There are so many wonderful New York City sources to help with my genealogy research that I scarcely know where to begin. My Schwartz, Farkas, Birk, and Mahler ancestors all sailed past the Statue of Liberty from Eastern Europe, so my
genealogy naturally has a New York state of mind.
Here are four of my favorite sites for NYC genealogy:
- NYC brides, grooms, births, deaths, and naturalizations: My top go-to site is the Italian Genealogical Group. It's free and the volunteers who transcribed the records and developed the databases have done an incredible job.
- 1940 NYC directories, old photos, and much, much more: online and in person at the NY Public Library Milstein Division. Browsing the Digital Gallery brings me back to the New York City of my grandparents' time.
- Ellis Island and Castle Green sites are helpful in finding immigrants who landed in NYC, although I prefer Family Search's Ellis Island passenger lists and Ancestry, not to mention Fold3's naturalization documents.
- Linkpendium's city and borough-by-borough links that that of the Bronx are quite useful. Actually, Linkpendium is great for any state!
Now for my most recent New York genealogy adventures in following the
Markell family. Barnhart (Barney, Bernard) H. Markell (1874-1944) was the father-in-law of my grand-aunt Mary Mahler Markell. As I wrote earlier this year, Barney came to New York from Boston with his son Joseph after the early death of his first wife, Rose Lebowitz. I've followed the paper trail of Barney and his progeny via US and NY census data, but have yet to discover exactly how
Julius and Barney Markell are related.
On Friday, hubby and I took a field trip to
Riverside Cemetery in NJ, where Barney is buried (above). In the same plot were: Barney's second wife, Esther M. Markell; Esther's daughter Ella Markell and her two husbands, Albert Brown (originally
Brownstein) and Jeremiah
Match; and Albert's brother-in-law David
Zenkel. RIP.
This weekly prompt about New York is part of the "Genealogy by the States" series by
Jim Sanders.
