One Good Idea - Your Ancestry - ItalianGen.org

by Fred Litt

Did your family live in NYC during the 20th century?

If you are researching your family history and your ancestors were born, married, or died in the five boroughs of New York City during the 20th century, you will love http://www.ItalianGen.org/ .

The City of New York keeps very good 'vital records' of its residents.  If you want copies of these records for you genealogical efforts, you will have to visit their offices in lower Manhattan or submit a mail order for a SEARCH, often costing $15.  What makes this process particularly difficult is that you must provide the respective year of the birth, marriage, or death in order for you to facilitate the SEARCH.  Without  the "event year", your SEARCH is almost doomed to failure.

To the rescue is the web site http://www.ItalianGen.org/ .  This site include tens of thousands of the City's vital records, all entered by volunteers.

With a little practice, searching is easy.  Somehow, the owner of this site has recieved ready access to the City's vital records files and, with the help of dedicated data operators, makes this data available to the public for FREE.

For example, I was looking for the date of my late grandparents' date of marriage, and, even better, a copy of their marriage certificate.  I had no information except their names, Albert Litt and Fannie Rothstein. 

I used the ItalianGen.org web site to search for "Albert Litt".  Sadly, I found nothing,  However, I was able to search using only "A Litt", and found a record for "Abie Litt" with a matching record for "Fannie Rothstein".  BINGO.  The website's marriage records data base gave me the date of their marriage and the City's Record Number for their marriage certificate.  With this data, I was able to successfully order their marriage certificate.  Wow!

If you are hitting a wall in your ancestry search, visit http://www.ItalianGen.org/ .


This article was provided by Fred Litt, Family Technology Associates, Allendale, NJ. Fred welcomes your comments and questions. Visit http://www.FamilyTechnology.com to learn more about Fred's professional efforts.

Email Fred at mailto:Fred@FamilyTechnology.com