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Research in Other Countries => United States of America => US Resources & Offers => Topic started by: shellyesq on Wednesday 30 September 15 14:31 BST (UK)
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I thought this organization might be of interest to people researching in the US.
http://www.reclaimtherecords.org/faq/
We’re a not-for-profit group of genealogists, historians, researchers, and open government advocates who are filing Freedom of Information requests to get public data released back into the public domain. We’re collecting information about archivally important data sets that are not available online or on publicly available microfilm, and we’re using Freedom of Information laws and Open Data initiatives to get copies of this information released back to the public.
We’re planning a series of requests for data under state Freedom of Information Laws, starting with New York City, New York State, and New Jersey archives and libraries. We started with one pilot project in 2015, and will be launching three more in early 2016.
Their newsletter, which can be seen here - http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=6a1be2dc76 - says they were successful in their first case trying to get the more detailed marriage license application for the NYC Municipal Archives.
Hopefully, these efforts will give greater and easier access to helpful records.
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This to-do list of Reclaim the Records may be useful for people to see availability of records and indexes in some states/cities: http://www.reclaimtherecords.org/to-do/
The requests that they are planning are listed here: http://www.reclaimtherecords.org/records-request/ If these requests are successful, they should be very helpful for people researching ancestors from New York and New Jersey.
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Reclaim the Records is reporting that they received the index to the New York City Clerk's Office marriage records for 1908-1929. They will be uploading the actual images of the index to the Internet Archive beginning Monday. They said that these records contain about 10% more records than the brides/grooms index that is currently transcribed on www.italiangen.org.
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Reclaim the Records has announced this:
THE INDEX TO THE NEW YORK CITY CLERK'S OFFICE MARRIAGE PAPERS (AFFIDAVITS, APPLICATIONS, AND LICENSES) FOR 1908-1929
https://archive.org/details/nycmarriageindex
Includes (so far) 48 items scanned from 39 microfilms:
MANHATTAN 1908-1929
BROOKLYN 1908-1929
BRONX 1914-1917
Still to come are nine more microfilms:
BRONX 1918-1929
QUEENS 1908-1930
STATEN ISLAND 1908-1938
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This just acquired and photographed
https://archive.org/details/nycmarriageindex
Topics with same information merged ~ moderator
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More good news from Reclaim the Records - the New York City marriage index from 1930-1995 will soon be available on the internet. http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=aee6566e00
Some early 20th century New Jersey BMD indexes are also coming soon - http://us11.campaign-archive1.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=3a4bc69cfc
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Great news thank you
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More good news from Reclaim the Records - the New York City marriage index from 1930-1995 will soon be available on the internet. http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=aee6566e00
And here it is: http://www.nycmarriageindex.com/
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They now have the New York City registered voters' list from 1924 online - http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=2af2a58d17&e=c04476a3fd
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The New York state death index is in the process of being rolled out. I found at least one person from 1898 already. :) Here is part of Reclaim the Records' message from Facebook:
This death index covers 1880-1956, which is seventy-seven years! Here are some things to keep in mind:
- 1880 and 1881 have very limited data, as the state law requiring reporting deaths to the state didn't have great compliance at first.
- 1943 is, unfortunately, extremely hard to read, and we don't know if any better copy exists. If there is, we'll go after it with a new FOIL request and scan it.
- New York City deaths are, for the most part, not included in this statewide death index. That's because New York City and New York State are completely different vital records jurisdictions. However, some deaths that were in neighborhoods that are part of modern-day New York City -- such as Flushing (Queens) or Canarsie (Brooklyn) -- do show up in the pre-1897/1898 statewide death index! That's because they weren't incorporated as part of the city yet at the time they were recorded.
- Three major cities are not included in this statewide death index until 1914 or 1915: Yonkers, Buffalo, and Albany. Reclaim The Records will be making three new and separate FOIL requests to those city clerks for the first-ever public copies of their 1880-1914 death indices, in order to complete the missing data.
- Finally, there is some disagreement over whether people who died at state-run mental institutions or developmental disability institutions were correctly included in the statewide death index. If you know of someone who died in one of those facilities, could you please check to see if they were in fact recorded in this index, and report back?
WHERE:
We're uploading all these files, year by year, to the Internet Archive (archive.org). Other websites, as well as individual researchers, are welcome to use, download, and even host the files on their own websites, and create transcription projects if they wish. The files are entirely in the public domain, free to use without any restrictions. If you do create a transcription, though, we'd appreciate just having our name mentioned, and a link back to our website (https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/).
Each year's worth of files can be very large, perhaps a 10 GB zip file for images for an earlier year, or 20 GB for later years, as the later years do have more names and therefore more images in them. We would recommend browsing through the data using the images hosted online on the Internet Archive's website, rather than trying to download the huge zip files to your computer on a slow home modem connection, but that's up to you.
Here's what the sample URL structure looks like:
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1880
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1881
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1882
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1883
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1884
https://archive.org/details/New_York_State_Death_Index_1885
...and so on. You get the idea, just change the year at the end of the URL to any year between 1880 and 1956.
The best way to see the WHOLE LIST of the items in the New York State Death Index collection will EVENTUALLY be through this direct link:
https://archive.org/details/nydeathindex
...but FOR THE MOMENT, you can do a search of what's available so far using this inexact link:
https://archive.org/search.php…
WHEN:
Some of these records are online and the images are browseable online right now. Some are online but you can't browse the images yet, they're only downloadable in giant zip files right now. And some of the records aren't online at all yet, but will be going online in the next few weeks.
Please have patience while we try to get everything in tip-top shape. We hope everything will be completely online and browsable by August 2017.
Reclaim The Records is changing that. If you like what we're doing, if you're happy to see vital records indices like this New York State death index returned to the public domain, and if you want to see this approach brought to more record sets in more states, we hope you'll consider making a contribution to our work. We recently applied for and won our 501(c)3 non-profit status from the IRS and will be announcing soon how you can make a tax-deductible donation to help us reclaim more records!
Until then, stay informed about what we're doing and what records we're planning on reclaiming on next! You can:
1) Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter through our website at https://www.ReclaimTheRecords.org/
2) Like our page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ReclaimTheRecords/
3) Read our snarky GIF-filled tweets on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ReclaimTheRecs/
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Thanks Shellyesq,
I hadn't seen this thread before....what a great source!
Annie
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Ancestry now has an index for these records. http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=61535
One thing worth keeping in mind is that some of the outer boroughs that are currently governed by New York City didn't become part of the city until 1898, which is after this death index began.
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Reclaim the Records has put in a request for the New York State marriage index 1881-2016, so hopefully there will be some movement on that in the next few months.
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The New Jersey marriage index 1901-2016 is now available thanks to Reclaim the Records. https://archive.org/details/njmarriageindex?sort=titleSorter
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They recently obtained the Buffalo, NY death index from 1852-1944. http://mailchi.mp/reclaimtherecords/bfvk8vew84-1631181
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A New Jersey death index that covers 1901-2017 with some gaps is now available here - https://www.newjerseydeathindex.com/