"American Pie" - the Irish in the US
Photo from wellcome collection
Life, Love and Death in New York
New York was undoubtedly the gateway to a new life in America for perhaps the majority of Irish emigrants, many of whom went no further, although Boston can also lay claim to a huge Irish diaspora. Many Irish also found their way to these Eastern Seaboard cities and others via Canadian ports as the voyages may have been cheaper, so be sure to check any passenger manifests and immigration documents north of the border too.
Unfortunately many of the young men fleeing Ireland in the wake of the Great Hunger ran slap bang into the brewing discontent between the North and the South that led to civil war. I learned lots about them from a hugely informative talk by Damien Shiels on the Irish in the American Civil War. In addition to revealing the existence of a veritable gold mine of information lurking in the Civil War pension files in Washington for the families back in Ireland of those who died or were wounded in the war, he also painted a vivid picture of Irish life in New York around this time when Manhattan in particular was a real Irish ghetto and conscription into the army for many young Irish men happened virtually as the boats docked.
Stephen Morse's One-Stop Webpages should be your first port of call to query the various linked databases for immigration records and births, marriages and deaths (BMD) in the city, and other locations in the US. Some of his links might take you to subscription sites but many are free.
If you find a candidate on the One-Stop pages that lists a certificate number, then be sure to head over to the New York City Historical Vital Records to see if they have digitised the certificate yet. Launched in March 2022, the work is ongoing, so don't get overly frustrated if you get a "No Results" response to your search. Their Digital Vital Records page will give you all the current information on what survives and what has been digitised (approx. 70% complete as of March 2022.) There is a name search function as well but by their own admission this is beta at the moment and the indexing needs some further work - I found a couple of relatives eventually hiding behind transcription errors and there should be a function to report such things in the future. This is a great free site for finally tracking down those Irish relatives who moved across the pond to marry, start new families and perhaps pass away in the Big Apple!
New York was undoubtedly the gateway to a new life in America for perhaps the majority of Irish emigrants, many of whom went no further, although Boston can also lay claim to a huge Irish diaspora. Many Irish also found their way to these Eastern Seaboard cities and others via Canadian ports as the voyages may have been cheaper, so be sure to check any passenger manifests and immigration documents north of the border too.
Unfortunately many of the young men fleeing Ireland in the wake of the Great Hunger ran slap bang into the brewing discontent between the North and the South that led to civil war. I learned lots about them from a hugely informative talk by Damien Shiels on the Irish in the American Civil War. In addition to revealing the existence of a veritable gold mine of information lurking in the Civil War pension files in Washington for the families back in Ireland of those who died or were wounded in the war, he also painted a vivid picture of Irish life in New York around this time when Manhattan in particular was a real Irish ghetto and conscription into the army for many young Irish men happened virtually as the boats docked.
Stephen Morse's One-Stop Webpages should be your first port of call to query the various linked databases for immigration records and births, marriages and deaths (BMD) in the city, and other locations in the US. Some of his links might take you to subscription sites but many are free.
If you find a candidate on the One-Stop pages that lists a certificate number, then be sure to head over to the New York City Historical Vital Records to see if they have digitised the certificate yet. Launched in March 2022, the work is ongoing, so don't get overly frustrated if you get a "No Results" response to your search. Their Digital Vital Records page will give you all the current information on what survives and what has been digitised (approx. 70% complete as of March 2022.) There is a name search function as well but by their own admission this is beta at the moment and the indexing needs some further work - I found a couple of relatives eventually hiding behind transcription errors and there should be a function to report such things in the future. This is a great free site for finally tracking down those Irish relatives who moved across the pond to marry, start new families and perhaps pass away in the Big Apple!
Photo New York Herald Archives
"Read All About it!"
Armed with some information from various immigration sources, I have gone hunting for later BMD announcements in the New York newspapers, which has proven to be a great source of corroborating information - details of Irish parents and birthplaces are often included. I've managed to use a combination of the New York Times Archive (1851+) search screens and unindexed historical images from the New York Herald (1840-1919) to track down notices.
The former is a subscription site but if you are clever about how you enter your search terms (works best with more uncommon surnames and try Irish place names too (but watch out for mangled spellings!)), you might manage to glean enough from the short results abstract to see that there may be something that might be of interest - note the date!
Now go to the New York Herald archives and click on the folder for the same year. This is where it gets harder as there are no indexes on this site, but be patient and you may find treasure. Every page for every edition has been scanned and they are arranged in strict date order, although sadly the file names won't help you much other than the incremental number at the end. With a bit of trial and error and a LOT of patience, you should be able to narrow down your search to an approximate date range and then it's a case of hunting for the BMD notices in the editions. Be sure to search over at least a few weeks as notices could appear some time after the events. I promise you though, it's worth the hard work. Here's an example from my own family history of a death announcement that contained lots of great information that sent me back to some odd census records I'd found previously (see my Kindred Ancestry blog post here for more);
"DIED - SEABROOK - On Friday, October 18, at 3pm, NICHOLAS, son of Joseph and the late Sara Seabrook of Clonegall, County Carlow, Ireland, aged 37 years. Funeral from the residence of his brother-in-law, Benjamin Browne, 182 East 128th St., on Sunday, Oct 20, at 1pm. Dublin and Wicklow (Ireland) papers please copy."
Interestingly, you often find the opposite exhortation in Irish newspapers for American and Canadian newspapers to copy notices too as a way of informing far flung family of news I suppose. Did they ever do this though I wonder?
Armed with some information from various immigration sources, I have gone hunting for later BMD announcements in the New York newspapers, which has proven to be a great source of corroborating information - details of Irish parents and birthplaces are often included. I've managed to use a combination of the New York Times Archive (1851+) search screens and unindexed historical images from the New York Herald (1840-1919) to track down notices.
The former is a subscription site but if you are clever about how you enter your search terms (works best with more uncommon surnames and try Irish place names too (but watch out for mangled spellings!)), you might manage to glean enough from the short results abstract to see that there may be something that might be of interest - note the date!
Now go to the New York Herald archives and click on the folder for the same year. This is where it gets harder as there are no indexes on this site, but be patient and you may find treasure. Every page for every edition has been scanned and they are arranged in strict date order, although sadly the file names won't help you much other than the incremental number at the end. With a bit of trial and error and a LOT of patience, you should be able to narrow down your search to an approximate date range and then it's a case of hunting for the BMD notices in the editions. Be sure to search over at least a few weeks as notices could appear some time after the events. I promise you though, it's worth the hard work. Here's an example from my own family history of a death announcement that contained lots of great information that sent me back to some odd census records I'd found previously (see my Kindred Ancestry blog post here for more);
"DIED - SEABROOK - On Friday, October 18, at 3pm, NICHOLAS, son of Joseph and the late Sara Seabrook of Clonegall, County Carlow, Ireland, aged 37 years. Funeral from the residence of his brother-in-law, Benjamin Browne, 182 East 128th St., on Sunday, Oct 20, at 1pm. Dublin and Wicklow (Ireland) papers please copy."
Interestingly, you often find the opposite exhortation in Irish newspapers for American and Canadian newspapers to copy notices too as a way of informing far flung family of news I suppose. Did they ever do this though I wonder?
The same site that I've plundered for New York Herald BMD notices as detailed above, also appears to have a huge collection of newspapers for other towns and cities in NY state - see Historical Newspapers United States and Canada for more information. There is a search facility accessible off the home page - Old Fulton New York Post Cards - and some good advice on searching. You will need to settle down for a good old roam through the folders, and you will need to know your American and Canadian geography, but you may chance upon something that solves a mystery for you.
Depending upon your subscription, Ancestry may also occasionally throw up suggested records from the various collections of marriages and obituaries that it has indexed from the vast library of American titles on its sister site, Newspapers.com. You may find clues as to "lost" Irish relatives who emigrated and started new families or had new adventures. You can learn quite a lot from the sometimes mangled family information "scraped" from the newspaper into the Ancestry index record. You will of course learn more and be able to clip an image of the page (which might include photographs) if you view the original image via the main web site. Investigate subscriptions or take advantage of any free trials or sessions often offered over American public holiday weekends.
It's not all births, marriages and deaths of course - take your time to have a good roam around and you may learn some amazingly diverting things about your relatives - my 5th cousin 1xremoved's open water swimming exploits in shark infested Pacific waters being a case in point!
Another recent free find is Chronicling America - Historic American Newspapers, made available from the Library of Congress. This site currently boasts over 19 million pages of newsprint with titles across all states from 1777 to 1963. I've yet to have a really good play with the Advanced Search screen, but it looks promising. At the very least, I'm sure you could spend many an hour highly diverted by all the local gossip!
Depending upon your subscription, Ancestry may also occasionally throw up suggested records from the various collections of marriages and obituaries that it has indexed from the vast library of American titles on its sister site, Newspapers.com. You may find clues as to "lost" Irish relatives who emigrated and started new families or had new adventures. You can learn quite a lot from the sometimes mangled family information "scraped" from the newspaper into the Ancestry index record. You will of course learn more and be able to clip an image of the page (which might include photographs) if you view the original image via the main web site. Investigate subscriptions or take advantage of any free trials or sessions often offered over American public holiday weekends.
It's not all births, marriages and deaths of course - take your time to have a good roam around and you may learn some amazingly diverting things about your relatives - my 5th cousin 1xremoved's open water swimming exploits in shark infested Pacific waters being a case in point!
Another recent free find is Chronicling America - Historic American Newspapers, made available from the Library of Congress. This site currently boasts over 19 million pages of newsprint with titles across all states from 1777 to 1963. I've yet to have a really good play with the Advanced Search screen, but it looks promising. At the very least, I'm sure you could spend many an hour highly diverted by all the local gossip!
1870 NY Federal Census ... so much fun, they did it twice?
Well no actually, but take it from me and watch out for this little curve ball in any search results you get back from US census collections for this year (Ancestry has them under their worldwide subscription.) Apparently, New Yorkers were not happy with the census that was done at the same time as the rest of the US in June 1870 as they believed the city's population had been underestimated and so they decided to go through it all over again in January 1871! Hence you might get back 2 records that look almost identical but not quite - study both carefully and make up your mind as to what to believe in either!
Well no actually, but take it from me and watch out for this little curve ball in any search results you get back from US census collections for this year (Ancestry has them under their worldwide subscription.) Apparently, New Yorkers were not happy with the census that was done at the same time as the rest of the US in June 1870 as they believed the city's population had been underestimated and so they decided to go through it all over again in January 1871! Hence you might get back 2 records that look almost identical but not quite - study both carefully and make up your mind as to what to believe in either!
Townland of Origin ... so much more than the title suggests!
Although he hasn't updated the site in several years due to other commitments, Joe Buggy's Townland of Origin website is still a fantastic resource for all things genealogical in not just the US of A but also Canada, another very important destination for Irish emigrants. In addition to his well-written and informative blog articles, you will find details of his publications ("Finding your ancestors in New York City" looks like the definitive guide on the subject) and his own favourite links and tips. In particular, there is a link to the Irish Directories Database, a resource he has created in collaboration with another generous Irish genie, Shane Wilson, which gives information for many Irish trade and commercial directories.
Although he hasn't updated the site in several years due to other commitments, Joe Buggy's Townland of Origin website is still a fantastic resource for all things genealogical in not just the US of A but also Canada, another very important destination for Irish emigrants. In addition to his well-written and informative blog articles, you will find details of his publications ("Finding your ancestors in New York City" looks like the definitive guide on the subject) and his own favourite links and tips. In particular, there is a link to the Irish Directories Database, a resource he has created in collaboration with another generous Irish genie, Shane Wilson, which gives information for many Irish trade and commercial directories.
Navigating the US Library and Genealogical Society Scene
I recently watched a talk posted online from Rootstech 2018 which was given by Curt Witcher from the Allen County Library. Entitled "Pain in the Access : More Web for your genealogy", Curt showcases, in his own uniquely entertaining style, all the wonderful and mostly free online resources to be found at various different levels within the US county and state library and archive network. County level genealogical societies were also a bit of revelation to me and given that Irish immigrants were often true pioneers of the West, you never know what you might turn up if you go digging online for the treasure he talks about.
Incidentally, the Allen County Library is also a generous donor of free digitised texts to the Internet Archive and I've found many that relate to Ireland - searching with "Allen County Library Ireland" revealed 629 volumes at the last count.
I recently watched a talk posted online from Rootstech 2018 which was given by Curt Witcher from the Allen County Library. Entitled "Pain in the Access : More Web for your genealogy", Curt showcases, in his own uniquely entertaining style, all the wonderful and mostly free online resources to be found at various different levels within the US county and state library and archive network. County level genealogical societies were also a bit of revelation to me and given that Irish immigrants were often true pioneers of the West, you never know what you might turn up if you go digging online for the treasure he talks about.
Incidentally, the Allen County Library is also a generous donor of free digitised texts to the Internet Archive and I've found many that relate to Ireland - searching with "Allen County Library Ireland" revealed 629 volumes at the last count.
(c) Irish Geneaography - 2022
