Used Books Update - Old Saratoga Books

-----------------------

Used Books Update.

Back in January we blogged about sources of good used books and the value of them for genealogical and historical research. Here is the link to that Blog: http://ny-genes.blogspot.com/2008/01/finding-sources-of-good-used-books.html

One of the comments that were entered was from Rachel Jagareski of Old Saratoga Books in Schuylerville, NY. So yesterday I had an opportunity to be up that way on business and stopped in and had a delightful chat with Rachel and met her husband Dan and daughter. This nice young couple is living their dream.

They have a lovely book store in an important historical old village, right at one of the most famous historical spots in New York State. This Hudson River Village was a primary gathering place for many events that occurred in the French and Indian, and the Revolutionary Wars. Burgoyne's defeat there at Freeman's Farm was a pivotal point in the American Revolutionary War.

Their shelves are very well arranged by subject category and they have a constantly evolving stock of the type of books that we all look for. Of course I found a couple that I just had to have, but please don't tell my wife.

Rachel told me that she had just celebrated one year of blogging with her delightful Blog
Named “Book Trout”.

So if you are going to Albany or Saratoga or anywhere near the area, you will surely enjoy a visit to Old Saratoga Books.
www.oldsaratogabooks.com

They do encourage customers to contact them through the Internet and they will ship any where.



Visit our main website at www.unyg.com



My StumbleUpon Page

Billions of People in Over 100 Databases On-line for only $50 per year!

On-line Access to over 100 Important Databases. Cost: $50.00 per year. (Fifty Bucks!) Curious? Want to know more? Read on. This is no joke!

I did not count these exactly, but there must be over 100 databases, many of which will be very valuable to genealogists. These databases are searcheable and viewable on-line, and there is even an over all Master Search by Subject utility that will search all of the databases at once. You may also Browse by Title.

I’m guessing that these combined databases must contain billions and billions of names of people. Carl Sagan like, but I do not think I am exaggerating too much.

This following list is only a SAMPLE of the listings available.

19th Century Masterfile - Nineteenth century (1802 to 1906) newspapers.

Academic Search Complete - A full text database, with over 5,500 full-text periodicals, including over 4,000 peer-reviewed journals.

Accessible Archives - Online databases of primary source material from 18th & 19th centuries, including coverage of the Colonial Period, The French & Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, African-American History, and the Industrial Revolution.

African American Experience - African American history and culture is broken into topics such as history, biography, literature, arts, culture, business, civil rights, politics, sports, education, science, and more.

African American Newspapers: The 19th Century - The database consists of six newspapers: The Freedom's Journal, The Colored American, The North Star, Frederick Douglass Paper, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, and The Christian Recorder. Dates covered are 1827-1902.

America: History and Life - Historical coverage of the U.S. and Canada from prehistory to the present from over 2,000 journals from 1964 on. Includes fulltext linking to matching Oxford University Press and Project Muse journals.

America's Newspapers: New York - Full text coverage of a wide range of New York State newspapers from Albany, Batavia, Binghamton, Buffalo, Elmira, Ithaca, Lewisboro, Long Island, New York City, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Saratoga, Suffolk county, Syracuse, Troy, Utica, Watertown, and Westchester county.

Biography and Genealogy Master Index - Citations for over 12 million entries for current and historical persons.

(That is only a PARTIAL LISTING, starting in the A’s and B’s. Just a smidgen!)

Here are a few more FABULOUS collections!

HeritageQuest Online - Contains the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), full text of the Pension and Bounty-Land-Warrant Legislation and Administration Relating to Participation in the Revolutionary War, full text of Registers of signatures of despositors in branches of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company 1865 - 1874, full text of ProQuest's Genealogy and Local History Collection of 25,000+ family and local history books and the full text of the 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, 1860 -1880 and 1900-1920 census for the entire United States.

JSTOR - Arts and Sciences Collection - The Arts and Sciences collections I, II, III, and IV contain more than 240 titles in over forty disciplines.

Sanborn Maps - Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970 provides access to large-scale maps (50 feet to an inch) of towns and cities in New York.

Yikes! Sanborn Maps of New York! Do you people have any idea how important this collection is?

The above listing is only a teeny, tiny part of the list of all that are available for your fifty dollar investment.

All of these fine databases, and many more are available to anyone that has a New York State Library Card with the letter “P” designation. How do you get one?

Join the “Friends of the New York State Library.” In addition to the deep satisfaction of preserving a world renowned public research library, you can obtain special discounts at local book stores.

For all you Genealogaholics, the category that you will want is either the Contributing Membership at $50.00 per year, or you can be real supportive and sign up for the Excelsior Membership for $100.00 or more.

How do you join?
Go to the Friends website at: http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/friends/app.htm

To see the full list of databases available with membership go to:
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/gate/remotedb.htm

See you there!

Thanks to Cynthia Van Ness of the Buffalo Library and the Erie County rootsweb mail list for letting us know about this.




Visit our main website at www.unyg.com



My StumbleUpon Page

Washington County, New York Historian's Office Report

Upstate New York Genealogy recently received an email from Loretta Bates, Office Manager, of the Washington County, New York, Historian’s Office.
Part of which is as follows:

“Dick,
Did I mention to you that I have been putting info on our Washinton Co. official website? You might want to check it out, just Google Washington Co. NY and we're the first one listed. I have so much more ready to enter… I'm trying to put on the oldest things I can find, so far it’s mostly the Goodspeed Index and some older church records.
Keep up the good work.... Loretta”

The following link will go directly to the Historian’s website:

http://www.co.washington.ny.us/Departments/His/His1.htm

At the present time this office is open Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Available for research in the Historian’s Office:
Published regional histories, plus histories of several towns in Washington County and nearby counties

Published and unpublished Washington County family histories

The Asa Fitch Papers on Washington County genealogy and history

The Gibson Collection of genealogical material

The Goodspeed Collection containing over 50 boxes of information collected by a local genealogist. Aaron Goodspeed of Granville, Washington County, NY lived from 1862 to 1932. He made a hobby and a business of gathering genealogical data on local people of his area and Vermont. He collected newspaper articles, wrote hundreds of letters requesting information from families and spent a lifetime pursuing his love of genealogy. He was a “top notch” pharmacist owning a drug store which still stands today and houses a dry cleaning business. Much of Goodspeed’s collection is from the mid eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds, but some of his notes in his own handwriting might contain information relating to even earlier times. The following index has been prepared to advise researchers of the surnames in this collection. Some of the information found within is extensive, but in some cases it might contain a lone newspaper article.

Cemetery records for all 17 towns of Washington County

Washington County Poor House Records

The Morris-Rote-Rosen collection from his Granville Sentinel newspaper column on local history

The John Williams Papers

Over forty years of County Historian’s genealogical correspondence filed by family name

Church Records (limited)

United Church of Kingsbury and Queensbury during the Ministry of Rev. Ravaud K. Rodgers and Rev. E.E. Seeley

Register of marriages; Coila, Cambridge, Salem
Celebrated by John Dunlop, Minister of the Gospel
Original documents copied from the photostat of the Coila Church records in the State Library.

Also available is an assortment of
Family Bibles Veterans Records (limited)
Maps Newspapers (Microfilm only and limited)
School Records Business Ledgers
Quaker Records Civil War letters pertaining to Wash. Co.

Mail to: Washington County Historian
Washington County Municipal Center, Bldg. A
383 Broadway Fort Edward, New York 12828

Thanks for letting us know Loretta.

The church records and the Goodspeed collection are excellent, and I can’t wait for the important Col./Dr. John Williams papers. He was such an important part of the early Washington County history and we are fortunate that his papers survived.

Visit our main website at www.unyg.com

My StumbleUpon Page

National Archives and Ancestry (TGN) Propose Digitizing Project

Footnote and Ancestry are in the news recently regarding the digitizing that Footnote currently does, and the work that the parent company of Ancestry, The Generations Network (TGN), wants to do, at the National Archives (NARA).

NARA is asking for public comment regarding the non-exclusive contract that they intend to sign with TGN to embark on a digitization project at NARA of some parts of their collection.

Footnote and Ancestry are both very reputable companies and we all should be ever thankful to the Archivist who has such great forward thinking to bring this digitized content to the Internet. Online resources just keep getting better and better.

Thanks to Dick Eastman for this notice.

Please do go to the NARA info site and voice your opinion, it really does matter! The comments must be received by April 9th, 2008.
NARA Link: http://www.archives.gov/comment/tgn-preamble.html


You may sign up for a Free Trial at Footnote here:




You may sign up for a Free Trial at Ancestry here:



Dear readers, do you know that there are a GREAT MANY more postings on this Blog than just what you see on this first page? If you find the information here of interest or amusing, or curious, or just want to read more of my rants, then you can go to the bottom of each page and click on the words “Older Post”. This Blog goes back to 2005.

Visit our main website at www.unyg.com

My StumbleUpon Page

Vital Records Lookups, Update to the Update

This morning the Onondaga County Public Library (OCPL) sent a request that I post some additional information regarding their offer to do Free Lookups.

"OCPL will do limited lookups - a 5-year span on births, deaths and marriages. Questions are answered in order and often may take several days. Please be aware that many fiche are difficult to read, and while staff tries to be as accurate as possible any information stated is as it appears.

The index begins in 1880 and while NY State passed a law that year requiring the filing of these records, they still weren't uniformly or consistently filed until well into the 1900's. For more information about the index and what it covers: http://www.health.state.ny.us/vital_records/genealogy.htm"

Visit our main website at www.unyg.com

My StumbleUpon Page

New York State Vital Records Microfiche Indexes Update

Update to New York State Vital Records Microfiche Indexes. -- Free Look Ups!

The recent posting that we put up on this Blog, “How to Obtain Copies of Vital Records for Genealogical Purposes in New York State,” has created quite a buzz. Now we have some very good news for you distant researchers!

The Local History/Genealogy Department of the Onondaga County Public Library (OCPL) in Syracuse has one of the eight sets of the microfiche indexes to Births, Deaths and Marriages, that cover the largest part of Upstate New York.

Librarian, Holly Sammons, at OCPL has made the offer to do the actual look-ups for distant patrons. This is just one of the marvelous services that this most excellent facility has to offer.

That is just about the best news ever for people that live in areas that do not have a set of these Vital Records microfiche available. My personal thoughts are that patrons should respect this extremely generous offer and to not inundate the staff all at once with requests.

Holly said that they will be happy to chat with patrons by telephone, through email or will even take requests by U.S. Mail. You should check out their excellent website also which gives additional information about their collections and services.

Holly Sammons, Librarian
Onondaga County Public Library
Local History/Genealogy
447 So Salina St.
Syracuse, NY 13202
315-435-1900

OCPL website: http://www.onlib.org/website/LH/lh.htm

OCPL email address: lhg@onlib.org

Holly just sent this additional information just before I posted this Blog, so please heed the following instructions: “Just one caveat, we can't do open ended searches like - my great grandmother died sometime after 1900 can you find her death! Some parameters are good and necessary. We used to do a limit of a 5-year search, just to keep things from getting out of hand. There's a fine line between a look up and doing in-depth research!”

Read our previous post about how to obtain vital records certificate copies for genealogy HERE:

Researchers might want to check with the other libraries and holders of this collection around the state to see if they offer the same service.

Thank you OCPL, from Upstate New York Genealogy Blog.



Visit our main website at www.unyg.com

Read the original message on this subject here: "How to Obtain Copies of Vital Records."

Read the third message on this subject here: "Update to the Update to How to Obtain Copies of Vital Records."




My StumbleUpon Page

More Assumption Church Marriage Records - Germans - Irish - French of Upstate New York

Dick Barr has done it again. He extracted about 800 marriages from the Catholic Assumption Church Records in Syracuse, and they have been published by CNYGS in their Journal "Tree Talks."

The following is an announcement from CNYGS.

"Church of the Assumption marriages celebrated between 1844 and 1864 are also now fully indexed in the December, 2007 issue of the Central New York Genealogical Society's journal, "Tree Talks" (72 pages, nearly 800 marriages, primarily of Germans, but including some Irish and French marriages from Syracuse and the surrounding area as well).

The typical entry in this index contains the date of the marriage at Assumption Church, the names of the bride and groom, the parents, the witnesses and the officiating priest, but often also includes ages and residency or place of origin.

Original spellings and diacritical marks have been meticulously transcribed by Mr. F. Richard Barr.

Send a $15.00 check or money order payable to the Central New York Genealogical Society to: CNYGS - Publications, P.O. Box 104, Colvin Station, Syracuse, NY 13205."

Remember that not all of these people were from Syracuse and Onondaga county. Assumption being one of the most prominent early Catholic churches attracted people from Oswego and other surrounding counties.

Visit our main website at www.unyg.com




My StumbleUpon Page