Geneology in WNY

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..

Quote:

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..

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?

Quote:

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..

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.

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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/

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.

Quote:

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.

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.

Quote:

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.

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

Quote:

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.

Quote:

From the "Rochester Democrat and Chronicle" Published - Aug 17, 1901
As physicians have failed
to ascertain the cause of death the district
attorney will likely make an Investigation.

Thankfully, there wasn't any sinister plot in the deaths of my great great aunt by marriage and my 3 cousins twice removed. I knew my grandfather was staying with them at the time of the 1900 census. I had heard that he was quite the drinker and was hoping he wasnt evil too. After further research, I found that the 4 family members died of dysentery.

From the "Rochester Democrat and Chronicle" Published- Aug 19, 1901-

NIAGARA

Bereft of Wife and Three Little Ones In Just a Week

The church at Wendelville could not hold all the people who came to attend the double funeral and sympathise with John Raps, who has been bereft of his entire family within a week. John Raps is a well-to-do farmer, living near Wendelville, southwest of Lockport. He has a fine farm and is a hard-working man. A week ago Saturday, Katie, his baby daughter, aged 13 months, died, and the funeral was to have been held the following Monday. Monday morning, Elisabeth, the second daughter, a pretty babe of two summers, after a brief illness, passed away. Tuesday a double funeral was held, the two little ones being buried in one grave. Mr. and Mrs. Raps received the sympathy of the entire community. They had left one son, their eldest child, 5 years old, and so the parents felt they still had much to live for. Wednesday morning the boy,
who had been seized with dysentery, the disease which carried off the babies, followed his sisters. The parents were now prostrated with grief, and nothing their neighbors could say or do consoled them in the least. The arrangements for the funeral were made for Friday. Mrs Raps a charming young woman of 30, gave up completely Thursday, and that followed her three children to the other ****. Saturday afternoon mother and son buried side by side and the father is bereft of family, an almost cruel kind of grief. His sad affliction has called for the sympathy of a wide circle of friends from the county.