This message was sent as a comment on the old version of the blogger blog that we no longer update.  It is important enough to genealogists that I thought we should make a blog post out of it here on the Upstae New York Genealogy Blog at www.unyg.com/blog.

Thanks for letting us know Jim L.

If anyone has any more information on this subject we will publish it here on this blog.

There is a bill in the New York State Assembly,

BILL NO A02834
SPONSOR Kolb (MS)
COSPNSR McKevitt, Bacalles
MLTSPNSR McDonough

Amd S4174, Pub Health L

that relates to the cost of review and copying of vital records for genealogical purposes; reduces current cost by half; also provides that for applicants who show current membership in a genealogical society, such applicants may review vital records at no charge; also provides that all copies of files and records secured under this subdivision shall be stamped, “For Genealogical Purposes Only”

Use this link for more details and to follow the bills progress.

http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A02834&Summary=Y

Jim L.

Upstate New York Genealogy readers please note, it looks like we are losing another extremely valuable local research facility.  The  National Archives–Northeast Region in Manhattan has been our nearest location to access NARA record holdings.

Roger D. Joslyn, FASG, sent me this letter and requested that we share it here on UNYG.com/blog in the hopes of creating some public influence on the situation.  Roger makes a point to say that none of this information is truly “official” yet but it has been gleaned from various sources that he has.

Please read and take action.

“Dear Friends

We may be losing the National Archives–Northeast Region as a research facility. Perhaps we can save it and not have New York lose yet another important repository for our research.

Here is the supposed plan, told recently to Stuart Stahl by Diane LeBlanc, NARA’s Regional Administrator in Waltham, Massachusetts, for him to pass the word. So, there is nothing “official” beyond this, and nothing in writing for dissemination.

•NARA-NYC will move in approximately eighteen months to about 5000 square feet over two floors in the Customs House.

•Only about twenty percent of the current collection at 201 Varick Street, textual and microform (not specifically identified to Stuart), will go to the new location in the Customs House. All or most textual material will go to a storage facility in northeast Philadelphia and will have to be transported to New York City for researchers, as off-site textual material in Lee Summit, Missouri, is now.

•Among the textual material to be retained in the new space will be the federal court naturalization petitions not microfilmed and the federal court records docket books, but it is not clear if the originals of microfilmed naturalizations will be retained.

•“Non-regional” microfilm will go to NARA-Pittsfield.

•Certifications of records on microfilm will have to be requested from Pittsfield.

Additionally, the following seems to also be in the plans for the move:

•The volunteer staff will be abolished or reduced, since there will no longer be textual records for them to arrange, index, and so forth.

•The new space will be primarily for visitors to see exhibits. There will be a few computers and, apparently, some microfilm readers and reader-printers.

•The microfiche indexes of New York State vital records will evidently go to the new space, together with associated printed material and microfiche readers.

•Nothing has been mentioned about the fate of NARA-NYC’s library, including published census indexes and so forth.

•Some of us had been led to believe there would be invitations to some of us “regular” users to help NARA staff know our needs and plan the space and collection for the Customs House. It would seem now that, while there may be a “public meeting,” it will only be to tell us NARA’s plans—too late for any changes.

There is probably more that is or will be of concern to all or most of us.

When the move of NARA-NYC became more certain a month or so ago, I had a telephone conversation with Diane. She seemed very excited about the increased display space that NARA will have in the Customs House and explained the need to reduce the research collection because there will not be room. She also mentioned that the lower number of patrons using NARA these days justified the scaling down of the research facility. She did not seem to be concerned about the need many of us have for certification of records for legal matters, or that the microfilm and original textual records were still necessary even though there is much online. She was quite proud to tell me that NARA-Waltham had given all of its “non-regional” microfilm to a library in Plano, Texas. Guess who got the better deal there! Ironically, while New York City is scaling down, the Waltham facility is being expanded!!

I do not think I need to state the obvious to all you seasoned and knowledgeable researchers about the huge loss to us if all the plans noted above are correct and go through. I know I use microfilm of the Federal Census at least once a week in order find what I cannot online or clarify what I do find online, one problem being the annotations that obscure names on the 1900 Census. This is but one example. I am sure you have all found census pages missed by Ancestry, Heritage Quest, Footnote, or “front material” and other pieces not scanned from the microfilm that someone evidently decided we did not need. Sorry! One more example: What about the original ships’ passenger lists, especially the ones where the often abbreviated copy is what is on the NARA film? What will become of these?

Who in Pittsfield will make “my” kind of decision about the best copy to be certified for the court? In the always-tight time breathing down our necks for court cases, what will Pittsfield’s turn-around time be? Will there be added costs since we can no longer get the certifications locally? Will Pittsfield staff make “groupings” of certified records that we often get here to hold down costs?

Personally, while I have enjoyed many of the exhibits at NARA-NYC, I rarely see anyone coming to specifically look at them, and even those who come to do research seem not to pause for a few minutes of viewing.

And it has always been my understanding that one of the great things about our National Archives is its wealth of material for scholarly research. Yes, personal visits are down, but we all know what the majority of those who rely strictly on the magic box are missing. And I do not see much effort by NARA to help educate the unwashed about what is there that cannot be found online.

I very much admire the position of Kathleen Roe, New York State Archives’ Director of Operations. At a meeting there last year, she told our advisory committee something like, “I know financing for archives is tight, but our mandate is to serve the public, and we must make every effort to continue to do so.”

The very upsetting plan seems analogous to a library tossing certain books because no one has taken them off the shelves over the last couple of years.

So, who wants to organize the car-pooling to Pittsfield and Philadelphia? No? Then we should organize a group effort to let our concerns be known. Genealogists have been successful in the past in changing the direction of bad thinking at NARA. Some examples come to mind: When President Reagan proposed John T. Agresto as Archivist of the United States and the genealogical and historical communities formed a loud “No!” to the inappropriateness of the candidate; and when Archivist John Carlin planned to ship huge amounts of NARA material from the regions to cold storage (and some of you were on hand to give your two-cents when he came to New York City). Another example is the great effort genealogists lent to getting NARA away from GSA’s thumb.

Are there others out there, including folks you know in the historical community, whom we should encourage to get involved?

I know after the G&B mess, many of you may not want to devote the time and energy it may take to make a difference, but I look forward to hearing from those who are concerned and want to be involved. Then we can plan something together.

Roger”

A huge treasure trove of historical and biographical information is now online for those of you that have family that lived in Wisconsin.

Why would we care on an Upstate New York Genealogy Blog?  Simple, millions of people that lived in, and migrated out of New York state went on out to the upper mid-west.  Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, and Wisconsin and others as well.

You might have been searching for many years in New York for details, and you should, but actually your clues might be found in information that was published in later generations that had moved on out of NY.

So this information just came in on one of the rootsweb newsgroups (GENWISCONSIN) sent by Patricia Ricci about an hour ago and I jumped right in to see what it was about.  Wow!  The Wisconsin Historical Society has sponsored this project, major kudos to them, and it is a very easy website to navigate and the digitized scans are remarkably clear.

More than 80 standard county and local histories are all word searchable, or you may browse them page by page.  You will find obscure directories, almanacs, local histories and county histories.  Are these primary source documents?  Absolutely not.  Do they have immense value to genealogist, of course they do!  Where else would you find such clues to spark a major in-depth search for primary records unless you know where people were at any given time?

I have always been interested in the earlier settlers of Racine and Kenosha Wisconsin as that area was first populated by old time families from around Hannibal, Oswego County, NY.

Here is a section of data that I have in my computer database regarding a family of HULET/HULETT relatives:  “Many families from the town of Hannibal, New York and the immediate surrounding towns, were stockholders in “The Western Emigration Company” that originated in Hannibal and settled in Racine County, Wisconsin and the Kenosaha area.  I presume that Gardner HULETT either was a stockholder or went to Kenosha to join neighbors, friends, and possibly other relatives.  More can be found out about the Western Emigration Company on the Hannibal and Kenosha GenWeb sites on the Internet.”

So I went right to the search engine on the new WCH website, checked for Racine and found three publications:

Prairie Farmer’s Reliable Directory of Farmers and Breeders, Kenosha and Racine Counties, Wisconsin – 1919

Smith’s Business and Farmers’ Directory of Racine and Kenosha Counties for 1897-1898. Containing a List     Smith’s Business and Farmers’ Directory of Racine and Kenosha Counties for 1897-1898.

Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Racine and Kenosha Counties Wisconsin. – 1906

In this last one I discovered the parents and siblings of one of the HULETT wives that is sure to lead me to more clues as they were from New York state originally also.

Thank you Pat, and a big thank you to the Wisconsin Historical Society!

Here is the link to the Wisconsin County Histories

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wch/

Dick Hillenbrand
Upstate New York Genealogy Blog
www.UNYG.com/blog

Gloria Waldron Huckle was bitten by the genealogy bug many years ago and while digging into her early Dutch Colonial Roots on the WALDRON Family she became so interested in their history that her passion for history sparked her career as a novelist.

From a recent article in the Glens Falls Post Star newspaper she tells her story to a staff reporter and it is a fun story to follow.

She brings her ancestors and their lives to life with her fictional novels, three of them so far, starting in the 17th century up to more modern times you will see how the families progressed through the generations.

(From the Post Star article:)
“Manhattan: Seeds of the Big Apple” is the story of lower Manhattan in 1653 and the Dutch who lived there, including Resolved Waldron. “The Diary of a Northern Moon” follows a 26-year-old advertising executive in 1976 as she journeys through the Adirondacks looking for clues to her family’s past. “Threads: An American Tapestry” tells the story of Margaret Vandenberg and the struggles she faces in the early 18th century because of her gender and mixed ancestry.

By going back in time through her family history research she was able to discover exact locations where they had resided and she would go to those spots and try to envision what it was like in the much earlier times.

Essentially her books follow quite a similar pattern of the history of New York from the earliest to modern times. Many of our own ancestors followed quite the same migration patterns as hers did, up and down the Hudson River towns and then branching out to other parts of Upstate New York.

You will want to read the complete article in the Post Star.

http://www.poststar.com/lifestyles/article_dd32459e-dbcd-11de-b9e3-001cc4c002e0.html

Congratulations Gloria on your achievement and thank you for writing these books.
Dick Hillenbrand
Upstate New York Genealogy
www.unyg.com

There is an enormous amount of discussion on the internet about using DNA testing to “prove” one’s genealogy.  Well certainly genealogy and DNA go hand in hand however there are certain limits as to what may be proven.

DNA Hand-in-Hand

DNA absolutely may be used to authenticate the parents of an individual.  We all inherit absolutely unique codes of information from our parents.  50% of the code in our genomic makeup comes from our father and is known Y-DNA, and 50% comes from our mother which is called Mitochondrial DNA.  As long as you are able to collect a sufficient number of cells from all three individuals, you will have absolute proof that the two parents are indeed the ones that created the child.

There are various ways to collect the sufficient number of cells, such as through blood test comparisons, hair follicle strands, saliva, cigarette butts, a soda pop can and all of the various methods you will see on your favorite mystery or crime television program.  Most of those tests are indeed the figment of a TV writer’s imagination.  They might be able to be done but they very difficult to test and could be very costly.

One thing that is absolutely provable is that a blood spatter at a crime scene compared to a blood sample from a suspect unconditionally can prove or disprove that the blood came from the same individual.  The DNA sample can not lie.  Only certain people can lie in court and get away with it.  OJ did it.

For genealogy and DNA testing there is an easier way.  There are now many companies that offer DNA kits to gather the samples with.  This is a pain free, no blood method that is actually kind of fun to use.  A typical DNA collection kit will contain some sterile envelopes and perhaps some solution to swish around in your mouth for a specified period of time and then spit out into a container.

Another method is to use a simple little scraper which kind of works like a tongue depressor only it is shaped somewhat like a stumpy tooth brush with no bristles.  All you do is scrape it up and down inside the cheek of your mouth for a specified period and then this device is sealed and mailed in to the DNA testing center of your choice.

For my own Y-DNA testing I will be looking for my father’s and paternal grandfather’s bloodline male ancestors.  Well all of these males are deceased, so what to do?  Now we enter into sibling and male cousin relative comparisons to be able to show markers that will compare to the first common ancestor.  This should be fairly easy to affirm, as my brother and I will compare to our dad, and then we have three male first cousins that though all three are deceased, they each had male issue and those first cousins once removed will no doubt all compare to my paternal grandfather.

Now after that it will become a little more problematic.  My grandfather Jacob HILLENBRAND (1862-1941) was the only son of an only son.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Grandfather Jacob came to America in 1885 and settled in Upstate New York in Syracuse.  I have been contacted many times through my years of genealogy publishing on the internet by other people with the HILLENBRAND (or variant spelling) surname to see if we could be related.  My answer at first is a simple “No”.  However I mean it in the aspect of related as in modern times.  It just can not be so.

We would have to go back in time through three generations to find any of the males that had sons.  Gramp’s father died fairly young (1825-1866) and his father also died fairly young (1798-1826).  Neither of these two early ancestors had any other male issue, than my direct line.

The earliest ancestor of this surname that I have been able to locate is Caspar HILLENBRAND who was born circa 1760 somewhere in what is now Germany and is first located in church records in Markelsheim, Wurttemberg in the late 1700’s as the father of three sons of which the only one I know anything about is my own direct line ancestor.

So that does leave two possible males that ‘might’ have produced male issue but it would take me a lot of time and money to attempt to track this possibility down to modern times.

However there is a possibility that we ‘might’ be able to perform Genealogy DNA tests on other males anywhere with this surname and if we were able to show that we indeed did have a common ancestor then it might help us to shortcut the amount of genealogical research that we would have to do to show the connection.

I think it will be fun to do and will firm up the many thousands of hours that I have invested this past 40 or so years of intense genealogical research in, and I will write about this later as we gather more information.

If you have your own genealogy and DNA story to tell please leave a comment here on the Upstate New York Genealogy Blog.

A Partial Index and Page Images of the 1865 and 1892 New York State Census Population Schedules are now Online at Family Search through the Pilot Program.

When I saw this announcement on one of the news group message boards I instantly went to the search forms and searched for some of my ancestors in Onondaga County, NY.  I found nothing so looked closer at the Family Search collection description.  Onondaga Co. has not been completed yet, however there is a very impressive quantity of other counties that have been made available for free online.

Here is a description of those counties that are now available.

1865 NYS Census:

Name index and images of 1865 New York state census.  Counties included in this collection are:   Albany, Allegany, Broome, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Dutchess, Erie, Fulton, Herkimer, Kings, Livingston, Monroe, Montgomery, Niagara, Otsego, Rensselaer, Rockland, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Steuben, Tioga, Tompkins, Ulster, Washington, and Yates.
http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=collectionDetails;c=1491284;t=browsable;w=0

1892 NYS Census:

Name index and images of population schedule of the census of New York taken by that state in 1892. This 1892 New York State Census is an every-name index to the state’s inhabitants as of February 16, 1892. The counties included are: Allegany, Cattaraugus, Cayuga, Chautauqua, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Erie, Kings, Livingston, Monroe, Montgomery, Orleans, Otsego, Rensselaer, Rockland, Saratoga, Schoharie, Steuben, Tioga, Ulster, Washington, and Yates.
http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=collectionDetails;c=1529100;t=browsable;w=0

You can search by first name, last name, all events such as birth/christening, marriage, or death/burial, year range per event, location and either exact & close match, or by exact, close and partial.  There is also an advanced search tab which will even present more optional search ideas.  The images are not linked to the search results, but you can browse the actual census page images once you know the page from the index search.

Family Search is a service of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Their main website is at www.familysearch.org.

To readers of this Upstate New York Genealogy Blog, please bookmark this new web address url www.unyg.com/blog as we no longer publish this Blog on the old Google Blogger platform and have moved it here and attached it to our main website page.

The State of Michigan is in a budget crisis.  What a shock.  What state is not?  The myopic view of the current state administration is to do away with the State Library

You can help stop this idiocy by signing an online petition, it does not matter what state you live in, sign it anyway.  An interesting note is that when I just signed it there were only 393 signatories.  It would seem that 300 thousand would be more impressive.  Please sign the petition, do not put it off.

From an announcement by Dick Eastman at www.eogn.com the following in part:

In meetings held during the Federation of Genealogical Societies/
Arkansas Genealogical Society Annual Conference in Little Rock this past
week, the Records Preservation and Access Committee (a joint committee
of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National
Genealogical Society) has initiated a petition drive in support of the
Library of Michigan.

Genealogists from within and without Michigan are encouraged to sign the
online petition. You are encouraged to sign this online petition NOW.

You can read more at http://www.fgs.org/rpac.

For all you people with Upstate New York ancestors this is an important announcement.  There apparently is a major error in the 1820 U.S Federal Census microfilm for the towns of Cicero, Lysander and Manlius.

The following press release was just received:

Press release:

“For Immediate Release

1820 US Federal Census Microfilm Errors Corrected for Onondaga County, NY.

The American Pomeroy Historic Genealogical Association (APHGA)
identified an error in the pagination sequence of the microfilmed copies of the 1820 US Federal Census.  These errors relate to the towns of Manlius, Cicero and Lysander in Onondaga County, New York, and were discovered while attempting to verify the location of the Spencer Pomeroy and Lucy Pomeroy households.

The APHGA’s research indicated that both of these Pomeroy families should have been living in Manlius, N.Y., but both the Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest indices placed these households in neighboring Cicero.  By examining the total counts by page and town for both the Manlius and Cicero microfilm rolls on Ancestry.com we were able to determine that these pages were filmed out of sequence.  When the pages were sorted out we were able to verify that only 3 pages of the 21 page Cicero microfilm roll were part of the original 1820 Cicero census!

The APHGA has created corrected indices of the 1820 US Federal Census for the towns of Cicero, Manlius and Lysander in Onondaga County for use with Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest images.  These indices, along with other documentation explaining how this error was detected and how corrected results were substantiated are available free of charge on the APHGA website at http://www.americanpomeroys.org/Coetranscriptions.html .

The American Pomeroy Historic Genealogical Association was founded by Bill Pomeroy of Syracuse, NY, in order to provide an organization to facilitate American Pomeroy research.  We provide a platform for the collection, communication and collaboration of research regarding the descendants of Eltweed Pomeroy, and act as a clearinghouse for that research.  Bill’s dream is to publish an update of the Albert A. Pomeroy genealogy books, The History and Genealogy of the Pomeroy Family, Volumes I-III, published in 1912 and 1922.  The APHGA has also founded the Pomeroy Anvil Trail, a project to install monuments in the shape of the Pomeroy Anvil across the United States in places that were historic to the Pomeroy Family.

Please feel free to contact us by e-mail at roots@cxtec.com or by phone at 1-800-767-3282 x2530.  For more information about the APHGA please visit our website at www.americanpomeroys.org .”

———

That sounds like a very important discovery and we send kudos and thanks for the sharp eye of Nancy Maliwesky, Director, American Pomeroy Historic Genealogical Association and Bill Pomeroy who so tirelessly and benevolently makes this all possible.

If you have a POMEROY anywhere in your family history you will certainly find a treasure trove of information on their website.

Oh, and for what it is worth, the Federal Government in their infinite wisdom discarded all of those original manuscript census enumeration books after they were microfilmed.  Certainly no one would ever need to look at the original documents.

Dick Hillenbrand

This message was recently received from Richard L. Herrick with the request to pass it on.

So to the readers of the New UNYG Blog, here it is:

ALBANY, NEW YORK, AUGUST 31, 2009:

The Herrick Family Association (HFA) is pleased to announce that the Herrick Family Association Annual meeting is being held September 23 to September 27, 2009, in Albany, New York. Richard L. Herrick, President of the HFA and compiler of the third edition of the Herrick Genealogical Register (HGR) will be available to consult with anyone interested in their Herrick family connection.

Mr. Herrick graduated from Michigan State University with a B.S.M.E and later became interested in genealogy in the early 1960s. After retirement in 1994 Mr. Herrick began in earnest to update the 1846 & 1885 editions of the Herrick Genealogical Register [HGR] which now has a database of 50,000 individuals for Herrick’s and allied families connected to the Herrick family.

Volume I of HGR3 was published in 2008; Volume II in 2009 and Volume III will be published in 2010.  Publishing the HGR3 is a team effort of Richard L. Herrick, Kenneth Roy Herrick, Sharon Herrick, Joann Nichols and Dale!
EllenYoe who will also attend the Herrick Family Meeting.

The Herrick Family Association is a national non-profit organization formed in 2001 to provide a central focus for family tree information for all individuals with an ancestor or spouse named Herrick and those who descended from Henry Herrick who arrived in Salem, MA from England during July 1629.  The Herrick Family Association also supports a DNA project and genealogy research ongoing in several countries.

The meetings will be held at the Hampton Inn & Suites-Albany, located at 25 Chapel St., Albany, NY 12210.  Further information on reservations and activities at:  http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~herrick
(end)

Note: If any of you are interested  a capsule format genealogy of my connection to the HERRICK line is shown on the main UNYG website at: http://www.unyg.com/my_genealogies/

Hi everyone.  If you are reading this you know that we have finally moved our Blog to this new domain.

To all who are following us please make sure you subscribe to this new Blog by using the orange button at the top right which is for an RSS feed to your news reader and you will receive all future posts in your reader.  If that seems a daunting task just use the Subscribe via Email form and then you will receive at the most once a day a listing of any new posts that we have published for that day.  If no posts are made you will not get the email notification.

As all of you know who have been subscribers we will never spam you and your personal information is 100% secure with us.  We never share, sell, trade, loan or in any way give out your email address to any one.

Glad to have you with us, remember to subscribe and we will be publishing a whole lot of new stuff that has been backing up.

Please leave comments or ask questions at the bottom of any of the Blog post articles or use the Contact form at the top if need be.

Dick Hillenbrand