Verifying What is Written in Stone - Summary & Resources

I've had a lot of fun with this project; trying to verify the information on this headstone from Donald's family. I have relearned some old lessons, like taking the time to understand a new-to-me record set before diving in, I've learned about new records and I have a nice list of things to learn and investigate. And additional documentation is needed for a lot of the information on the stone, so the project isn't really over, just my blog series.

I've loved looking through New York City census records for this time period; these time capsules are a great tool for imagining life in the past. Like the occupations captured on just one page; an embroidery designer and operator, a janitor, two coopers, two vaudeville actresses and a department store detective and a handful of servants. I think you could write a novel using just one page as a starting point.

I want to learn more about Winifred Coughlin; about her life in Ireland if at all possible and her early years in New York City, before she married William Barry. There were some fantastic lectures at the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa conference and I'm hopeful that they can help me add to our knowledge of the Coughlin family in County Galway.

I am also hopeful that learning more about William Barry will help us to discover his home parish in Ireland and open up another branch of Donald's family. I'll be looking for any documents related to his immigration and naturalization as well as records of the Emigrant Savings Bank, which I believe are on Ancestry. The New York Public Library also seems to have some images, but I'll have to look into that further. Investigating William Barry's Civil War service is sure to be another great learning experience. I plan to start with a webinar at Legacy Webinars and go from there.

In the spring I will be on an absolute mission to do two things in New York City that I've been talking about for a while; finally visit the Tenement Museum and spend a day in the Milstein Division of the New York Public Library. A presentation at the New York State Family History Conference by one of their librarians gave some great examples of how their holdings can help you get a picture of what the city was like at a particular time. This is what it is all about for me. And maybe we can get back to Castle Garden, now that we know so many of Donald's ancestors came through those same gates that my own ancestors did.

Like most of you, I would imagine, I have quite a wish list of books and website subscriptions that would greatly help in my research. A couple of months ago, I joined the The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and can't wait to get my hands on the New York Family History Guide and Gazetteer and the New York City Municipal Archives guide.  But the NYG&B also has some great free resources.

Reading their guide to New York State census records saved me a lot of time searching for non-existent records. You can read it here to learn about the availability of each census, what areas may be missing in any particular year and what information was collected. It's really a must-read if you are researching in New York. At the end there is also a list of links to other articles that you may find useful; like Researching Irish Ancestors in NYS and Surprising Facts About Immigration to New York. NYG&B has a nice collection of webinars for members, they also have a YouTube channel with a few lectures than anyone can watch. This includes five hours of classes from the Fundamentals Day at the recent New York State Family History Conference. That is a must-watch if you haven't already.

In my ongoing research into Donald's family, I also want to learn more about Lutheran church records. Not only was Annie Miller Barry born into the Lutheran church, but I suspect that one of Donald's great-grandmothers, Emma Fredericks, and her ancestors were as well. For this I will need help from resources like the FamilySearch Wiki and a great book that I bought last year; How To Find Your Family in U.S. Church Records: A Genealogist's Guide by Sunny Jane Morton and Harold A. Henderson, CG.

Something I wrote about during this series was the National Library of Ireland website where you can find images from Irish Catholic parish registers. There is no index on their website and you won't get any hints as you may on Find My Past, but if you know your ancestor's home parish, you may be able to find them for free without the index or hints.

Facebook groups are a great way to access the "hive mind" when you are stuck on something. Back in 2013, Katherine R. Willson started a list of Facebook groups for genealogy. Her last update to the list was in January of this year, which you can find here. Since then, Cyndi Ingle of Cyndi's List has taken over and you can find that on her website, here, although as of the writing of this post it is still under construction.

Chronicling America is a free digitized newspaper resource from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. This is where I found the news article about William Barry's mourner who collapsed at the church before his funeral.

One last resource that I thought I would use more, especially for analyzing records in search of Annie Barry's year of birth, was Clooz. One of the drawbacks of this program is the data entry. It did get a bit ponderous and I admit that I lost patience for it, although that may have something to do with the fact that I desperately need new bifocals. Since concluding the series, I have gone back and entered the data for all of the records that I have for Annie, but I was not able to produce a report that would have been any help with this problem. I'll keep working with the software, though, and keep you posted when I've had a chance to watch more of their videos and use it more.

Of course, the most important thing to remember from all of this is that just because information has been "carved in stone," or even recorded in a parish register, doesn't make it correct!