search at: http://pilot.familysearch.org/

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I also mix ancestry with the free sites. For more than a year, I couldn't find my grandfather on any passenger list from England to Canada. He was in the 1901 England census and was married in St Catherines, Ontario in 1911, yet I could not find him any passenger list. Finally, I examined a form that was filled out when my grandfather crossed the border at Niagara Falls from Ancestry's Canada-US Border Crossing database and noticed on the last line the date, ship and port he arrived at. I went to the http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/d...5-100.01-e.php free website and found his middle name not his given name on the passenger list.

Found alot of records for the German side of my family on http://pilot.familysearch.org/

Recently, I uploaded my gedcom file to myheritage.com which is free up to 250 people in your tree and found matches from other trees there.

Mixing the free sites and ancestry along with a wealth of pictures and documents from my dad's cousin has kept me going with my search.

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Originally Posted by Linda_D

I used to think that was so, too, but it's not true. Most records aren't really gone, but they are some times hard to get at (sometimes impossible as in the case of the 1950 census which won't be available until 2020). Except for the 1890 census, which was destroyed by fire, all the US census records between 1790 and 1930 are available on microfilm. Your dad probably used the Mormon Family History Center, which is located out on Maple Road in Amherst. I believe that UB and/or BECPL also has the censuses on microfilm, and I believe that you may be able to get copies through inter-library loan. The 1940 census is scheduled to be "opened" (made available) some time this year.

I believe that the parish registers that record baptisms and marriages for Catholics are kept by the Diocese for closed parishes. Existing parishes keep their own records IIRC. Since your family is Irish, they're probably in closed parishes like St Columba or St Brigid. I believe you can also get birth and death certificates from either the county or city. You have to prove that you are related to the people whose records you are seeking, however.

The Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society also has tons of city directories that list all the heads of households and their addresses. Some of these are on line.

If you'd like to get started in geneology, a good place to start is to collect your family's oral history from older family members who can be links back to life back in the Great Depression, World War II, the Fifties and the Sixties. You can record it on tape to transcribe later or you can just take notes. Old people frequently love to talk about the past. Even your own reminesces (sp) about your own childhood, teenage years, young adulthood will be fascinating to your adult children and grandchildren one day because their lives will undoubtedly be very different from yours.

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Records that are "gone" are ones never written down -- NY was terrible for records up to about 1881. We lose family who are well documented from the 1630s to the 1790 census in MA when they move to NY in the early 1800s, only to pick them up again in the 1820 census. How did we find them? Simple: we have the family bibles and they farmed the same farm until people moved to Buffalo in the 1920s. If you don't know where the family lived, you will spend lots of time in censuses with little accomplished unless the name is odd.

You are missing one of the best sources: Western NY genealogical Society. They have tons of material in the Grosvenor room of the downtown Library. Look up the website for WNYGS and search the holdings.

Most churches send their records to the diocese on closing; my husband's did not. [We really had to search for his records when we got married -- until we found a brother of one of the women in my church had gone to grade school with him and could swear he was in her confirmation class... it was good enough for the priest.]

The city has older vital records in a storage center in BlackRock ( on Amherst St, I think). Vital records from other than Buffalo are in the towns or you may have to contact Albany for them.The county has deeds and citizenship and other vital records not sent to Albany. These are all "primary source": originals. Most you find online or in databases are not:

Note about Mormon records: they are often copies which were microfilmed. the local census is handwritten by a census taker for the county and was recopied for the state; the state later recopied it for the federal copy. Mormon libraries and places like Ancestry use that federal copy. There are MANY chances for errors in recopying. My Mother, aunt and uncle all had their name misspelled in the 1930 census and their mother had her name starting with a "C" not the correct "K". Ages are also often error prone. If you can, go see the originals. We have lots of families in the southern tier and just co to the county museums.

We also have a state library with many records in Cooperstown (not open all year) and the big state library in Albany.

Just found this newspaper extracts site and searched by great grandfather's name (Philip Hain) and found him in the real estate transfer section of an article dated Jan 30, 1880 from the "Buffalo Morning Express" in which he purchased property from his step-father Frederick Welder in Clarence for $1,000.

http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/li...detail&id=3587

Cool topic.

Both sides of my father's family settled in Wyoming County, and came to the area roughly the same time period (1830's). One side came from the region that is now Alsace-Lorraine in France, and the other from Co. Meath, Ireland. Unfortunately I don't really know anything about them other than their birthdates, occupations, names, and where some of them are buried. We did find out where one of the original "homesteads" was, but it's just an open field now. It would be so neat to find out what they were like, but I guess that will not happen.

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Originally Posted by Linda_D

I believe that the parish registers that record baptisms and marriages for Catholics are kept by the Diocese for closed parishes. Existing parishes keep their own records IIRC. Since your family is Irish, they're probably in closed parishes like St Columba or St Brigid.

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Yep, my Irish great-grandparents were married at St. Columba in 1912.

Another site to check out is- http://fultonhistory.com

You may find some old obits and newspaper articles. It's best to search with quotes surrounding the name you are searching.

http://fultonhistory.com is an educational site

Found an article on my father in a May 1935 article in the "Niagara Falls Gazette" with him receiving a 6-month suspended jail sentence and a $50. fine for causing a ruckus at a dance hall in Rapids.


Also found an article regarding the family of my great grandfather's brother - John Raps. His wife and 3 children died from from some unknown sickness.

From the "Rochester Democrat and Chronicle" Published - Aug 17, 1901

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Queer Disease Kills Four.
Special Dispatch to Democrat and Chronicle.
Lockport, Aug. 16.—A remarkable ailment
not yet diagnosed by physicians has almost
wiped out of existence the family of John
Raps, of Wendelville, a few miles south of
here. Three of the children have passed
away within a week, and yesterday the
mother. Mrs. Margaret Raps, died. The father
is also very ill. As physicians have failed
to ascertain the cause of death the district
attorney will likely make an Investigation.

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