Family history research often begins with an interview. Speaking with your family to discover names, dates, locations, and important life events is one of the most important steps in delving into the genealogy world.
Interviewing newcomers, Ellis Island, Image ID 79880
Key facts that are essential springboards to researching your family history may be held by few (often older) family members. Genealogy researchers frequently express their regret in not pursuing these family details when they had the opportunity. Bits of information requiring intense research may very well be found by asking your family a few questions. Don’t wait until you find yourself saying “if only I had asked Great Aunt Mary...” her mother’s maiden name, or her parents’ ancestral town, or [insert your query here]. Talk to your family now!
Marcolla family, c. 1917
Alongside facts, personal narratives are just as important for genealogical and historical research. Stories help to provide personal insight to accompany the names and dates of genealogical research, and help to form a thorough account of someone’s life experiences. Consider your family as “eyewitnesses to history,” whose stories, memories, and traditions are important for both personal and historical contexts (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage).
Whether you’ve heard family stories countless times, or you’re curious to know more, it is important to sit down with your family and ask questions. You might be surprised by what you find in the process. Different relatives will provide varied bits of (sometimes conflicting) information. All of these pieces are essential in beginning the journey of uncovering your family history.
Interviews can provide you with a personal keepsake, a genealogical research tool, a piece of history, and an opportunity to learn more about your family.
My Experiences
Firefighter Popularity Contest, New York Evening Journal, c. 1924
I recently interviewed my grandparents in two respects:
To learn the facts (names, dates, and locations concerning their family history)
To record an oral history of their experiences growing up in Brooklyn and the Bronx
Fun facts I learned through this process include my great grandfather winning 2nd place in a city-wide “Most Popular Firefighter” contest, my grandfather witnessing the flag raising at Iwo Jima during his time in the navy, and (possibly exaggerated) stories of scandalous love confessions and acquaintances with the Mafia.
In addition to collecting information for genealogical research, interviewing your family presents an opportunity to better understand their lives. Taking time to speak about significant events, family traditions, and daily activities can be a fun, eye-opening experience. You may find yourself surprised by what you learn.
Where Do I Start?
Who?
Begin by interviewing older family members, but eventually aim to interview all of your relatives. Speak with people from different generations of your family. Stories and details may have been held and passed down by different lines of the family.
Preparation
Before your interview, consider what you’d like to know. Are you interested in a particular time period/subject, or a full-scale account of your interviewee’s life?
Conduct background research and plan questions.
Build rapport with your participant. Describe the nature of the project and some of the topics you’d like to talk about to help put the interviewee at ease. Your relatives can prepare for dates, details, and stories they would like to share.
LoFaro children, 1932
Logistics
Schedule the interview for a time and place (either in-person or over the phone) that is most convenient to your relative.
The interview should take place in a relaxed and comfortable environment (often at the interviewee’s home).
If you don’t know the relative well, bring someone who is more familiar to him/her. This mutual person may make an introductory phone call on your behalf.
Conversation Tips
Don’t interrogate your interviewees with details they might not remember, but instead think of the interview as a friendly discussion. Ask questions about names and dates as they arise naturally in conversation.
Show interest, listen carefully, maintain eye contact, and provide encouragement with nods and smiles—try not to interrupt.
Doing an activity alongside your relatives (e.g. walking, knitting, cooking) may help them reveal details more easily.
Marconi steel-tape machine, Image ID 1199776
Documenting the Interview
Take notes of important details and questions you may think of while your participant is speaking. You may also like to record the interview using a digital recorder/camera (ask permission!) so you can focus on the discussion rather than writing.
What Questions Do I Ask?
Prepare questions to use as a structural guide for your interview. Background research will help you determine what you want to know, what subjects you’d like to cover, and will help you ask better questions.
Structuring your questions: Questions should be concise and open-ended, allowing the interviewee opportunities to elaborate. Ask follow-up questions and engage in conversation. (e.g. Could you explain? Can you give me an example?)
Start with the basics: Begin with biographical questions (e.g. What is your name? Where were you born? Where did you grow up?)
Marcolla sisters, c. 1933
Genealogy focus: Ask names of family members and important dates (e.g. birth, death, marriage, date of immigration), and locations (e.g. where they lived and worked, native country and town).
Remembering family customs: Ask about family traditions, holiday celebrations, and cultural influences (e.g. my family had an aunt who draped homemade pasta all around her house).
Exploring local history: Ask for descriptions of hometowns, what it was like to grow up in a particular town and how it changed over time. Ask about community traditions and how the area was impacted by historical events.
Expect the unexpected: Don’t worry if the conversation strays from topics on your lists of prepared subjects. Allow interviewees the opportunity to tell their stories and speak freely—they may have experiences of which you were previously unaware. You can always redirect the interview to your original plan if strays too far off course.
Post-interview: Don’t forget to thank your participant. If the interview was recorded, give them a copy and have your participants sign release forms (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage).
Artifacts
Old photos and documents may help spark memories, prompt questions, and ease your interview into natural conversation. Ask to see your relatives’ old photos when you visit with them and bring photos of people who you'd like to discuss.
Marcolla family heirlooms
Artifacts can include photos, scrapbooks, letters, vital records, immigration documents, family Bibles, and a variety of other heirlooms.
Gathering artifacts can also jump start your family history research. Documents that would have required painstaking effort to locate may suddenly become available at the hand of a family member. In my case, a great aunt sent an 1880 Italian birth certificate (among other genealogical goodies), which provided essential clues and paved a path for future research. Simply asking your family for documents can solve mysteries and save you valuable time.
My interviews with relatives also revealed heaps of photos, a smattering of birth, marriage, and death certificates, wedding invitations, and a letter to the U.S. Navy inquiring about my grandfather, as he apparently did not write home very often during World War II.
Interviewing Guides
The following is a sampling of guides for more interviewing tips and best practices:
The Oral History Workshop, Call Number APB 11-2219
Many beginner genealogy handbooks also provide information on conducting interviews.
NYPL Oral History Projects
The Community Oral History Project documents New York City neighborhood histories through the stories of people’s experiences. Learn about the current projects, how to be an interviewer, and how to share your story. These interviews will be preserved in the Milstein Division, and will be accessible through circulating collections and online.
Undated aerial image of Times Square shows the impact of lights in the "crossroads of the world." Image ID: 1558469
Before there was a Times Square, the uptown intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue was known as Longacre Square, named after London’s carriage district. Long Acre in London was known for its horse-coach industry, a business that was shared in Manhattan's Longacre Square until nightlife and theaters pushed out the more rustic trade. The city’s density and development worked its way uptown, pushing the theater district into this region in the 1880s and '90s. The Gay '90s saw it flourish, and the hourglass shaped district between 42nd and and 47th Streets would become the crux of Broadway— the industry, not just the street name — also called the Great White Way.
Pabst hotel on the site of what would become One Times Square. Image ID: 723527F
Still called "Longacre Square" on this postcard which shows the new Times building. Image ID: 68247
Though Longacre Square was the official term prior to the Times Square name change, this area was at the northern end of what police of the time called The Tenderloin. Theaters abounded, as did brothels, and police of the time were known to profit from vice by collecting graft(2). The nickname “Tenderloin” did not stick as it did in San Francisco, where there is still an area with that name, but the reputation for prostitution, brothels, saloons, and nightclubs would linger.
Transitioning from quaint to flashy. Image ID: 1558486
Times Square only took a few years to transition from quaint to commercial. The 1909 view above shows a modest sign shop and toggery, but it also shows the Gaiety Theater and Churchill’s restaurant. Churchill’s was one of the area’s lobster palaces, described as the city’s first nightclubs: expensive, elegantly decorated, with orchestras, dancing and floor shows(3). Lobster palaces did serve lobster, but they also served up quite the party atmosphere. They thrived until Prohibition and were a defining characteristic of early Times Square(4). One guidebook of that era even calls out restaurants with cabaret and dancing with a star, Churchill’s among them.
Ad card for White Rock Water, 1912. Image ID: 809971
The above image from 1912 shows something for which Times Square is well known: sensational and impactful advertising. The advent of neon signage would particularly alter the look of Times Square as advertisers would compete against each other for the most eye-catching display. In Times Square Spectacular, author Darcy Tell wrote, “the most popular attractions in the district were free: enormous electric advertising signs that sprouted on roofs all over Times Square. Even on Sunday evenings, when the theaters were closed, crowds came to stroll up and down Broadway at the latest dazzling spectaculars.”
The Great White Way. Image ID: 836173
Broadway earned the nickname “The Great White Way” around the time that it became (possibly) the first street in America to be fully lit by electric light. The moniker moved uptown along the avenue as the theaters did, and by the time that Times Square was named, it was already there. The electrically lit advertising boon of the square helped the term stick. Over time, advertisements would become even brighter and more grandiose, and the theaters would remain centered along Times Square. One advertiser, O.J. Gude, has been attributed as the creator of the “Great White Way.” His ads changed the landscape and had a lasting impact.
1919 view of One Times Square. Image ID: 836167
Revues, such as Ziegfield Follies, were popular in the early days of Times Square. The influx of caberet changed the ambience of the lobster palaces to what many considered less “high class.” There was also an influx movie theaters influx after 1914. The Strand theater opened in April, 1914 — a huge movie palace which sat almost 3,500. Movie palace shows dominate the scene for the next few years and they adopted the elaborate lit ad styles to draw in movie-goers.
Night View with Subway Entrance, 1921. Image ID: 809972
The Wrigley’s sign seen above was in place from 1917-1924 and was a full block long. Crowds would come just to stare at this sign, and during World War I, it helped to promote war bond sales. When installed, it was the Gude Company’s largest sign ever. Advertising, movies, and tourism would dominate Times Square during the 1920s, when Prohibition’s policies and the subsequent economic depression would cause other types of Times Square businesses to fail, such as cabarets and theaters(5).
Dated via marquees: Jack LaRue in “Hot off the Press” Baer vs. Louis Fight 1935. Image ID: TH-57049
Many live performance theaters converted to movie theaters during the Great Depression. Vaudeville was especially hard hit by the advent of sound film. The Depression saw a rise to more bawdy entertainment and several burlesque shows, theaters that catered to ‘murder, mayhem, and adventure,” and post-Prohibition, the opening of several small bars(6). The Encyclopedia of New York City states “the neighborhood changed dramatically after the stock market crash of 1929. Few new theaters were built, and during the Depression many existing ones were converted into cheap ‘grinder’ houses that offered continuous showings of sexually explicit films.” This era also brought burlesque shows, peep shows, penny arcades, and dime museums to the neighborhood.
Service on the IRT Flushing Line (7 Train) subway line under 42nd Street was increased when the line expanded from Grand Central to Times Square in the 1920s. In addition, this train was part of the city’s efforts to get people to the 1939 World’s Fair (records at NYPL) location in Queens. WPA employees removed several of the existing surface streetcars tracks as subway service increased.
1945, Times Square is iconized in this photo while celebrating V-J Day.
The glamorous reputation of Times Square remained largely intact during the Great Depression, despite the influx of more ‘bawdy’ businesses, and World War II brought renewed prosperity as well as many who catered to the entertainment of military personnel on their way overseas. Pop culture such as the Broadway play and Hollywood film On the Town demonstrate this, but the area soon became a haven for prostitution and hustlers. Attempts to thwart to growth of sex-related businesses in the 1950s mostly missed the mark. Watch footage of Times Square in the 1950s via YouTube.
Subway arcade, 1960
By 1960, the New York Times ran an article titled “Life on W. 42nd St. A Study in Decay” in which the area is called “the ‘worst’ in town.” In this article, the reporter dwells on the elements that gave Times Square its reputation: vandalism, prostitution (hetero- and homosexual), loitering (especially in the subway arcades), shops selling knives or sexually explicit materials, grindhouse theaters, and believe it or not, loneliness and rock ‘n’ roll. In the book The Devil’s Playground, author James Traub analyzes the article, which ran front page in the Times, saying that things had not suddenly become more deviant in Times Square, just more visible.
1969 Gay Liberation Front march on Times Square. Image ID: 1582230
Scenes of Times Square in 1969's Midnight Cowboy and 1976's Taxi Driver
Additional visibility of the area came from the Oscar-winning film Midnight Cowboy. This article by the Bowery Boys gives a comprehensive summary of the film and its relation to locations in New York, mostly along Times Square.
1976, Cast Member of Musical “Pacific Overtures”. Image ID: swope_5556279
The 1976 film Taxi Driver“begins with a blurry surreal trip through Times Square and the surrounding blocks” [via Scouting NY], so Times Square as a setting in this era essentially tells viewers a lot about what they need to know about Robert De Niro’s lead character Travis Bickle, who works the night shift driving cabs in the epitome of 1970s seediness. The Scouting NY ‘before and after’ images really present the remarkable changes that Times Square has seen since revitalization efforts gained momentum in the 1980s and '90s.
Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins all had a hand in development plans for Times Square, but Mayor Rudy Giuliani is most often associated with the movement that brought big businesses, such as large-scale theaters, retail shops, restaurants, and hotels back into Times Square. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration brought in pedestrian plazas which allowed more free movement in the area. Sometimes referred to as “Disneyfication,” redevelopment in Times Square has been intense in the last 30 years. This interactive feature of the New York Times shows the changes. Over time, Times Square has offered both the high life and the underbelly of New York, and it seems that New Yorkers demand both aspects of their city.
Current image via Google Street View
Current Google Street View shows a different Times Square, the product of two dozen years of revitalization efforts. One Times Square is obscured by the electronic billboards that bring in more revenue than leasing the building to tenants would. It’s still a place of theater culture, of massive hotels, of busy subways (the busiest!), and shopping.
Atlas of Hudson County, Bayonne, NJ. 1919. Image ID: 3991145
“: a local pride; spring, summer, fall and the sea; a confession…” - William Carlos Williams, Paterson.
In 1609, Dutch explorer Henry Hudson sailed west from the port of Galway Bay in search of a northwest passage to Indo-Russia. Crossing the Atlantic, Hudson instead found northeast passage to New Jersey. The explorer sent men inland who returned with red and green tomatoes the size of bowling balls which they had seized from the food supplies of the Seminole indigenous tribes whom inhabited the stretch of Pine Bogs along the Union City River. Returning to Europe, Hudson and his men distributed their booty of tomatoes on the black markets of the Midlands and the Andalusian steppe, where the fruit eventually found its way to Southern Italy. So goes the genealogy of the pasta sauce.
Confused? Alarmed? Enlightened? If the truth of these facts provokes questioning, the local history resources related to New Jersey available in the New York Public Library's Milstein Division might prove a useful pursuit. The division holds an abundance of genealogical and historical material related to the state once known as a “barrel tapped at both ends,” given the migratory magnetism of the neighboring Big Apple and City of Brotherly Love.
Perhaps familiar to New Yorkers as a garden state of smokestacks, or surrogate playing field for the Jets and Giants, or otherworld of childhood memory, New Jersey bucks understanding from without and blinkers perspective from within. It is where Albert Einstein died and Joe Pesci was born; during the American Revolution, the colony was defended by the rebel father of Robert E. Lee and governed in exile by the Tory son of Benjamin Franklin; South Mountain Reservation in West Orange served as the shooting locale for The Great Train Robbery (1903), the archetype of movie westerns, produced by Thomas Edison, whose 60,000 square foot lab was down the hill off Northfield Avenue; and in 1981 Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco along Kittatinny Ridge in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area was the setting of grade-Z slasher franchise Friday the 13th. “The Voice” turns 100 this year, and the ref desk in Room 121 is ready for questions on The Chairman’s family history or his history with the Family.
While New Jersey was the first Mid-Atlantic state to legislate the registry of vital record information, in 1848, and the third in the U.S., it also has been lamented as infamously underdocumented, with gaping holes in the record because of British destruction of courthouses, churches and county repositories in the Revolutionary War, in addition to patterns of delinquent recordkeeping. 19th century Boards of Freeholders have been known to sell off pension documents as waste paper, and county clerks to chuck out marriage records over 20 years old. In 1997, using a calculation based on the ratio of historical publications to state population, the Task Force on New Jersey History determined that New Jersey ranked the lowest of the original thirteen states. However, as noted by legion NJ genealogist Kenn Stryker-Rodda, NYPL, in combination with the NY Historical Society and Brooklyn Historical Society, contains more “unofficial documents” on New Jersey than all the collections within the state itself.
“New Jersey genealogy,” says Stryker-Rodda, “is not for the lazy minded, the unimaginative, or those who demand quick results.” Collections in the Milstein Division now include the humongous addition of the unique Jersey resources formerly housed at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. Yet, while the NYPL catalog lists 121 entries under the subject heading “New Jersey—History,” searching “New York (N.Y.)–History” brings up 781 entries. The spike in curatorship of New York City’s past since the 1970s has yielded hundreds of documentaries, microhistories, neighborhood blogs, targeted guidebooks and revisionist museum exhibits, while in comparison New Jersey has benefited briefly from the best show in TV history, The Sopranos, to the worst, Jersey Shore.
New Jersey materials have been a highlight of research collection policy at the Local History and Genealogy Division since the inception of the New York Public Library. Whether appreciated or unfairly deprecated, the proximity to New York City, a symbiotic early colonial history, and a major legacy of cross-migration and industrial connections, qualifies New Jersey’s past at NYPL as local history.
Proposed NYC-NJ Tunnel. 1919. Image ID: 810062
Local History
With a total area of 4.8 million acres, and 1,200 inhabitants per square mile, New Jersey is the most densely populated state in America. In land area only larger than Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island, New Jersey tallies 8.8 million people within 7,355 square miles; roughly twice the amount of residents of Ireland but nearly one-fourth the size.
New Jersey is a peninsula, with only 48 miles of border out of a total 480 that are land-based. Traditionally, migration to New Jersey was aquatic; into the ports of Newark and Perth Amboy from Long Island and New England, down the Passaic River from New York State , and up or across the Delaware River from Pennsylvania.
What colonial proprietors in the 17th and 18th centuries once officially delineated as East and West Jersey is today perceived in the idioms of North and South Jersey. North Jersey is roughly the seaport crook of hyperpopulation and industry that converges with New York City, with the stretch of Highlands bordering New York State that includes a patch of the Appalachian Trail. South Jersey is anchored in Delaware Bay by Cape May, flanked at the ocean by Atlantic City and coordinated east of Philadelphia across the Delaware River by the city of Camden. The state capital of Trenton is too equatorial to easily fit in either domain, and the New Jersey coastline, “down the shore,” from Sandy Hook Bay down to Cape May, straddles both sections, whether proprietary or imaginary. Summerers in Belmar, N.J. refer to Union County as “up north,” while on a clear day the Rockaways in Queens might be visible from the beach, and Atlantic City is still a two hour drive south.
Bayonne Bridge. Image ID: 730854F
New Jersey was known as the “Corridor State” in the American Revolution, the “connector of North and South.” If the Mason-Dixon line had extended to the Atlantic Ocean, six counties in New Jersey would fall south of the border. Conversely, between 1685-1692, Boston was the capital of New Jersey, when King James, the former Duke of York, corralled all the New England colonies under one short-lived dominion. In the Civil War era NJ was sometimes referred to as a “border state” because of its strong Democratic politics and softness on slavery. When George McClellan, former Major-General of the Union Army, ran against President Lincoln on the Democratic ticket in 1864, he lived in West Orange, NJ.
In the late 18th and early 19th century, Jersey gave women and blacks suffrage rights equal to white male property-owners, on an alleged typographical error that was soon revoked, and was “the last state in the north to abolish slavery.” However, the inductive Quaker presence in early East Jersey led to the subtle initiation of free African-Americans as landowners in the Shrewsbury area south of the Navesink River. Monmouth County Deed Books show multiple real estate transactions involving free blacks, dating just before passage of the Gradual Abolition Act (1804) through the end of the Civil War. The town of Fair Haven was a viable active black community where locals organized as trustees of schools and the Methodist Episcopal Mount Zion Church.
Land Use
Colonial land transactions are the key but controversial legacy around which much of the local and genealogical history of early New Jersey revolves. As recounted in numerous writings on early Jersey history, the territory formally originated as an English colony with two separate claims to the land.
In 1664, anticipating the submission of the Dutch West India Company to British forces, King Charles II granted northeast regions in the New World to his brother, James, Duke of York, while those areas were still known as New Netherland. New Amsterdam and Fort Orange upstate were increasing in size and consequence, while the central areas west of the lower Hudson River were inhabited by the Unami, the Turtle Clan; north by the Minsis, the Wolf Clan; and southwest by Unalachtigo tribes, the Turkey clan. These Delaware Indians outnumbered the additional handful of Germans and Scandinavians in 1660s NJ. The Pavonia Massacre in 1643, when Dutch marauders slaughtered Lenni Lenape men, women and children in modern Jersey City, was one of several imperial acts which disposed the Indian tribes in Jersey lands as violently intolerant of Dutch colonists, whom generally stayed out of in fear of attacks.
Massacre of Indians at Pavonia. Image ID: 834404
The Duke of York, also known as the Duke of Albany, was appointed lord high admiral after the Restoration, and fervently supervised the operations of the English navy to out-contend the supremacy in world trade of the Dutch, with whom England feuded in 1652, then 1665, and again in 1672. In the New World, King Charles assumed the right to overrule colonial authority, alter boundaries, and seize territory by conquest. The King granted James “an astonishing assortment of lands extending from the St. Lawrence to the Delaware.” Before the Dutch surrendered their port colony, having been promised English citizenship under royal oath in exchange for sustaining the well-established Dutch court system, the Duke of York conveyed land-granting powers to incipient Governor Richard Nicholls, who issued the “Duke’s Laws,” renamed the colony, and referred to New Jersey as “Albania.”
Nicholls validated the 1664 purchase between Long Island settlers John Ogden, John Bailey, Daniel Denton and Luke Watson, and Lenni Lenape real estate agents Mattano Manamowaouc and Couesccoman, for 500,000 acres of land in what was once a scarcely colonized sprawl of New Netherland between the Raritan and Passaic Rivers, and which would later form the counties of Essex and Union. The men were now freeholders of the flatlands west of the Hudson River, and formed what would be known as the Elizabethtown Associates.
Meanwhile, soon after the departure of Nicholls from English ports, the Duke of York, flush with the megalomania of impending conquest, was seized with magnanimity. Having just empowered Nicholls to issue land patents in his new domain, the Duke, apparently without any sense of contradiction, bestowed the lands of Albania to loyal friends from the Admiralty, Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley, who received the vast acreage in the form of a proprietorship. Sir George got “East Jersey” and Lord John “West Jersey,” which divisions, in various permutations, would characterize the state through the 21st century.
Map of East and West Jersey. 1682. Image ID: 433742
The divisions were split by a roughly 45 degree boundary line between Little Egg Harbor and Minisink Island in the Delaware River, today in Sussex County.
Lord Berkeley had been loyal to the Stuart brothers when Cromwell drove out the monarchy, and joined Charles and James in exile on the Isle of Jersey, near the coast of France, which was the domain of Sir George Carteret, later to hold the office of Treasurer of the British Navy.
His Royal Highness, James, Duke of York and Albany. Image ID: 423111
Sir George and Lord John were invested with shareholding rights within their divisions, the authority to collect remunerations for the use of the property, and the ability to transfer proprietorship to other parties. However, this arrangement would have voided any title obtained in the manner of the freeholders who purchased land under the Nicholls grant, known as “headrights,” and instead would have beheld the settlers to “quit-rent” payments to the proprietors rather than ownership.
The years 1664 to 1702 form the first period of dispute and civic upheaval over the proprietary claims to the lands of East and West Jersey. Before Nicholls was finally made aware of the Duke’s deal with Carteret and Berkeley, due to the lumbering dispatch of letters via oceanic passage, the Governor had authorized the sale of numerous Jersey lands both East and West. An increasing amount of settlers claimed that the Duke had never properly owned the land, the proprietorship was false, and no rent should be due.
Little resolution was achieved, including the name of the settlement. The proprietors claimed that Elizabethtown was named for the wife of Sir George, while the ex-Long Islanders claimed the provenance in honor of the Queen. Still, the territory acquired its etymological ancestor from the isle birthplace of Sir George Carteret, Nova Caesarea, New Caesarea, New Jaesarea, New Jersey.
The “Concessions and Agreements” issued in 1665 by the Jersey proprietors provided for a registry of land transactions and the guarantee of “liberty of conscience” and freedom of religion. Persecuted and ambitious Quakers settled rampantly in West Jersey, and Newark was founded by Congregationalists sailing into the Passaic River from the puritanically constricted settlements of Connecticut. Though a more indiscriminate mandate on religion was proffered in order to attract more settlers, whom arrived chiefly from Long Island and New England, atheists were not tolerated. It may be that today atheists are better tolerated in New Jersey than settlers from Long Island or New England…
Original trustees such as the Elizabethtown Associates were ineluctably forced to reckon the political and economic disposition of the proprietary system, which was rooted in English plantation laws and the feudal relationship between owners and tenants. But little had been codified in distinguishing the right to political office and legislative decision in relation to the conveyance of land title. Both sides invested their own idea of land rights with political consequence, and confusion between the act of land-holding and the right to govern was sustained. The trustees contended that the Duke’s gift to the Lords was simply a “grant of the soil,” with no transfer of governmental powers. The Council of Proprietors sought to enforce laws and create political bodies while collecting quitrent payments, akin to dues for occupation and husbandry of the land, often in the form of barrels of pork.
In 1670, Philip Carteret, a young cousin of Sir George, debarked at New Jersey as a representative of the proprietors, assumed the role of governor of both East and West Jersey, yet, ironically, soon bought into the Elizabethtown Associates, which group was disputing the claims of the proprietors. Complicating the gnarled network of antagonisms, New York Governor Sir Edmund Andros demanded that Carteret yield all Jersey authority to New York. Philip balked and asserted that Jersey, though in adherence to the “Duke’s Laws,” garnered its own independent jurisdiction, and as a result, vessels trading in Jersey ports were exempt from paying customs to New York. Governor Sir Edmund Andros did not agree with this, and subsequent to further brinkmanship, ordered gubernatorial henchmen to invade the home of Carteret, drag the Jerseyman from his bed, imprison him in New York State, and administer a vicious drubbing that caused permanent and eventually fatal wounds to New Jersey’s first governor.
The Landing of Governor Carteret in New Jersey. Image ID: 1207338
The Crown sought to equalize these disagreements in 1702 with the appointment of a Royal Governor of both New York and New Jersey, Lord Cornbury, to whom the proprietors relinquished governmental power. However, disputes continued into the 1730s and 1740s, with land riots in West Jersey and the successful jailbreak in Newark of dispossessed yeomen Robert Young and Thomas Sergeant, orchestrated by a determined gathering of three-hundred citizens armed with cudgels and staves. The militia cocked their muskets, the sheriff drew his sword, but the jailbreakers were not attacked and the two men went free.
In the ensuing years, lawsuits neared a resolution, but appeals to the king, claims of errors in the proceedings, and overruled verdicts stalled both clarity and closure.
In Historical and Genealogical Miscellany; Data Relating to the Settlement and Settlers of New York and New Jersey (1903), one of the many compilations of NJ local history available in the Milstein Division, one finds the brief “Discourse By Way of Dialogue between an old Inhabitant of the County of Monmouth and a Proprietor of the Eastern Division of New Jersey.” The succinct dialogue between “William” and a nameless proprietor is contemporary to the 17th century and demonstrates the convictions of landowners against the claims of the proprietors:
Pro. You Will not allow then that King Charles had a Right to the Soil. Therefore the Proprietors none.
Will. No because he never had it by Discovery Conquest Gift nor Contract. Therefore no right to the Soil.
Pro. Pray by what title Do you Pretend to hold your Land if not by patent from the Proprietors, Wee hold our Land by an honest Purchase and Consideration paid for.
Will. A Title Derived from a Charter Granted to the Sons of Adam by the Great and Absolute proprietor of the Whole Universe God almighty and has Stood Recorded In the best record on Earth 3,198 years…
Pro. Then you Deny that there is any acknowledgement due to the Proprietors?
Will. Yes Wee Do.
William’s glib Jersey-style comeback merges a Protestant eco-evangelism with the minutiae of early U.K. land laws.
The Tombstone of Aaron Burr, Princeton, NJ. Image ID: 420481
Library Resources
When searching the NYPL classic catalog for genealogy materials that relate to a specific region, it is always most useful to conduct subject searches by county name to yield the most comprehensive results:
Materials will include local histories, periodicals, estate records, business information, family trees, travelogues, guidebooks, and anecdotal miscellanea, in addition to official reports on potentially relevant subjects such as environmental conditions, municipal projects, transportation, demographics, and agriculture. Also, the Map Division is abundant with NJ collections:
[COUNTY] (N.J.) -- Maps.
New Jersey -- Maps.
Atlantic Coast (N.J.) -- Maps.
Subject headings are highly useful for grouping together materials on a specific topic, but sometimes are not all-inclusive. Hours could be spent browsing the results of a simple subject search using “New Jersey,” or pairing the state with a topical search term in a keyword search, like “transportation” or “Muslims” or “oysters.” For instance, if a researcher were interested in 19th century sources on NJ fraternal organizations, a potentially rich avenue of genealogy or local history, one will not find subject headings which group together the many items in NYPL collections on this subject. Keywords are needed. Pairing the phrase “New Jersey” with keywords like “proceedings” or “organization” or “minutes” will yield more heterogeneous results on private groups, political clubs, and legislative actions.
The contents of the four volume Genealogical and Memorial History of the State of New Jersey (1910), edited by Francis Bazley Lee, is summed up by its subtitle, “a record of the achievements of her people in the making of a commonwealth and the founding of a nation.” The first entry is for the Frelinghuysen family, described as having given New Jersey “more great and distinguished men in proportion to their numerical strength as a body of individuals than almost any other family.” Patriarch Theodorus Jacobus was born in 1691 in East Friesland, ordained a minister in 1715 and three years later charged with leading the congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Raritan Valley. A number of constituents accused Frelinghuysen of heresy because of the askew interpretations of church teachings in his sermons. “Evangelical fervor” combined with a habit of “autonomous actions” characterized the minister’s tenure, along with official complaints, threats of excommunication, and demands for “Peace Articles” that would reckon the domine to the church status quo. Frelinghuysen was an independent but strict mind. Family descendants would include Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, at whose country home in Somerset County President Warren G. Harding signed the 1921 treaty to formally end World War I. Today, an avenue is named for the family out by Newark International Airport.
The Milstein Division holds multiple boxes of historic travel and promotional brochures, arranged by city. This evocative collection is uncataloged and undigitized, but easily accessible by visiting Room 121 in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and inquiring with a reference librarian.
The NYPL online digital gallery features thousands of finely zoomable photos, illustrations, cartographic and atlas collections, portraits, and stereographs. Search the online Picture Collection for images pulled from books, magazines and newspapers among the 30,000+ visual materials collected at the Mid-Manhattan Library.
It is advisable to search the NYPL Archives and Manuscripts Home Page for potential New Jersey primary sources. A related stand-out trove is the Stryker-Rodda collection, comprising the papers of the F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald of tri-state area genealogy.
Jersey Marriage document. 1782. NYPL Manuscripts and Archives. Image ID: 4005164
In addition, the digital databases available at NYPL are serendipitous sources of regional Jersey history, as the below three examples might illustrate:
The 49 page guidebook All Rail to Long Branch: a work descriptive of the new all-rail route from New York via the New York & Long Branch R.R. to the sea shore of New Jersey, and of the summer metropolis of America (1875) at HeritageQuest Online;
A spike in New Jersey scholarship over the last fifteen years is well reflected in the volumes made available through the library’s account with Project Muse, where numerous books and academic anthologies regarding NJ subjects are available to patrons in the research libraries. Most notably invaluable are A New Jersey Anthology (2010) and New Jersey: A History of the Garden State (2012), both published by Rutgers University Press and edited by Maxine N. Lurie, professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Seton Hall University.
The controversy over proprietorship versus patent is well-recounted in books, local histories, and the Guide to the Records of the East and West Jersey Proprietors, only recently processed and made available by the NJ State Archives. Plenty of land records and transcribed primary sources are published in Jersey serials like New Jersey History and the Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. Because of the thorny, abstruse, multi-lapping and contradictory predicament of early Jersey land records, cross-referencing among primary and secondary resources is recommended. Use the below subject headings as points of entry for NYPL collections:
Centuries back, roads were scarce and the capitals distant. It was common for land transactions to remain unrecorded for many years because of travel difficulties, which is ironic for a state later stereotyped for its manifold mandala of interstates, parkways, highways, skyways and turnpikes, which toll roads in NJ trace back at least to the first decade of the 19th century in boosting transit and generating cash. The first Public Roads Act was passed in 1673 by the East Jersey Assembly, the local governing body organized by the landowners under the Nicholls grant.
The land records of the East Jersey and West Jersey Proprietors have only recently migrated to the collections at the NJ State Archives in Trenton. In 1998, the East Jersey records moved from their 300+ year old home in the former colonial capital of Perth Amboy, and not until 2005 did the West Jersey Proprietors do likewise from the former capital at Burlington. “The main purpose of proprietary records,” says NJ State Archivist Joseph R. Klett, “is to document land surveys and the initial severance of title from the proprietors.”
Numerous resources in the Milstein Division are available for tracking the shifting county boundaries and emergence of new counties from former territories, as in the creation of Union County from a chunk of Essex in 1857. Three in particular:
In 1777 New Jersey founded one of its earliest newspapers, the New Jersey Gazette, in South Jersey, while two years later East Jersey found the New Jersey Journal. Both were funded by the state as instruments of “war measure,” though the Journal was a paper for the military while the Gazette was espoused by the State Legislature and Governor William Livingston. “I can assure you,” the Governor wrote to printer Isaac Collins, a Quaker from Trenton, “that the blaze of our Eastern Comet the New Jersey Journal has not diverted my attention from the western light the Gazette…” Unlike New York City across the Hudson from East Jersey and Philadelphia across the Delaware from West Jersey, the “Cockpit of the Revolution” operated a state-funded press unthwarted by Tory command, but belabored by lack of paper and the routine capture of post-riders who dispatched the issues and collected subscriptions.
Collins was continuously struggling for funds, often printing his news using old army “tent-bags,” and supplemented the state money by operating a general store, selling paper and printing goods, and hosting slave traders. Dependent on the state for finances, Collins maintained his publication’s independence of opinion. Collins printed a caustic and tasteless attack on Governor William Livingston, the benefactor of the Gazette, under the alias Cincinnatus, and when the Legislature demanded Collins reveal the true name of the author, the printer refused, publishing under his own byline two pieces titled “Liberty of the Press.”
New Jersey is currently represented somewhat marginally by digitized newspaper resources, most of which early printings are found in the database America’s Historical Newspapers, including the Gazette, and in America’s Historical Imprints, a useful database of distributed printed matter that may serve as an indirect point of entry for business information, city directories, or local history information.
NYPL collections include many obscure, older, or short-run NJ newspapers on microfilm. A major exception is the Hudson County succession of newspapers that evolved into The Jersey Journal, which, though a major publication in the industrial, commercial, and highly residential metro peninsula of Hudson County, the paper is only available in full on microfilm at a handful of Jersey repositories, and digitally by subscription online. In addition, the New Brunswick Public Library has begun a newspaper digitization project.
[ETHNIC GROUP -“Americans”] -- New Jersey -- Newspapers.
As a result of the absence of comprehensive or complete collections of New Jersey genealogy sources, and the scattershot predicament of NJ records, the use of serials and publications may yield tractable results. The open stacks in the Milstein Division, Room 121, feature extensive runs of the two most valuable NJ genealogy journals, New Jersey History and the Genealogy Magazine of New Jersey (GMNJ).
GMNJ, issued triennially by the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, publishes the commonly sought but not always found genealogical timber that builds family history research. A surname index provides the point of entry for family notes and lineage histories, baptismal rolls and registers of vital information, gravestone inscriptions, 18th century loan office records, tax ratable lists, church records, county census schedules, an ongoing series reprinting New Jersey Supreme Court Cases (1704-1760), and likewise information. Issues on the open stacks in the Milstein Division run to 2004 and current issues can be accessed in Room 119.
New Jersey History, the successor publication to the Proceedings of the NJ Historical Society (first published 1845), is a Willowbrook Mall of niche articles covering a multivalence of historical NJ subjects, with titles like “Strikes and Society: Civil Behavior in Passaic (1875-1926);” “Ezra Pound’s Tribute to Newark;” and “Oraton, Sachem of Hackensack.” Issues can be navigated using a bibliographic index (1845-1992) of subjects, names, and authors, or a subject index (1845-1919). Many issues of the Proceedings and NJH can be accessed at NYPL research libraries using the digital database HathiTrust, and all issues are available either in the Milstein Division open stacks or by request. Current issues are made available freely online by Rutgers University Libraries (2009-present).
New Jersey Genesis and The Jerseyman: A Quarterly Magazine of Local History & Genealogy are two additional genealogy journals offering much research fodder for the Garden State. Issues of The Jerseyman are in copyright and available in NYPL digital databases.
Often incomplete and unindexed, state censuses were taken in New Jersey every ten years between 1855-1915. NYPL collections include Jersey state census schedules on microfilm in Room 119 of the Schwarzman building. Locate these materials in the catalog using the below suggested subject headings:
[NAME OF COUNTY OR CITY] (N.J.) -- Census, [YEAR].
New Jersey -- Census, [YEAR].
Rarely are indexes available for these census records. NJ state censuses are arranged by local township, borough, precinct or ward district, and searchable by municipal subdivision. Once the locality is identified, one must browse the pages for the subject name or address. If an address is unknown, NYPL holds numerous NJ city directories, which are described in a subsequent section below. It can be a foggy procedure and patrons should inquire with Milstein librarians beforehand about research steerage in Jersey census records.
Up to 1895, the state census did not list address. Columns indicating nationality are divided by German-born, Irish, or “other,” suggesting the high populations of Germans and Irish, and the marginalization of New Jersey’s abundant first and second generation ethnic populations. The 1905 state census is the first to list a street address, and includes the birthplace of parents, with the exclusive nativity columns for German and Irish removed. The 1915 schedules include occupations and the school attended by enumerated children. Sometimes the school will be named, but often the column will simply indicate “grammar” or “high school,” with a column for public, private or parochial.
In addition, for Federal census indexes that zero in on a particular NJ county or city, use the above census subject headings for population schedules and indexes as well as nonpopulation schedules like mortality, manufacturing, or Merchant Seaman schedules.
Tax ratables abstracted and indexed by genealogist Kenn Stryker-Rodda act as a “census of the heads of families and of bachelors who had a source of income outside the family.” Cattle, horses and swine are enumerated, but not children; families might have been taxed according to horned animals and fatback, but not kids. These tax lists are published in multiple issues of the Genealogy Magazine of New Jersey and in the microform series County Tax Ratables, 1778-1822 [New Jersey]. Also useful is Revolutionary Census of New Jersey; an index, based on ratables, of the inhabitants of New Jersey during the period of the American Revolution / Kenn Stryker-Rodda.
Cranberry picker from Browns Mills, NJ. 1910. Image ID: 464525
The earliest Jersey directories date back to circa 1830. NYPL collections, accessed on microfilm, can be located in the catalog using the below subject headings:
Directories include basic residential listings, business, the county farm journal, and railroad directories, and specialized reference publications like The Classified Directory of Negro Business Interests, Professions of Essex County, compiled by Ralph William Nixon for the Bureau of Negro Intelligence, Newark, New Jersey (1920). For digitized directories, Ancestry has dozens of towns and counties dating up to the late 1950s, for both major hubs like New Brunswick or small exurbs like Verona.
The pre-proprietary landowners recognized binding real estate transactions with Delaware tribes, which, though civilized and nonviolent, slowly extinguished the peoples from the territory. At the time of first European contact, the indigenous population of New Jersey is estimated between 8-12,000; by 1700, the number was around 2,400-3,000; in 1763 had dwindled to less than 1,000; and by 1800 diminished to fewer than 200. These tribes migrated out of the state with little traces of assimilation into New Jersey culture. East Jersey laws in the 1660s allowed tribesmen to collect the bounty on killed wolves, but white men were fined heavily for sharing liquor with any indigenous people. In 1832, Delaware professor and Revolutionary War veteran Shawuskukung, or “Wilted Grass,” known to whites as Bartholomew S. Calvin, successfully petitioned the state legislature for $2,000 in land reparations. The speech was published in The Daily Union History of Atlantic City and County, New Jersey.
Subject headings for indigenous history:
Delaware Indians -- History.
Delaware Indians.
Delaware Indians -- Folklore.
New Jersey Indians Of North America.
Russian Church and Orphanage. Image ID: 490751
Religion, Racial and Ethnic Subjects
NYPL collections should be mined for materials that support the multiethnic and polysectarian identity of Jersey, a subject whose scope demands its own research guide. As usual, key subject headings are a springboard:
[ETHNICITY] – New Jersey – History.
[RACIAL GROUP] – New Jersey – [ COUNTY OR TOWN].
[RELIGIOUS GROUP] – New Jersey – [SUBJECT].
[RELIGIOUS GROUP] – New Jersey – [COUNTY OR TOWN].
Rounding out NYPL collections is the salmagundi of external resources available for Jersey research. Birth, marriage and death certificates can be accessed by contacting the New Jersey State Archives. Select vital information is made available online at the New Jersey Vital Records Searchable Databases, plus population schedules for Passaic County and Atlantic City in the 1885 state census, along with additional digitized collections including the Federal Writers' Project photographs, Civil War Service Records, and Early Land Records (1650-1801) of the East and West Jersey Proprietors.
Hopefully, many things have been left out, unexplained, forgotten, glossed over, or abandoned to the Meadowlands off Route 3 in Secaucus. Librarians in the U.S. History, Local History & Genealogy Division encourage researchers to reach out to the reference desk in Room 121, where New York City collections, like the Statue of Liberty, share a land border with New Jersey.
Hungarian Family at Ellis Island, all of whom were deported. 1905. Image ID: 417071
If you have done any family history research, such as looking for records on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org or conducting interviews with older family members, you may have pondered writing about your genealogy research. Here are 20 reasons why you should cease pondering and start writing:
You’ll feel wiser.
In 2014, ⅓ online adults used the Internet to learn more about their family history.
67% said that knowing their family history has made them feel wiser as a person.
72% said it helped them be closer to older relatives.
52% said they discovered ancestors they had not known about.
Ancestry.com, Global Study of Users, 2014
First person narratives and family histories are important historical documents.
“You are doing a service by leaving a legacy, no matter how small or large.” “The interesting stories in your life have become familiar to you… The novelty of these stories is most apparent to someone hearing them for the first time.” The Story of You: A Guide for Writing Your Personal Stories and Family History, John Bond, 2014
You are an important person. You have things to pass on, to your children, to your local history society, to unknown future generations.
Writing your family history gives you the chance to depict your ancestors how you see fit.
“You cannot write our story. You have no right.”
In 2004, Native Americans react to depictions of their ancestors in documents about Lewis & Clark. History News, Summer 2014
There is a need for diverse family histories about those who have not been represented well in history texts.
“For members of marginalized groups, speaking personally and truthfully about our lives plays a small part in erasing years of invisibility and interpretation by others.” Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, Judith Barrington, 1997
There is a need for more family histories documenting female lines.
“The traditional descendants-of genealogy usually begins with the immigrant and follows descendants for some number of generations. Often they have a paternalistic bent and follow only male descendants who bore the surname….In the future we hope to see less short-changing of maternal lines and collateral lines in published material.” Producing a Quality Family History, Patricia Law Hatcher, 1996
There is a need for more family histories about families who are not affluent.
“Genealogical publishing [in the past] was accessible primarily to the affluent…. Modern genealogists are researching ancestors who are relatively recent immigrants, landless, illiterate, living on the frontier or migrating. There seems to be a trend away from idealizing our ancestors.” Producing a Quality Family History, Patricia Law Hatcher, 1996
Paiute Family in Yosemite, circa 1900. Image ID: 1690994
Family histories humanize the people you know or knew and remember for those who did not know them.
Information raises questions. Genealogy research has brought new facts into your life.
“They research and write down when and where mom and dad were married. I don’t want to say accurate facts aren’t important, but I do question priorities here. The facts, or at least the important facts, of mom and dad’s marriage were not where and when it took place but what they made of it.” For All Time: A Complete Guide to Writing Your Family History, Charley Kempthorne, 1996
It may help you understand your current family dynamics.
“I spent a year writing my story which is also my mother’s story and the story of our family. It was a most enlightening time for me, one I treasure, because it forced me to look at my life, re-shape it in many ways, and to laugh at things that I had taken so seriously before. I matured in many ways and became more tolerant and caring. It also freed me from some of my doubts and fears.” Family Focused: A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Your Autobiography and Family History, Janice T. Dixon, 1997
It will help you build or solidify a sense of family.
Cowboy writing in a notebook, 1909. Image ID: 5027900
It can be therapeutic.
“Studies show that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person’s health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory…. Writing -- and then rewriting -- your personal story can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness.” New York Times, "Writing Your Way To Happiness," Tara Parker-Pope, January 19, 2015
Don’t take for granted that the lives of your ancestors are lost. Evidence of the people they have been exists somewhere and is discoverable.
“Virtually all my finds have been made from old manuscripts in public repositories and have been of the family moving, not in the company of celebrities…, but among people as little known to fame as themselves.” How to Write a Family History: The Lives and Times of Our Ancestors, Terrick FitzHugh, 1988
“It will have a wider impact than you might imagine.”
After publishing some of her family histories and donating to libraries and archives, author Penny Stratton heard from other researchers that they had found leads and data in her writings. American Ancestors, Spring 2014
Family members and even distant cousins may become more forward in contributing documents, photos, and stories for your genealogical research.
“It’s cousin-bait.” Genea-Musings, “Why Do You Write About Your Personal Research?” Randy Seaver, January 2015
You will be encouraged to archive and preserve the documents on which your family history research is based: certificates, letters, diaries, etc.
I first heard the name Bill Barvin almost by accident, when by chance a colleague remembered the existence of a large photographic collection belonging to the Milstein Division and suggested that it might be of interest to me. The Bill Barvin Location Photograph Archive turned out to be a dizzying 81 boxes of 35mm negative strips and color photos, the collection's finding aid alone 45 pages long.
William "Bill" Barvin (1952-2000) worked for over two decades as a location manager and scout for television and film, taking thousands of photos during the course of his career of New York and New Jersey streets, apartments, storefronts, and rooftops; bars, clubs, restaurants, and theaters; hotels, hospitals, laundromats, and churches. I had the great fortune of sifting through box after box of Barvin's photo files and cherry-picking some of my favorites, over 200 of which are now available online at NYPL's Digital Collections website.
Exterior street view, the Puck Building. Image ID: 5210019
Elevator shaft, the Puck Building. Image ID: 5210018
When I saw Barvin's photographs for the first time I wasn't sure what to make of them. They were the same kind of inexpensive drugstore prints that my local pharmacy used to develop, the Kodak and Konica logos reproduced on the backs. Sometimes the photos were glued directly into the manila folders in which they were organized, folded over and creased if they were too long. Most interesting to me was the fact that Barvin often glued or taped multiple photos together to create a single, wider view of a particular location site. In such cases the side-by-side alignment of the photos was always just a little bit off, with color and tone changing from one photo to the next, the perspective skewed, the edges jagged and uneven. Facades of buildings were fractured and disjointed, sidewalk curbs didn't line up correctly, the tracks of elevated subway platforms were broken. Sometimes a person or object would be abruptly cut off mid-picture, or, alternately, would appear multiple times within a single image. On one Paterson, New Jersey street, for instance, half of a car moves down the road, while, simultaneously, the same bicycle appears three different times, once as a ghostly free-floating half wheel right in the center of the frame.
Store interior, Main Street, Paterson, N.J. Image ID: 5210075
The more I looked at Barvin's strange, makeshift panoramas, however, the more my initial confusion turned to a sort of excitement. Though the photos were taken as part of his job, Barvin—who studied art and photography at Antioch College in Ohio—had created his own unique, off-kilter, cool-looking aesthetic, one that faintly echoed the fragmented perspective of early modern art as well as the grittiness of contemporary street photography. Occasionally a photograph might even hint at an ambiguous narrative, as in the case of one photo taken at a suite in the Pierre Hotel, where a mysterious dark figure stands lurking in a doorway. (I've nicknamed that one in my head "The Assassin," even though I know in reality it's just some dude showing Barvin the room and trying to stay out of the shot.)
Pierre Hotel, Suite 1616. Image ID: 5211732
Rooftop, Vernon Avenue. Image ID: 5211698
Barvin's photos of New York City in particular are also documents of a city in transition. Most of the photos in the archive date from the 1990s, a Dinkins/Giuliani era when the city was moving out of the crime-ridden '70s and '80s and yet hadn't reached its current state of luxury high-rises and gentrification. Many of the locations photographed by Barvin have been demolished or else transformed beyond recognition; the Palladium has been rebuilt as an NYU residence hall, Limelight is now a David Barton Gym. (The Upper East Side Scores location is also, sadly and to the dismay of many, now defunct, though Barvin's shots of the interior are actually some of my favorites in terms of color and composition.) As is pointed out in the NYPL Public Eye exhibition—where several of Barvin's works are currently on display—Barvin's panoramic images are also a sort of precursor to Google Street View, and it's interesting to compare the two side by side and observe what has changed or what has, surprisingly, remained the same.
Deerhead Diner, Jackson Heights, by Bill Barvin. Image ID: 5210092
Most importantly, the Bill Barvin Location Photograph Archive captures one man's relationship with his adopted city. Born in Iowa and raised in Texas, Barvin moved to New York City in the late 1970s, where he lived for most of his life in a loft in Soho. According to his wife, Lynn Cassaniti, who generously donated her husband's archive to the Library in 2011, Barvin was "passionate about New York City and knew the city and surrounding areas inside out, like the back of his hand. He loved the work he did—exploring, seeing amazing places and meeting people. He had... that Southern gift of gab that gave him entree to apartments, mansions, museums, bars and other places where he needed to convince people to allow a movie to be shot in their home or location." On screen we've all had fleeting admittance into Barvin's world without even realizing it. (The Sopranos and Law and Order are just two of the productions he worked on). Now thanks to his photography we have permanent access as well.
You can see more of Bill Barvin's location photography on NYPL's Digital Collections site.
Gunslinger in the Church. Lobby card. Image ID: G98F842_002.
In the old movies about the Old West, when grizzled, chawing, cussing, murdering highwaymen ride into town and disturb the peace, from behind the batwing doors of the lawman’s office steps the badge-wearing, fast-shooting, strong-silent-type. The banditti are savage and lawless. The lawman is good.
The lawman might be a U.S. marshal, appointed by the Attorney General, under whose loose, vague authority the marshal operated until the Department of Justice was organized in 1870; or he might be a local sheriff, elected to office by the townspeople. Out West, where systems of order were as scarce as systems of plumbing, the marshal and the sheriff assumed the persona of the law. The distinction often makes no difference in old Western movies, but is an optimum detail in the pursuit of genealogy and local history research in the Milstein Division, where reference librarians must wrangle between the local, county, state, and federal levels in order to rope in relevant resources for patron requests.
In Silver Lode (1954), sneer-and-swagger character actor Dan Duryea plays Ned McCarty, who rides into town on the 4th of July brandishing a marshal’s “tin star” and a warrant for the arrest of local rancher Dan Ballard. Turns out McCarty is an impostor, and hellbent to avenge the murder of his brother, whom Ballard shot in self defense; but by the time Ballard is exonerated, McCarty has riled up the whole town against him, and stars-and-stripes morality devolves into mob justice. Silver Lode proves that the badmen weren’t always bad, and the lawman wasn’t always lawful.
The old High German roots of the word marshal, “master of the horse,” befit both the iconography and transit of the frontier lawman. Marshals and sheriffs had the right to deputize civilians and assemble the posse comitatus, which etymology invokes research methods in local history librarianship, the “power of the county.” For example, marriage certificates are issued at the local level in New York City, the county level in Arizona, and the state level in Virginia. Death certificates are sealed for seventy-five years in Oklahoma, but in Connecticut they are public record before 1997. In New Mexico, birth and death certificates are obtained from the state, but marriages from the county clerk. Like military pension files, census schedules and bankruptcy petitions, naturalization records are filed at the federal level, but before 1906 citizenship may also have been applied for at county courts. Deeds and land conveyances are filed at the county level, and likewise probate records, housed in the records room of the Surrogate's Court, which court is a "surrogate” of the governor’s office, dating back to colonial times when travel to the capital was distant, grueling, and slow.
Cowboy Punching Cattle on a Jackrabbit. Postcard Collection, Milstein Division.
Access to court records, whether historic or last week, will also vary by state. For example, after the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri decided against the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office immediately made public the court documents in the case. However, at the State Supreme Court in Richmond County, New York, where the grand jury proceedings against Officer Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner also ended without indictment, court documents related to the case have remained sealed. The release of the documents, in accordance with state laws, was argued before a state judge in Richmond County this past February. In the future, researchers seeking court records related to the case will be directed by local history librarians to the Richmond County Clerk, despite that grand jury proceedings since the 17th century have been kept secret. In addition, any research into the investigation of civil rights violations committed by the Ferguson Police Department would seek documents issued by the Department of Justice, which federal organization also employs the U.S. marshal.
The Milstein Division holds a handful of guidebooks in tracking legal records:
Two men standing in front of a horse and buggy. 1882-1883. Image ID: 1801431.
“When General Stephen Watts Kearny inaugurated the American system of justice in the Southwest in 1846, he introduced a judiciary long common to Anglo-American civilization.” Under the entry for “law and order,” The New Encyclopedia of the American West says that “pioneers did not create new forms of law and order; rather they continued to use two ancient English institutions: the justice court, headed by the justice of the peace; and a county, or high, sheriff, with powers to collect taxes, deputize citizens, and form a posse.” The English roots of this system are reflected in the word "sheriff," where a “shire” is the one-thousand year old ancestor of “the modern county in the United States,” and “the principal officer of the shire court was the shire reeve.” Ironically, like the U.S. marshal in Silver Lode, the Sheriff of Nottingham is portrayed as the archvillain in the folklore of the radical and righteous bandit Robin Hood. Director Allan Dwan, who helmed Silver Lode, adapted the Robin Hood tale thirty years earlier, starring Douglas Fairbanks.
Gary Cooper. Image ID: TH-04687.
In High Noon (1952) Gary Cooper plays the town marshal, basically the sheriff, though sometimes the nomenclature was scotched, and, like many early genealogical records, the verbiage more pragmatic than official. Bad Ben Miller seeks revenge on the marshal, but the townspeople, who elected the law-bringer by popular vote and attended his wedding, refuse to support him against the brigands.
When Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and tubercular ex-dentist rifleman Doc Holliday killed Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona, Earp had been deputized a U.S. marshal. Surely no heroic showdown between the good and the bad, prolific oater-epicist Larry McMurtry described the ugly gunfight as little more than a "botched arrest." Earp was later indicted in Pima County, AZ, for the vendetta killing of Frank Stilwell, whom had back-shot brother Morgan Earp in 1882. With regards to how folks like to remember the old West, it may be a sign that the NYPL catalog shows 28 entries under the subject heading Cochise County (Ariz.) – Fiction, but only 5 for Cochise County (Ariz.) -- History.
Map of Cochise County. The Oasis.
Wichita (1955) is a cinematic Wyatt Earp origin story, where the burgeoning Kansas cattle town has plenty of saloons but no medical doctor, and the current marshal is a yellowbelly, which is an advantage when the ruffian cattle drivers swoop into town, drain the supply of whiskey, and start shooting up the place. After a stray bullet kills a young boy, Wyatt Earp takes up the marshal’s badge and gun, jails the sozzled cowpokes, and bans firearms within city limits. These were the powers of the marshal, whether local or federal; and he often did not just run the jail, but sometimes also resided in the building with his family.
The Wichita City Eagle. 1873.
From the 1789 Judiciary Act, when the office of U.S. Marshal was established, to roughly the 1850s, when the territory of New Mexico was created, the marshal carried out the modern duties of the post office, FBI, and Secret Service. In the antebellum years the marshal enforced the Fugitive Slave Act and postbellum the Civil Rights Act. He was an agent of the courts, a server of subpoenas and warrants of eviction, an overseer of prisoners, supervisor of elections, collector of taxes, and, for some time, most relevant to the historian of family history, the marshal took the census. The inaugural 1790 census was compiled by 650 federal marshals, who spent 18 months trekking the 13 states and enumerated 3.9 million residents.
Presently, city marshals in the five boroughs are appointed by the Mayor and regulated by the corruption-busting Department of Investigation, but are described as neither employees of the city nor the Civil Court. Like U.S. marshals before 1896, they earn funds by a system of fees. Marshals both east and west collected fees based on court duties and service of process, in what was part of the “entrepreneurial” system of law enforcement, versus the bureaucratic and municipal system codified by the onset of the early 20th century. In addition, central authority west of the Mississippi was dwarfed by the zealous and domineering control of private industry, which also paid for security with greater dispatch than Uncle Sam. As Southern California chronicler Carey McWilliams writes in “Myths of the West,” his debunking 1931 essay, “the cattle companies captured Nevada after 1861; Montana was merely the alter ego of the Anaconda Copper Company until recent years; the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company ruled Colorado during its formative period; while in Idaho and Wyoming the Union Pacific played the villain.”
An Arizona Cowboy. Image ID: 1610053.
In the opening courtroom sequences of True Grit, the 2010 adaptation of the 1968 novel, U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn is accused by an Ozarks counselor of exploiting his federal authority in several questionably justified shootings. Marshal Cogburn is gruff and unapologetic. The local sheriff describes him as mean, pitiless, and “double tough.” But such was the beleaguered bathos of a late 19th century U.S. marshal, that Cogburn lives in the cramped backroom of a Chinese grocery and haggles reward money with a 14 year-old girl out to avenge the murder of her father.
In the old western district of Arkansas, families of slain deputies received no compensation from the government, and marshals received no fees if they failed to capture their fugitive, no matter the travel and time expended, nor were they paid if the fugitive was killed during the act of apprehension. Pulp writers and eyepatch-clad Hollywood directors would stretch the legacy of the entrepreneurial system into the pop mythos of cheroot-smoking bounty hunters, leather-jawed freebooters, and ivory-handled guns-for-hire.
Sunset magazine. Image ID: 1258913.
New York City continues to run a Sheriff’s Office, which Alfred E. Smith once occupied as a patronage gift from Tammany Hall at $50,000. a year, in the years prior to Sheriff Smith’s garnering the NY Governorship.
Sheriff Alfred E. Smith at his desk on his first day in office. Image ID: 3997994.
In Manhattan one still finds Sheriff Street, between Houston and Stanton and bisected by the Samuel Gompers Houses to continue one block under the Williamsburg Bridge. The city named Sheriff Street in honor of Marinus Willett, a swashbuckling New York City Tory-fighter who led the Sons of Liberty radicals in sacking the British arsenal in occupied Manhattan, invaded Canada, fought under General Washington at Monmouth, and held the esteemed office of Sheriff of the City and County of New York in 1784-1788 and again in 1792-1796. In between these terms, President Washington sent Willett south to Georgia to treaty with the Creek Nation. The street runs through the old 13th Ward, in the Southeast frontier of the island where Sheriff Willett lived after the war.
Residence of the late Col. Marinus Willett, Mayor of New York in 1807-8. Image ID: 424296.
Ball, Larry D. “Frontier Sheriffs at Work.” The Journal of Arizona History. Vol. 27, No. 3, Autumn 1986.
Ball, Larry D. “Pioneer Lawman: Crawley P. Dake and Law Enforcement on the Southwestern Frontier.” The Journal of Arizona History. Vol. 14, No. 3, Autumn 1973.
Cooley, Rita W. “The Office of United States Marshal.” The Western Political Quarterly. Vol. 12, No. 1, Mar. 1959.
Dressler, Joshua (ed.) Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice. Vol. 2. 2nd ed. NY: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002.
Eichholz, Alice (ed.) Red Book: American state, county, and town sources. Provo, Utah: Ancestry, 2004.
Jordan, P.D. “The Town Marshal Local Arm of the Law.” Arizona and the West. Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1974.
Lamar, Howard R. (ed.) The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Sankey, Michael (ed.) BRB's guide to county court records: a national resource to criminal, civil, and probate records found at the nation's county, parish, and municipal courts. BRB Publications, Inc. 2011.
View of Manhattan from Fulton Street circa 1935. Image ID: 482681
New York is a city of nicknames. The City That Never Sleeps, Empire City, The City So Nice They Named It Twice… and of course Gotham, which we’ve covered before. Today let’s just look at the Big Apple.
Before it became a moniker for the city, “big apple” had other meanings. Throughout the nineteenth century, the term meant “something regarded as the most significant of its kind; an object of desire and ambition.” To “bet a big apple” was “to state with supreme assurance; to be absolutely confident of” [Oxford English Dictionary]. The term was popular enough that you see several nods to the colloquialism in the reporting of literally large apples. For example, the Portland Advertiser reports in 1840:
Here the Commercial Advertiser places the term in quotes, possibly to highlight it in light of its common use (1848).
There are also plenty of examples of wagering or betting a big apple as a sure thing in newspapers in the 1800s. This one is from the Salem Register:
Another example from the Boston Daily Globe is an 1891 advertisement which read, “We will wager a big red apple that the prices attached to our thousand and one styles are as low or lower than the same quality of goods can be bought elsewhere.” Dozens of references to big apples and betting big apples can be found by searching digitized newspapers in Proquest Historical Newspapers, Chronicling America, and America’s Historical Newspapers.
The Oxford English Dictionary also reports its first known inference of New York in this context in 1909. Used only to imply a big and important place, “the big apple city” in context just happens to be New York. From Edward Martin’s introduction in the Wayfarer in New York: “It [sc. the Mid-West] inclines to think that the big apple [sc. New York] gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.” The editors of the OED actually address the early usage, “which, though referring to New York, is part of an extended metaphor and appears to be an isolated use.” A look at Martin’s text offers greater context. He discussed the perception of New York City from other parts of the United States with an extended metaphor as though it were the fruit of a tree of which other “lesser fruits” are jealous and embittered.
So why are apples so special in the 1800s? In Origin of New York City's nickname "The Big Apple", author Gerald Leonard Cohen explains that “nowadays apples seem to be regarded as just another fruit, neither more nor less special than pears, grapefruits, etc. However, in the 19th and presumably the early 20th century a big red apple was apparently something of special desirability,” such as the gift of an apple for a teacher as a sign of flattery. Indeed, this is true. Brooklyn Botanic Garden explains how the 19th century was the golden age of the apple: “an era known to fruit historians as the golden age of American pomology, a period running from the presidency of Thomas Jefferson to the Wright brothers' liftoff at Kitty Hawk. It was a time of unparalleled public interest in new fruit varieties, when apples, pears, and peaches were critically reviewed and rated with the enthusiasm now reserved for Hollywood movies and popular music.” Americans were seeing more apples than ever at the market and bigger, tastier specimens at that.
Variety of Apples, 1812. Image ID: 1107620
The “Big Apple” as a nickname for New York City really takes hold in the 1920s jazz era. The term, already in popular meaning as betting on a sure thing, makes its way to racetracks in the early 1920s. John J. Fitz Gerald, a reporter who wrote a regular racing column in the New York Morning Telegraph, referred to the New York racing circuit as the Big Apple—a proper noun. He is credited for popularizing the term, and in 1924 he wrote, “The Big Apple, the dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There’s only one Big Apple. That’s New York.” Fitz Gerald’s racing term complies with the original slang definition in his usage, since he is certainly expressing that he thinks the races are to be regarded as the most significant of their kind. Fitz Gerald titled the column “Around the Big Apple.”
Within the same decade, usage of the term shows up in other papers, often meaning the city of New York and not just its racing circuits. Chicago Defender, 1922: “I trust your trip to the ‘big apple’ was a huge success…” and the New York Times uses it for the first time in an article about the slang that motion picture industry men use called “Slang of Film Men,” published March 11, 1928.
The term was popular amongst jazz musicians, and in Origin of New York City's nickname "The Big Apple", Cohen explains that when Charles Gillett, president of the non-profit New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, took interest in the phrase in the 1970s, he was inspired by its jazz connotations. Gillett ran a tourism campaign to invite tourists to New York in an era when the city’s reputation was dominated by crime, bankruptcy, and middle class flight to the suburbs. The New York Times explains in his obituary:
Skyline from World Trade Center looking north with closer view of Empire State Building, circa 1980. Image ID: ps_lhg_151
“But perhaps his greatest success came with turning the term "Big Apple" into a tourist draw. A jazz fan, he remembered that musicians in the 1920s and '30s had an expression for playing the big time after gigs in one-horse towns: "There are many apples on the tree, but when you pick New York City, you pick the Big Apple."
Gillett enlisted local celebrities to promote NYC, made Big Apple stickers and pins, and successfully recruited large organizations to bring their conventions to the city. When he retired, he received a New York State Governor's Award, with Gov. Mario M. Cuomo citing Gillett's "long and distinguished service in promoting New York as the premier travel destination in the world," and for moving the bureau into the front ranks of local travel promotion agencies. By the time he passed away in the 1990s, Gillett was celebrated for his role in changing public opinion about visiting and living in NYC. The Big Apple campaign was successfully counter partnered with other 1970s publicity such as William Doyle and Milton Glaser’s “I Love New York” campaign. A Google Ngram of the term “Big Apple” shows the growth of the term’s usage, as well as its resurgence in the 1970s and continual rise since Gillett’s campaign.
Street vendors selling hot potatoes and baked apples. Image ID: 732390F
The Statue of Liberty’s hand and torch in Madison Square, New York. Image ID: G91F190_006F
“They have not been able to procure a whole statue, but they have ornamented the city with a nice large piece of the intended statue’s arm” (New York Times, Feb. 26, 1877).
The Statue
"The Statue of Liberty as it will appear by the time the pedestal is finished," 1884. Image ID: 809724
Officially titled Liberty Enlightening the World, the Statue of Liberty was first envisioned as a lighthouse at the entrance to the Suez Canal before evolving into the Lady Liberty we know today: a symbol of American independence and Franco-American friendship.
Representing freedom, patriotism, and immigrants’ first sight of the New World, it is now difficult to imagine the New York Harbor without this iconic American symbol. However, sparking enthusiasm for this project wasn’t as easy as some might imagine.
A Pedestal Problem
Led by designer Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, France proposed to bestow the statue to the United States, while Americans were asked to fundraise for its pedestal. Lady Liberty did need a place to stand, after all. Because Americans were not particularly passionate about this fundraising endeavor, Bartholdi developed a plan to raise attention and money: The Arm of Liberty was going on a journey.
First presented at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (though delayed until one month before its closing), thrill seeking visitors could buy tickets to climb a ladder in the statue’s arm up to the torch, fostering curiosity and excitement in Bartholdi's creation.
"Colossal hand and torch" at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, 1876. Image ID: G91F380_025F
“Finally, our eyes were gladdened by the actual receipt of a section of “Liberty,” consisting of one arm; with its accompanying hand of such enormous proportion that the thumb nail afforded an easy seat for the largest fat woman now in existence” (New York Times, Sept. 29, 1876).
“An Isolated and Useless Arm”
Despite sparking public interest, the Centennial Exhibition raised concerns about fate of the rest of Lady Liberty’s body and, in September 1876, the New York Times reported that “the statue has been suspended in consequence of a lack of funds.” Bartholdi chose the arm (over other body parts) because it would make an acceptable standalone structure if the project failed, and for some time, it seemed very possible that the arm is all we would have.
New York Times, Sept. 29, 1876
Igniting a Rivalry
In a clever response to the New York Times, Bartholdi said that he might just allow Philadelphia to claim the statue instead of the intended New York Harbor. Within a few months, New York took Bartholdi’s bait and announced that the hand and torch would be displayed in Madison Square while they awaited the rest of the statue.
Madison Square, New York, showing the Statue of Liberty's arm and torch in the background, at right. Image ID: 721496B
With the wrist reaching treetops and rooftops, and the flame high enough to see for many blocks, the Arm of Liberty became a long-standing advertisement for the statue from 1876-1882. Souvenir photographs were sold, and for 50 cents, visitors could climb a ladder leading to the balcony (NYPL, 1986). While this massive arm triggered public enthusiasm for the project, it eventually began to blend into the city’s background, with its surrounding grounds “infested” with infants and children.
New York Times, "Serial Statues," Feb. 26, 1877
New York Times, Oct. 3, 1882
Critics, however, did not feed into this excitement, and mockingly suggested that the statue’s other body parts be scattered throughout the city. In fact, they quipped, “we have hardly a public statue which would not be improved by being [divided] and distributed” (New York Times, Feb. 26, 1877).
Lady Liberty Was Going Where?!
Rivalries continued over the years, and despite New York’s apparent indifference to the statue, they were appalled when another city tried to claim Lady Liberty. A monument so iconic to New York, it is difficult to imagine the Statue of Liberty anywhere else. While Philadelphia was always a contender for the statue, Boston had also jumped in on the competition. New Yorkers weren’t thrilled about this.
Washington Post, March 27, 1883
Even more shocking was the possibility that the Statue of Liberty could have rested atop the Washington Monument, 150 feet high at the time. “You would have been surprised to see how nicely the statue fitted the monument. It really seemed to have been made for it” (Washington Post, March 27, 1883).
After years of procrastination, New Yorkers did not want to lose the opportunity to host Liberty Enlightening the World, and were determined not to let another city “steal away our grand, symbolic, international, one hundred and twenty feet high statue” (New York Times, Oct. 3, 1882).
Advertisement for $1 "miniature Statuettes" to fundraise for the Statue of Liberty, 1885. Image ID: 809722
A Push for the Pedestal
Eventually, donations for the pedestal were collected more aggressively. Fundraising efforts included benefit concerts, art exhibits, and auctions selling models of the statue, souvenir photos, sheet music, and other mementos. Campaigns by the American Committee and the World newspaper (headed by editor Joseph Pulitzer) were also instrumental in raising essential funds.
Art Loan Exhibition advertisement to fundraise for the Statue of Liberty, 1884. Image ID: ps_prn_cd21_305
Ultimately, New York and the rest of the country resolved to raise sufficient funds and see the statue through to completion. “Our failure to provide a suitable pedestal is the only thing that stands in the way” (New York Times, Oct. 3, 1882).
The Statue of Liberty was finally dedicated on October 28, 1886 on Liberty Island and has reigned as an unforgettable symbol of hope and freedom.
Further Reading
The head of the Statue of Liberty on display in Paris, 1883. Image ID: 1161045
For a more complete history of the Statue of Liberty's construction and fundraising campaign, consult the following subjects in the library's Classic Catalog:
Seems that a little show called Mad Men featured a mention of the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel in the third episode of this final season. Following the airing of that episode a few weeks ago, Gothamist posted a recap and review titled "Unpacking Last Night's Mad Men: From The Oak Room To Port Authority," featuring some color commentary about the various settings and details in the show. That recap featured a link to the menu above from our Digital Collections, and made that image the most viewed in April 2015.
What sorts of things were the Mad Men characters dining on in January 1969 (or similarly in 1970, where the show's chronology has now arrived)?
Guide to symbols in a 1910 Tour Book from the Automobile Club of America
Meanwhile, a close second was a 1910 "Tour Book" from the Automobile Club of America (better browsed via our book viewer). That traffic came via a post on Slate's "Vault" blog (featuring "historical treasures, oddities, and delights") titled "The Complex Series of Symbols Early Motorists Used for Wayfinding," which showcased the fascinating set of symbols used in early motorist route descriptions.
Another popular collection that got a lot of notice last month is our nearly complete set of "The Green Books" from 1936-1967, which was just recently put online.
Digital Curatorial Assistant K Menick described the collection in a blog post, noting how these historical documents highlight the contours of a segregated nation listing "hotels, restaurants, beauty salons, nightclubs, bars, gas stations, etc. where black travelers would be welcome. In an age of sundown towns, segregation, and lynching, the Green Book became an indispensable tool for safe navigation."
That's the story for this month! Check back in a few weeks for more stories from our Digital Collections.
Periodically, the MTA posts images to its Flickr Photostream that document workers’ progress on many projects, including the Second Avenue Subway, the 7 Line Extension, and East Side Access project. Side by side with NYPL’s collection of photographs of the construction of New York’s first subway, which opened in 1904, these images provide stark contrast to each other. They are evidence of an industry drastically changed: the methods of construction used, the condition and expressions of the workers, and the scale of the projects differ in striking ways.
The subway is New York City’s central nervous system. The now familiar subway map began to take shape with the opening of the first Interborough Rapid Transit line in 1904. The shape of the subway system as we know it largely developed within its first thirty years of service.
New York’s first successful* subway was built expeditiously. When the contract went out for bidding, it stipulated that “the work was to be done and the road ready for operation in two years.” (1) The contract was won by a company called the Rapid Transit Construction Company, which evolved into the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (the IRT, as New Yorkers would come to know it) (2). This is a contrast to the current Second Avenue Subway project, which broke ground in 2007 and is still under construction.
Safety has improved dramatically since the first subways were built. Compare these images of the past and the present.
Abram Hewitt, mayor 1887-1888, earned the nickname “Father of the Subway” by facilitating the legislation, money, and cooperation of several public and private agencies needed for such a large scale project. Hewitt collaborated with the city’s mercantile elite and created the first detailed, workable proposal for an underground rapid transit system. His designs primarily served the function of providing convenient travel for workers and customers to shopping and manufacturing centers in downtown Manhattan (3). In 1891, New York State passed the Rapid Transit Act, which would provide cities with over 1 million inhabitants means for the creation of rapid transit. Groundbreaking for the subway would take place under a different mayor, Robert Van Wyck, in 1900. At the groundbreaking, “there were many well-informed people, including prominent financiers and experienced engineers, who freely prophesied failure” (4). However, when the subway opened on October 27, 1904, it quickly became the travel system of choice for New Yorkers and effectively sped up New York’s development as a world-class metropolis (3).
William B. Parsons is the chief engineer credited for the construction of the first subway (as well as the Hudson Tubes, the East River Tunnels, and the Panama Canal). Parsons’ obituary in the New York Herald Tribune explains that his work on the subway was “an engineering task that had no precedent,” and explains the difficulties of the construction:
New York Herald Tribune, May 10, 1932.
Construction techniques are described in detail in The New York subway: its construction and equipment, a promotional item published by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company to celebrate its 1904 opening. The selection of the subway’s initial route was governed largely by the funds available and approved by voters. The work was primarily done by open excavation, also called the “cut-and-cover” system.
Cut-and-Cover construction on Broadway. Image ID: 1113653
The typical subway route (called “road” in this text) was built near the surface with a flat roof and “I” beams for roof and sides and supported between tracks with columns. Not all of the construction took place in a uniform matter, partly due to the views of the different subcontractors who built different sections of the subway simultaneously.
Contractors faced a variety of challenges in building. Natural obstacles included ground water, rock formations, and the former canal for which Canal Street is named. Man-made difficulties included re-routing over 12 miles of sewers, as well as water and gas mains, steam pipes, and electric conduits. Pneumatic tubes used by the Postal Service could not be disturbed and had to be kept carefully aligned. Also, the street railways which the subway frequently replaced were disassembled to make way for the subway. Construction often ran near the foundations of tall buildings, requiring engineers to ensure the stability of both the buildings and the new subway routes. Another challenge would be encountering certain underground rooms and vaults (such as bank vaults) which sometimes encroached on the new subway’s path. Underpinning the Columbus Monument was particularly difficult.
Drilling was done by a night shift and followed by early morning blasting of rock. A day crew would then remove the debris by mule cart. Several houses were damaged on Park Avenue from blasting irregular rock formations with angled strata. The New York Times reported that despite this hurried and unprecedented construction, relatively few accidents occurred:
New York Times “Interesting Facts About Our Subway” October 28, 1904
The value of human life has changed in modern perceptions. The Times had a different spin on these events when recalling the first subway in a report on the Second Avenue Subway’s progress in August, 2012.
New York Times “Tunneling Below Second Avenue” Aug 1, 2012
The first underground line was a resounding success. Calls for expansion began immediately. On May 25, 1905 the New York Times ran an article “Subway Extension Plans” which said that the subway “beyond all expectation proved successful, and its operation is so profitable that private capital to the apparent amount of $225,000,000 now appears at the council table of the Rapid Transit Commission competing for the privilege of building many new subway lines extending and completing the present system.” Indeed, the economic impact of good transit remains high according to recent evaluations published in Urban Studies. This is contrasted by the Second Avenue Subway, where phases 2, 3, and 4 of the construction plan are still unfunded. In 1905, The Times advocated that “it would be a good policy also to have competition between the operating companies” and that “new subways may be built by each of the rival bidders.” Indeed, this competition led to rival companies servicing downtown Manhattan extensively and other areas of the city less so.
Tunnel making in the past was primarily accomplished with dynamite. Construction of the Second Avenue Subway and other MTA projects primarily use deep tunnel boring methods and a gargantuan tunnel boring machine. This type of construction eliminates disruptions for road traffic, pedestrians, utilities and local businesses that cut-and-cover created. Some, but not all, of the subway stations are still created with cut-and-cover construction. ENR New York specifies the particulars of the engineering project in this article: “New York's Subway System Finally Starting Major Expansion.” The MTA keeps an online list of their milestones in Second Avenue Subway progress. The first section of this line is estimated to open in December, 2016. The 7 Line Extension, originally planned as two further westerly stops on the 7 train, will open its solo new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue later this year.
New York City encompasses over 400 neighborhoods of varying size and structure. With notoriously murky boundaries, the city’s neighborhoods are continuously growing, declining, and resurfacing anew.
"Ancient view of Chatham Square and Bowery." Image ID: 800081
Despite the nostalgia and favoritism New Yorkers might feel for their native neighborhoods, these communities are perpetually transforming. Redefined by the city’s growth, changing populations, and the plans of real estate developers, New York City neighborhoods are ever-evolving entities.
As precursors to neighborhoods, New York first saw community distinctions in the late 17th century through the adoption of wards. Over time, residential differences began to emerge among these wards and the outwardly expanding boundaries of the city.
Many iconic neighborhoods once began as villages and towns, independent of nearby New York City. Their unique histories and identities predate their absorption into larger cities, boroughs, and eventually the greater New York City that we know today.
Facing increasing population growth and land development, neighborhoods came to be defined by the clustering of different ethnic, economic, and racial groups, each fostering a unique culture and community.
New York City neighborhoods, from their formation to present day, can be researched through the collections of NYPL and other institutions. Useful materials include neighborhood and borough-specific histories, NYC guidebooks, city agency reports, local newspapers, clippings, statistical data, and maps, among many other resources.
A summer day on a Lower East Side street "in the heart of ghetto," 1930. Image ID: 733326F
A useful resource for all NYC related topics, the Encyclopedia of New York City provides concise overviews of neighborhoods, including histories, geographic boundaries, land use and development, population details, social atmosphere, name changes, and includes suggestions for further research. The ‘neighborhoods’ entry in this encyclopedia also provides useful information on the establishment of neighborhoods and geographic boundaries throughout New York City’s history.
The New York Family History Research Guide and Gazetteer includes background information of the formation of NYC and each of its boroughs. Featured are timelines for the settlement of towns, villages, and wards for the five boroughs, along with descriptions of neighborhood names and boundaries. Also included are notable repositories, local history collections, and resources located throughout the city.
Neighborhood Names
Because of the changing nature of neighborhoods, it is helpful to begin by researching neighborhood names. Neighborhood names often change over time, and are sometimes renamed in an effort to improve their image. E.g., Yellow Hook became Bay Ridge in 1853 to disassociate with a recent yellow fever epidemic, and Hell’s Kitchen was promoted as Clinton in the 1950s to distance itself from gang violence.
As the New York Times explains, “neighborhood names and the coining thereof is a quintessentially New York activity.” Identifying communities’ past, alternate, and collective names will expand research options and provide historical details.
The following resources also provide information on NYC name origins:
Wikipedia can also be a good starting point for neighborhood research. In addition to being a quick way to learn background information on NYC neighborhoods, articles also list references for further research. References might include resources such as newspaper and magazine articles, landmark designation reports, books, and scholarly articles. Materials referenced in Wikipedia can be searched in the library catalog and databases.
Increasingly viewed by the academic community as a useful source for background research, the library has hosted Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, including those focused on New York City topics. NYC related articles edited through these events include information on neighborhoods, historic districts, roadways, subway lines, and more.
Bicyclists on Harlem River Drive, formerly Harlem River Speedway, 1897. Image ID: 720335F
Neighborhood Histories
General histories of NYC and neighborhoods include details on the establishment of towns and cities, population growth, and how land was used and developed throughout the five boroughs. The following resources discuss the history of neighborhoods, including their foundations, cultural distinctions, geographic boundaries, and evolution within the greater context of NYC:
Avenue C and East 8th Street, c. 1992-1998. Image ID: 5211667
Neighborhood-Specific Resources
Search the catalog for materials which provide historical information on particular neighborhoods. Resources include both contemporary and historically written books, pamphlets, speeches, clippings, newspapers, reports by NYC agencies, interviews, archival material, and more.
Search by subject through the format: [neighborhood name] (New York, N.Y.) -- History.
Among the neighborhood histories available in the library’s collections are the Neighborhoods of New York City series, including Brooklyn, Queens, and Harlem, and neighborhood history guides from the Brooklyn Historical Society.
New York Neighborhoods Study Guides from the library’s Teaching and Learning Division also provide teaching resources and activities for The Lower East Side and East Harlem. Included in these guides are historical overviews, activities, and questions using the library’s primary source collections.
Guidebooks
The Milstein Division’s collections include over 1,000 New York City guidebooks. These guidebooks span many neighborhoods, time periods, and topics, and provide an interesting insight into the culture of neighborhoods over time. Browse guidebooks by a particular time period using the catalog’s “Limit Sort Search" feature.
Neighborhood Land Use and Development
The library holds a variety of materials related to NYC land use, community development, and neighborhood planning. Resources include reports from the NYC Department of Planning and other city agencies. Spanning a range of years and locations throughout the city, reports and related items can be searched through the following subjects:
New home advertisements, 64th Road and Woodhaven Boulevard, Queens. Image ID: 485985
The collection of New York City Clippings Files contains articles from a wide variety of NYC newspapers and magazines, from the 1950s-present. For a list of NYC neighborhoods represented in these files, search the catalog for “Villages & Sections.” Also search the catalog for neighborhood names by keyword.
Local Newspapers
Local newspapers reflect the culture of specific communities and offer views of neighborhoods’ daily life and events. The following are a sampling of neighborhood newspapers available on microfilm in the Milstein Division:
Lenox Avenue, Harlem, 1938. Image ID: 720868F
The Villager 1933-2005, “A weekly newspaper reflecting the finest traditions of Washington Square and Greenwich Village.”
The Parkway News 1973-1981, “Serving the Pelham Parkway/North Bronx communities”
Manhattan East 1963-1983, "A community newspaper for residents of East Manhattan."
A Little News 1972-1986, "From the Friends of Central Park and the Friends of Prospect Park."
Additional communities represented in the Milstein Division’s newspaper holdings include the East Village, Murray Hill, SoHo, and the West Bronx, among others. Many larger NYC newspapers are also accessible through the library. For more information on searching historical newspapers, refer to the guide: Conducting Genealogical Research Using Newspapers.
Boundaries of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, Landmarks Preservation Commission
Historic Districts
Certain neighborhoods are designated as New York City historic districts. Historic districts have been deemed to hold special historical, cultural, or aesthetic value to the city, and include a collection of landmark buildings.
Neighborhood changes such as evolving boundaries, land use, and area characteristics are often depicted through maps. The library’s Map Division (maps@nypl.org) holds a significant collection of NYC maps and atlases, from New Amsterdam to the present.
Advertisement for the auction of the Morris Park Race Track land in the Bronx, 1913. Image ID: 5086081
The Map Division’s Land Auction Catalogs also illustrate neighborhood development in NYC. As advertisements to auctions off the city’s undeveloped lots, these pamphlets can be used to explore changing land use in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn from the 1860s-1920s.
More Map Resources
OASIS provides an interactive map of NYC, searchable by neighborhood, community district, zip code, and other geographic boundaries. Maps can be customized to include a variety of information, such as transit, parks, environmental characteristics, land use, social services, population, and many others.
The NYCity Map Portal can be searched by address, block and lot, or intersection for links to a variety of neighborhood information, including community district websites. The NYC Department of Planning and NYCdata also offer maps that show neighborhood boundaries.
Neighborhood Data
Because neighborhood boundaries are informally defined, the geographic boundaries for communities are determined in different ways by different sources. Use this Baruch College guide for details on how neighborhoods are defined by different city and federal agencies.
InfoShare
Land Use Map of Bronx Community District 8, NYC Department of Planning
The InfoShare Online database, accessible at the Science, Industry and Business Library, provides census data for New York City and New York State. Data for NYC is available at the local level (e.g. community district, health district, police precinct) and includes topics such as population, immigration, land use, public assistance, and public schools among other factors. Selected neighborhoods can be profiled and compared through maps and tables.
New York City Department of Planning
The NYC Department of Planning provides a wealth of information for neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs of NYC. Explore a variety of demographic, social, economic, and housing data for recent years. Access neighborhood profiles, maps, land use data, current population statistics, future projections, and Department of Planning reports, including the NYC Census FactFinder, the American Community Survey, and the Community Portal. The Newest New Yorkers also provides neighborhood data through immigrant populations. Search the library catalog by author, New York (N.Y.). Department of City Planning, to find a variety of reports and maps from this NYC agency.
U.S. Census Bureau
American FactFinder, available through the U.S. Census Bureau, is the primary way to access data from the U.S. Census, American Community Survey, and other federal surveys. Users can focus on specific NYC locations and construct and download tables for a wide range of demographic characteristics.
NYU Furman Center
NYU Furman Center Data Search Tool, showing data for "mean travel time to work," 2010.
The State of the City’s Housing and Neighborhoods is an annual report by the NYU Furman Center that provides data on NYC’s housing, land use, demographics, and quality of life for the city’s five boroughs and 59 community districts. The Furman Center’s Data Search Tool allows users to create customized maps, downloadable tables, and track NYC demographic and housing trends over time. The State of the City's Housing and Neighborhood reports are also available through the library.
Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center
For insight into NYC neighborhoods of the 1940s, explore the 1943 New York City Market Analysis. This report includes neighborhood profiles, 1940 Census data, color coded maps, photos, narratives, and borough maps and statistics.
Baruch College
NYCdata features a wide range of data related to New York City via the Baruch College Zicklin School of Business. Discover NYC statistics for topics including population, education, income, housing, social services, government, culture, sports, and more. This New York City Data research guide also highlights many different resources for obtaining NYC demographic data.
Gold Street and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn. Image ID: 485827
More Resources
The Citizens Housing and Planning Council’s Making Neighborhoods project illustrates neighborhood-level changes from 2000-2010 through a variety of characteristics, and includes an interactive map and detailed report.
The Community Oral History Project documents New York City neighborhood histories through the stories of people’s experiences. These interviews provide an insider’s perspective on what it was like to live in a particular neighborhood through a certain time period. Learn about the daily life, culture, and historic events as told and experienced by NYC residents from different neighborhoods and eras. These interviews are available for listening through the NYPL website and will eventually be annotated for research use.
Social conditions in the Lower East Side, 1930. Image ID: 732966F
Local Historical Societies
Search local historical societies for further collections and resources relating to NYC neighborhoods.
Bay Street, Stapleton, Staten Island. Image ID: 105075
Many community and block associations, civic councils, neighborhood alliances, historical societies, local museums, and other societies throughout NYC are listed as neighborhood partners of the Historic Districts Council.
Also refer to Community board websites for neighborhoods throughout New York City. These portals provide information on local government issues such as land use and zoning, budgets, and public hearings, as well as background information about the community.
Photos
Photos of New York City neighborhoods can be found through a variety of NYPL collections. Details on locating photos can be found through the guide: How to Find Historical Photos of New York City.
“Can you recommend any books (realistic fiction—about romance, friendships, family, etc.) with female protagonists who are in their early to mid-20s? I used to be into YA books, but I feel like I've outgrown them and I'm having trouble finding fiction I can relate to, about women who are within my own age range.”
We can definitely help you with that and thanks for asking.
Reno, the protagonist of Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers, breaks land speed records. She cuts conceptual art experiments into dry, desert floors. She takes on love and politics in the New York art world. And eventually, she finds herself on the other side of the world, more-or-less floating, through heartbreak and a revolution. Unique in its style, yet immensely readable, The Flamethrowers describes a world of phonies, lovers, players, capitalists, revolutionaries, and geniuses. Which is to say: It describes a world a lot like ours. —Chad Felix, Social Media
Rebecca, an artist, goes to Athens to find inspiration and meets a man with a talent for language and another who is an archaeologist. Their atypical love triangle is heat drunk, lost, and full of mystery in Everything Beautiful Began Afterby Simon Van Booy who writes in a style that will have you dreaming of love. —Jessica Cline, Mid-Manhattan
How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran is a rollicking story of an English everygirl who remakes herself through rock and roll and self-deprecation. For extra fun, treat yourself to Moran's accent via audiobook. Friendshipby Emily Gould has characters who are a little beyond their 20s but I still think it will appeal. Two best friends navigate NYC and their evolving relationship. Sex and the City this is not—and that's a good thing. —Leslie Tabor, East Manhattan Libraries
The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides is set in 1982 and follows three college friends from Brown University through their senior year and into their first year of life after college. —Stevie Feliciano, Hudson Park
I'd recommend The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. It's about a group of friends who first meet at summer camp, but stay friends, for the most part, into adulthood. The characters are all vividly drawn, and you will relate to them as they struggle with relationships, jobs, friendships, jealousies, and fight to keep life "interesting."—Ronni Krasnow, Morningside Heights
In Mira Jacob's lovely book The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing we meet Amin as she turns 30. She is dealing with the lingering grief of her brother's death and her father's sudden descent into dementia, while cultivating—and occasionally sabotaging—her own career as a photographer. The novel moves between New Mexico present and India past. Amina's observant, humorous voice shines throughout as she narrates beautiful, tiny moments of family, friendship and relationships. —Caitlyn Colman-McGraw, YA Programming
"I’d lived in New York long enough to know that the city was just like a guy I was dating there: shiny and mesmeric as mercury and just as elusive. Slipping away right as I reached for it. I longed to be somewhere I could touch and be touched by." Val Wang's funny, freshly told memoir, Beijing Bastard: Into the Wilds of a Changing China, is about art, history, rebellion and the misadventures of youth. —Miriam Tuliao, Selection Team
In Jojo Moyes' Me Before You, 26-year-old Louisa Clark lives a small, cautious life when she suddenly finds herself unemployed. With no skills or interests to speak of, she reluctantly takes a job caring for Will, a quadriplegic, formerly of great adventure and success. Befriending Will, Louisa learns what it really means to live life to the fullest. —Megan Margino, Milstein Division
I suggest Demon Hunting in A Dive Bar by Lexi George. "It's Last Call On Earth" ... Yes, okay, the entire premise is a bit (completely) outrageous, but at no point is the absurdity not unconditionally embraced and well leveraged. If you're looking for a good laugh, you can tolerate the humidity outside New Orleans, and you're open to the idea of love between a demon dive bar owner (okay, half demon dive bar owner) and a demon hunter who are also friends with a piano-playing ghost, then Lexi George has you covered. The situations, the characters, and the plot all go from go from weird to ridiculous as you turn the pages. A fantastic read for summer and a Romance Writers of America award finalist for 2014! Warning: Read at home or be laughing in public. —Jaqueline Woolcott, AskNYPL
Maineby J. Courtney Sullivan - Three generations of the same family collide (including a young 20-something) when they all spend the summer together at the family's beach house in Maine. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell - Best friends Beth and Jennifer spend their days at their desk jobs at a newspaper trading long emails about their lives and gossiping about their co-workers. Lincoln, the IT guy who monitors the company emails finds himself a peeping tom on their stories and slowly realizes he's falling in love with Beth. This is a love story of emails and missed connections. Well known YA author Rowell finds the sweet, honest humor in this light romance. Then Came Youby Jennifer Weiner -The plans of four women--including a college student egg donor, a working-class surrogate mother, a wealthy woman, and her stepdaughter--are thrown into turmoil when the wealthy woman's husband suddenly dies and names the stepdaughter the unborn baby's guardian. Perfect Timing by Jill Mansell - The normally predictable Poppy meets Tom, a perfect stranger, the night before her wedding to her staid fiance, Roy. Unable to forget him she cancels the wedding and moves to London to try and find him. Turns out her new life and fun new friends make Poppy's life anything but predictable. A British author, Mansell's books are always laugh- out-loud funny, sexy, romantic and touching. Luckily, there are a lot to choose from. This one just happens to be my favorite. The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan - Before she died tragically in a car crash at the age of 22, recent Yale grad Marina Keegan was about to set the New York theater and literary worlds on fire. Luckily, she left behind a treasure trove of essays and short stories that perfectly articulate the struggle to become the person we want to be and impact the world in a (hopefully) meaningful way. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street
As a web developer who works on a screen and an illustrator that works on paper, I have always admired those who could paint big—often on impossibly large and inconveniently placed walls—only to be erased in a matter of weeks or days. The ephemeral nature of street art is what makes it simultaneously appealing and frustrating as a viewer. However, Google Maps recently rolled out a feature allowing users to go back in time on its Street View. I immediately thought to check out the well-known wall on Bowery & Houston and found that Google captured the painted wall dating back to 2007. Here's a sampling from 2007 to present. I added a few images of the wall that I found while perusing the web to fill in some of the gap years that Google didn't capture.
Next, since the images of the walls were taken from different angles, I built a very basic web tool to align them by defining each of their four corners to be used as control points.
Once all the control points are defined, the tool then warps each image so they look like that are shot at the same angle. Below, you can see before and after the images were warped:
Next, since all the walls were aligned, I thought it would be interesting to lay them on top of each other chronologically, where the most recent wall is on top and the oldest wall is on the bottom. I created a brush tool that allows you to "erase" each layer to reveal the one previous to it.
You could also cut holes on each layer to get disorienting results like this:
Or what if we put walls in reverse order, so you are painting on top of existing art. Here's an example using the tool with 5 Pointz in Long Island City before and after it was whitewashed:
As more and more digital materials become available from the library and beyond, we will need to continue to ask what we should be remembering and what tools we can build to surface topics of interest and encourage conversations around them.
All the code for this tool is publically available here.
Registering Names at Castle Garden, 1871. Image ID: 800772
Like any word in the dictionary, a person’s name has meaning. The study of names is called onomastics or onomatology. Onomastics covers the naming of all things, including place names (toponyms) and personal names (anthroponyms). Given names, often called first names, and surnames, often called last names, usually derive from words with distinct origins.
For most, choosing a name for a newborn is an activity of utmost significance. “The act of naming a newborn infant is an important rite of passage in society.” (Nuessel). Filling in a birth certificate, making a name announcement to family members, and holding a formal religious naming ceremony all represent “a process of individuation in which a person becomes a separate entity who will ultimately develop a unique personality.” Nuessel also attests “most people recognize that giving a name to a child is a significant social function with profound and lifelong consequences.”
In The Anthropology of Names and Naming, this significance is upheld: “The right to a name is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, recognizing the implications of carrying a name that begin at the earliest moments of social being.” Names help a person establish an identity, and the process of “naming is a crucial aspect of converting ‘anybodies’ into ‘somebodies’.” Names also help tie a new child into a family identity because “the act of naming has the potential to implicate infants in relations… Individual lives thus become entangled—through the name—in the life histories of others.” (Bodenhorn).
Tenant farmer with child , Lee Co., Miss. Aug. 1935. Image ID: 1260027
Name dictionaries will list cognate names. For example, if you wanted a feminine version of Charles, you could choose from Charlene, Charlotte, Carole, Caroline, Carolina, Carly, Carla, Carlotta, Carolyn, Carrie, Charlize, as well as other names and a variety of spelling variants with “Sh” and “K”.
Each year the Social Security Administration releases statistics for the registered births of the United States for the previous year. You can also use the SSA data to track previous years’ popular names back through 1880 or see what is popular by each state. Many other countries also compile and release this data to the public annually.
Typical American Family. Image ID: 1685171
Finding the Meaning and History of Your Family Name
The meanings of surnames can often tell us a bit about our ancestors’ lives, sometimes including the region from which they came or the occupations for which they were known. However, one should not just guess. “Guessing the meaning of a surname is a dangerous game to play. What seems to be an obvious explanation is often completely wrong. One reason for this is that surnames have changed considerably in form over the centuries, and another is that even where the word is the same it may well have had a very different meaning at the time when surnames were being formed.” (David Hey, Family Names and Family History).
Many surnames fall into these general types:
Locative : the name is also a place name, usually where the family was from at some point on their timeline. This can also include a feature of the landscape such as Hill or River.
Occupational : the career of the person. e.g. Baker, Brewer, Smith, Miller. This can be less obvious for lesser known or outmoded careers such as Cooper (barrel maker) or Fletcher (arrow maker).
Descriptive : A distinguishing characteristic of the person. e.g. Short, Fairchild, Friend.
Descendant / Relationship: a prefix or suffix added on to an ancestor’s given name to show kinship. e.g. Robertson, Pierrot, Fitzpatrick, O’Connor, Tomkins, MacGregor.
A good name dictionary is created using historical evidence from documents to locate the name throughout history. The study of surnames in onomastics requires a combination of language studies and genealogical methods to match the evolution of words with the individuals who used those words as their names and how that usage changes over time. Check the introduction of the name dictionary for methodology on how the data was compiled. It is also a good idea to compare the entries for a name in several name dictionaries. A name dictionary will often provide an immediate answer to the meaning of the name and often its etymology, but not your family’s genealogy. However, your family’s genealogy may help you discover the meaning of your surname (Redmonds).
The Dictionary of American Family Names contains more than 70,000 of the most commonly occurring surnames in the United States, giving their comparative frequencies, linguistic and historical explanations, selected associated forenames, and occasional genealogical notes. The product of a ten-year research project gathering the contributions of thirty linguistic consultants led by Editor in Chief Patrick Hanks, it explains the meanings—some intuitive, some amusing, and some quite surprising—of the family names for more than 90 percent of the U.S. population.
Other surname dictionaries are generally specific to the country of origin or dominant culture. Some of the most popularly requested reference works include:
A page of signers to the Declaration of Independence. Image ID: 4005342
Origins of the Use of Surnames
Different cultures began using surnames at different times and not uniformly across social classes. In general, landowners tended to take the names of their estates long before working and peasant classes adopted surname usage. In China, surnames amongst nobility date back to circa 2800 BCE. In Spain, surnames amongst landowning aristocrats date back to the 10th century. In the United Kingdom, English surnames date back to the 14th century, yet Wales and the Shetland Islands did not use surnames consistently until the 19th century. In Iceland, surnames are not hereditary, and a child is named after their parent, usually the father, with the suffix -son or -dottir. African-Americans, Eastern European Jews, Native Americans, and Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam largely had surname customs imposed onto them by outside agencies. To understand the origins of a surname, you will need to investigate the distinct history of family names in that culture (Bockstruck). Surnames can also originate independently in different cultures. Lee (alternate spelling Li) is a popular surname in China, Korea and English speaking countries, having arisen independently in China and England and spreading outward from those places.
Why so many variations of the same names?
“Names have often had different forms before they settled down to an accepted spellings and pronunciation. Patrick Brontë’s name was recorded as Branty, Brunty, Bruntee, Prunty and so on before he made his idiosyncratic choice of spelling” (Hey). William Shakespeare signed his name with at least three different spellings (Davis).
Essentially, corruption of speech, regional accents, translation, and conscientious name changes cause evolution over time. “It has long been recognized that any surname can have a variety of spellings in the course of its history. Some of these are predictable, reflecting differences of pronunciation between one region and another, or between one century and another, others are the result of ignorance, misunderstanding or even deliberate remotivation. It is probably a much more complex aspect of surname development than is generally realized, particularly in the case of migrating surnames which had no obvious or apparent meaning” (Redmonds).
Martel Family Souvenir Photo. Image ID: TH-33810
An illiterate or semi-literate person may have had no say on how their name was written on documents. In addition, spelling was more negotiable in the past and the same name spelled in a variety of ways would have still been considered to be the same name. An example representing the same family: Mally, O’Mally, Meahley, Malley, O’Malley, Mealy, Ó Máille etc.
Another common spelling morph occurs when a non-English name retains its pronunciation in another language, but the spelling is adapted to English phonetics. Examples provided by Bockstruck include Tacquet (French origin) morphing to Tacket and Schoen (Dutch origin) morphing to Shane. Bockstruck also recounts this tale of surname morphing involving sound-alikes and translation:
“in Lincoln County, North Carolina, descendants of a colonial German progenitor named Klein held a family reunion. In addition to descendants who appeared under that name, direct male line descendants also appeared as Cline, Short, Small, and Little, all of which were English equivalents.”
Strictly adhering to one form of spelling of a name becomes more consistent over time as areas adopt forms of legal identification, such as passports and state-issued driver’s licenses, and even more so as those records are kept in computer databases where the spelling needs to be exact to retrieve the correct result.
Russian father and child. Image ID:51879
Spelling Fixations
Newcomers to genealogy research can be fixated on the spelling of names, often dismissing a spelling error to mean that the family found in a document was not the correct one for whom they were searching. This is roughly equivalent to refusing the drink you already paid for at a coffee shop because the barista misspelled your name on the cup.
Names in Translation
For many, translating a name from one language to another is not the same as changing a name since the meaning of the words remains intact. In The Name is the Game: Onomatology and the Genealogist, Bockstruck cites this example:
“Theophilus Taylor was a settler in the Carolina piedmont. At the time of his arrival in the British colonies he bore the name of Gotlieb Schneider. He eventually translated both his forename and surname into English and became Theophilus Taylor. Making that discovery ought to have allowed a genealogical researcher to bridge the Atlantic Ocean and to locate his baptismal entry in his village of origin in Germany. The entry in the parish register, however, was actually in Latin, and his name appeared as Amadeus Sartor.”
Bockstruck cites another language name morph in the case of a Scotsman named Ian Ferguson. Ferguson moved to an area of the colony of New York settled by Palatine Germans and amongst those German speakers was known as Johann Feuerstein. Many years later he moved on to Philadelphia and his name was rendered in English as John Flint. His grandson, Peter Flint moved to French-speaking Louisiana and his name was recorded as Pierre a Fusil. When moving on to Texas some years later, the name was translated from Fusil to Gunn. In three short generations the surname had morphed four times to fit into the colloquial language of the area where the person was living.
This practice is not entirely over. If you read a newspaper article in Portugal about Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, you will find her name written as Isabel. Likewise, if you read an American newspaper about a visit from a foreign diplomat of a country that uses a non-Roman alphabet, you will see their names rendered into the Roman alphabet instead of being printed in Chinese, Korean, Russian, Japanese, or Arabic, etc. Although this process is somewhat more standardized now than it has been in the past, you will still find variations in translations. You may remember different news organizations reporting on Osama bin Laden (most common) as also Usama bin Laden, Osama bin Ladin, Ussamah bin Ladin, and in French media as Oussama ben Laden. Some members of this family use the surname Binladen on western paperwork.
Tenement Family, New York. Image ID: 416564
One-Name Studies
One-Name Studies are the research on all individuals with one particular surname (and usually its variant spellings). One-Name studies are not limited to those who are related to each other, and include all individuals with the same name in the past or present, though there are some studies to that limited the study to certain geographic boundaries such as a country or county. Indeed, surname maps can be useful for genealogy research. The ultimate goal of most one-name studies is to identify the origin of a name, particularly locative-based surnames. The Guild of One-Name Studies, active mostly in in the United Kingdom, is an organization of many of these one-name societies and researchers.
Names Can Be Changed
Although there is a formal legal procedure to the process, usually anyone can change their name for any reason in the United States. The process is different in each jurisdiction, but in general, if a person files the correct paperwork in the correct court of law, the name change will be granted. This process is simplified in most states for those who change their name after marriage. According to LegalZoom, common reasons for name changes currently are
Taking the natural father's name (e.g., after being born out of wedlock or adopted).
Changing to the mother's maiden name (e.g., after a divorce).
Identifying with a foreign nationality (e.g., to show grandparents' nationality).
A cumbersome name (e.g., difficult to spell and/or pronounce).
Professional identity (e.g., legally maintaining a maiden name or changing to a pen name).
Gay or lesbian (e.g., both partners want to share the same last name).
Few are denied requests for name changes, though you cannot legally change your name to avoid debts or prosecution, or with the intent of defrauding someone. This has generally been true throughout United States history, and there is a likelihood that you may encounter a relative that has changed his or her name when doing genealogical research. However, the name was not changed at Ellis Island, but a person may have elected to change their name during the naturalization process. Current applications for naturalization still allow for name changes as part of the process. In some modern cases, people are “reverting” to a version of the name their ancestors once had. For more information about name changes during the naturalization process, see New York State Archives: Records of Name Changes in Naturalizations.
Some name changes are to avoid certain associations. For example, to bypass infamy of others with the same family name: there are few people with the surname Hitler. Other name changes are related to colloquial terms, perceptions of crudeness, and slang. Bockstruck cites legal name changes for the surname “Hoar” which so closely sounds like “whore” and names with the suffix “-cock” such as Woodcock, Haycock, and Glasscock.
“Have we improved upon our manner of celebrating the Fourth?” Looking south on Broadway from the corner of Cortlandt Street, 1834. Harper’s Weekly, July 7, 1894.
Ready for Fourth of July barbeques? Of course you’ll be having some pickled oysters, egg nog, and lobster, right?
"The Glorious Fourth - Sending up the Fire Balloon." Harper's Weekly, July 8, 1871
If you think these are some interesting cuisine choices for Independence Day festivities, 19th century New Yorkers would disagree.
Each year, among the swarms of people and blazing fireworks that filled New York City streets, the notorious Fourth of July booths arose. A tradition associated with clashing symbols of patriotism and immorality, one element remained unquestionable about these booths: They dished out an interesting menu.
Patriotism and Pyrotechnic Mania
The United States’ independence “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other.” –John Adams, in a letter to his wife Abigail, 1776 (McNamara).
Former Independence Day celebrations consumed New York City in every capacity. The city's festivities sparked excitement among adventurous instigators and thrill-seeking spectators, while causing “the bitter annoyance of all persons of quiet habits and sensitive nerves” (Hone).
July Calendar. Advertisement for Burr McIntosh Monthly magazine, 1904. Image ID: 833458
Thousands of military and civilians marched in parades, elaborate banquets were thrown, patriotic plays were performed, and religious services featured orations of the Declaration of Independence and Washington’s Farewell Address.
Surrounding these formal events, however, was the chaos and destruction of bonfires, fire-crackers, guns, pistols, rockets, Roman candles, fire-balloons, and “every other possible contrivance for making a blaze and a noise” (Harper’s Weekly, July 8, 1871).
Harper's Weekly, July 8, 1871
Considered a 'boys' holiday,' fireworks filled street corners, alleyways, and every space possible. Hordes of celebrators were left to trudge through gunpowder and smoking debris, and dodge the effects of homemade torpedoes and cannons.
"Rockets are fired in the streets, some running horizontally up the pavement, and sticking into the back of a passenger" (The Irish Penny Journal, August 22, 1840).
Though illuminated shores and continual blasts "would have led one to fancy that the city was undergoing a vigorous siege," reckless participants were not in the least deterred by potential danger. Fun and peril were synonymous among these die-hard celebrators, and “it seemed as the whole population of New York had been seized with a pyrotechnic mania." Despite these dicey conditions, however, “the streets in the lower part of the city filled [each year] with red-faced, weary-limbed, overheated men, women, and children" (Hone).
In the midst of this confusion stood the ever-controversial Independence Day booths. Stretching three miles on both sides of Broadway and surrounding City Hall Park, the notorious booths emerged annually as a time-honored patriotic tradition.
From the late 18th century through the mid-1840s, these food and drink stands were constructed every Fourth of July eve, ready to indulge the herds of celebratory crowds the following day. Among the "light and luscious" fare served up by the booths were oysters, boiled hams, lobster, clams, pineapples, puddings, pies and other treats - with a roasted pig as the centerpiece of each one (National Advocate, July 8, 1824).
National Advocate, July 8, 1824
"For a small amount of money a big piece of roast pig could be had, and clams were gratuitous—thrown in, so to speak" (Harper's Weekly, July 7, 1894).
Where "everything drinkable [was] to be had but water," mobs also enjoyed an abundance of mead, beer, cider, eggnog, and “other beverages, more exhilarating, perhaps, but less innocent" (Hone; Still). Though signifying absolute patriotism to some, such indulgences were quite unpopular with temperance advocates and conservatives.
Branded as an immoral, unnecessary, and a "highly improper" social evil, the Fourth of July booths were accused of corrupting the nation's holiday with "disgusting scenes of vulgarity, profanity, rioting, and drunkenness" (Commercial Advertiser, June 11, 1827).
Explosion On A Crowded Street On The Fourth Of July. Image ID: 833459
"Our wives and children, who might else ramble through [the booths], in the enjoyment of innocent mirth and healthful pastime, are shut out by whiskey kegs and cider barrels, rum sellers and rum drinkers, until the grass plats which adorn the Park are strewed with drunken men and women, and its paths thronged with reeling sots. And all of this on the Fourth of July—our national jubilee!" (Commercial Advertiser, June 27, 1840).
Aside from a moral standpoint, the compactly-arranged booths were not entirely practical. The "four or five hundred tents and booths set up in and around the Park and Battery" presented a serious space issue. As the cause for chaos and inaccessibility of public grounds, many argued that these booths had to go (Evening Post, June 11, 1840).
Though booth-abolishing petitions were signed by thousands, supporters maintained the booths' value as “an easy way to satisfy the immense number of persons, citizens and others, who celebrate the great and only national festival" (Hone). Others clung to the booths as a memory of the "patriotism of our childhood," and were reluctant to see the custom disappear (The Subterranean, June 20, 1846).
Despite the pro-booth advocacy, the infamous stands were banned after years of protest, forever fading as a New York Fourth of July tradition.
Commercial Advertiser, June 27, 1844
"The Fourth of July passed away when the booths around City Hall Park were taken away" (Jenkins).
While many early New York Fourth of July traditions have now vanished, fireworks remain as a dominating celebratory force; they are thankfully, however, not usually set off by children.
The Subterranean, June 20, 1846
Further Reading
Explore the following resources for more information on early Fourth of July celebrations:
Ellis Island is powerfully symbolic in American culture. For legions of Americans, it is the beginning of their American identity. For two groups that don’t tie their ancestry to Ellis Island, Native Americans and African Americans, it became a powerful place to stage a protest in the 1970s because of the island’s symbolic identity.
Ellis Island closed its doors as an immigration processing station and detention center in November, 1954 and was declared excess federal property. For many years it stood in the harbor, barely tended, falling into decay. In May 1965, President Johnson signed a proclamation making Ellis Island a part of the National Park Service by adding it to the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Plans were made for the site, off and on, mostly rejected or put aside for another time. During this time, protesters eyed Ellis Island as a place to make a statement.
Native American Occupation Attempt
On March 16, 1970 American Indians attempted an occupation of Ellis Island. Thirty-eight American Indians from 14 tribes (Johnson) gathered while eight launched in boat from Jersey City docks at 5:30 am, and the others waited to join.
Radio news announced the landing although it had not occurred—a leaky gas line caused motor failure and kept the boat from its intended target. The National Park Service, custodians of the island, were alerted from the radio broadcasts and notified the Coast Guard, who placed two patrol boats near Ellis Island and used a World War I law from the 1917 Espionage Act to to create a “zone of security” around the island.
New York Times, March 17, 1970
The Alcatraz occupation was the inspiration for the Ellis Island attempt, which was part of a several American Indian takeover attempts and demonstrations at the time in the United States such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs takeover, the Trail of Broken Treaties, Occupation of Wounded Knee, approximately seventy-four other short term occupations in locations such as Davis, CA, Fort Lawton and Fort Lewis, WA, Twin Cities Naval Air Station, MN, and protest camps at Mount Rushmore and Badlands National Monument (Johnson / Fischer).
“The targets of Indian protest were invariably government installations or historical sites of deep, double edged meaning. Indians in New York attempted to liberate Ellis Island. Mount Rushmore… was briefly occupied by Lakota and Chippewa militants. On Thanksgiving, a group of Indians led a protest at Plymouth Rock.” (Smith).
The motivation of the demonstrators was to duplicate the activist movement on the East Coast that had more successfully begun on the West Coast. John White Fox, a Shoshone from Wyoming, helped coordinate the occupation and announced later at a press conference “There is no place for Indians to assemble and carry on tribal life here in this white man’s city” (New York Times, Mar 17 1970). The demands at the press conference included an Native American educational and cultural center on the island and reversal of land, air, and water pollution in North America. The goals of the movement, sometimes called “Red Power” movement, were for self-determination and concerns for urban populations that lived away from tribal centers and reservation governments (Boston Globe, Apr 29, 1970). The Guardian reported “Indian leaders have been springing up across the country and challenging the Federal Government to redeem their historic ill-treatment which, indeed, has been almost uniformly atrocious” (Mar 18, 1970). No one was arrested for the Ellis Island attempt since none of the protesters landed on the island (Smith & Warrior).
At the time Ellis Island only had a watchman on duty for a few hours per day. The National Park Service already had plans for the immigration museum.
The Encyclopedia of Ellis Island lists the Delaware Indians, more correctly the Lenni Lenape, as the original inhabitants in the area around Ellis Island in the time that Dutch and Swedish colonists came to this area. Ellis and Liberty Islands were respectively known to the Lenni Lanape as Kioshk (Gull Island) and Minnesais. The Lenni Lenape used to the two islands and the surrounding estuaries for gathering oysters, clams, mussels, striped bass, sturgeon, flounder, and bluefish. In 1985 and 1986 National Park Service officials found human remains on Ellis Island which anthropologists concluded were from prehistoric Americans, most likely Delaware Indians. Apurification ceremony took place with modern Delaware representatives, followed by reburial in 2003.
African-American Occupation
In 1970, Thomas W. Matthew, head of National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Organization (NEGRO) asked President Nixon for use of Ellis Island to rehabilitate the decaying structures on the island and create self-sustaining black communities there as well as rehabilitation facilities for recovering addicts (Novotny). Matthew’s group had been featured in nationwide magazines and newspapers for their work in various venture capital operations, and hoped to eventually turn the facilities into profit making businesses as a movement for Black Capitalism. The Los Angeles Times described the occupation: “The invasion recalled tactics used by civil rights organizations around the country for the past several years. But NEGRO is quite distinct from the Urban League, the NAACP and CORE in that it is a business rather than a nonprofit social organization” (Nov 21, 1971).
Dr. Thomas W. Matthew, center. New York Times, Jan 9, 1970
No formal agreement was given from the White House, so Matthew and about 60 others quietly moved onto Ellis Island and began occupying it. Because the Coast Guard did not intervene as in the Native American occupation attempt, it seemed that Nixon had given “tacit approval” of Matthew’s plan (Cannato). Matthew’s group began clearing brush and some repairs to the buildings, and eventually the press noticed they were occupying the island. Most of the occupiers left, minus a small band that stayed on after the National Park Service agreed to Matthew’s proposal to rehabilitate the island. Few of that group stayed on past the winter, leaving only three residents by fall of 1971.
The organization was involved in several other businesses, including a chemical company, a textile firm, garment manufacturer, a bus company and a hospital. However by 1973, the New York Times reported on several of Matthew’s business failures and legal troubles, calling him a “man under fire” and reporting on his arrests (Apr 24, 1973). In regards to the Ellis Island occupation, the Times reported in 1974 “Dr. Thomas Matthew, who wanted to turn the Great Hall into a monument for immigrants. He has since been convicted of fraud in connection with Medicaid money. ‘He had a five-year use permit, but he didn’t do anything,’ said a spokesman for the National Park Service” (May 26, 1974). Oral histories from Matthew in 1970 are available to researchers at the Schomburg Center.
The National Park Service began their fundraising to restore Ellis Island in 1981. They similarly moved to restore the Statue of Liberty before its Centennial in 1986, and Ellis Island’s restoration would follow Liberty’s. In the late 1980s the Registry Room of the Main Building was restored to its appearance between the years 1918-1924. Renovated Ellis Island was reopened on September 9, 1990 as a museum and national monument. The Main Building received Landmark status in 1993.
This post is Part 1 of an ongoing Research Guide to New York City Guidebooks in the collections of the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History & Genealogy.
The first guidebooks to New York City were written by the navigators, explorers, and crewmen who sailed west from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean in the 16th and 17th centuries. These written works were often not intended for publication and took various literary forms, such as the famous 1524 letter by Giovanni Verrazzano to the King of France, describing the coasts of the New World, or the log jotted by Robert Juet, a ship’s mate on the Half Moon under Master Henry Hudson. Published works were called “descriptions,” “true relations,” or “peregrinations.” These written works, no matter where nor when, share the essential characteristics of a guidebook, which, for new visitors to a subject place, is to describe, recommend, and promote.
In the English language, the first published account of the harbor flowing between the islands of New York and New Jersey, written with the express purpose of addressing the public, is A Brief Description of New York, formerly called New Netherlands (1670), by Daniel Denton. Denton was preceded by a handful of “relations,” or descriptions, of the New York Bay region by Dutch authors whom often never visited the lands about which they wrote. These travelogues and descriptions are well anthologized in Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664, edited by J. Franklin Jameson in 1909 for the tercentennial of Henry Hudson surf-cleaving the river west of the Mannados.
Western Europe, trudging out of the Middle Ages, was a geopolitical pressure cooker of warring, spying, and freebooting, in addition to exploring, inventing and freethinking. Giovanni Battista Ramusio, a Venetian annalist of exploration narratives, including the writings of Marco Polo, published the Verrazzano letter in 1556. In England, the reading public of the late 16th and early 17th century learned of the expanding known world in the accounts anthologized by Richard Hakluyt, a geographer described in the Encyclopedia of the Renaissance as a “propagandist for overseas enterprise,” championing the forward guard of English exploration and trade. Hakluyt was the first to publish an English translation of the Verrazzano letter. Samuel Purchas, a successor of Hakylut, published in 1625 the five book series Purchas His Pilgrimes, notably containing accounts of the four voyages of Henry Hudson.
The first maps of the New York region show much Dutch nomenclature that did not stick, like the Mauritius River, Wilhelmus River, and Godenis Bay. The accuracy of maps evolved as cartographers sailed west themselves or corresponded with world explorers to gain scientific measurements about the new lands.
Americae sive novi orbis, nova descriptio. 1606. Image ID: 434528
The skilled cosmography of Verrazzano and nautical acumen of Robert Juet are reflected in each seaman’s written works, which recordings were for the benefit of captains and cartographers. Amsterdam was home to one of the more famous mapmakers of the early 17th century, Peter Plancius, a Calvinist scrutinizer-of-globes with whom Hudson caucused personally in Latin before his 1609 voyage. Hudson is also said to have consorted with Jodocus Hondius, an engraver whose atlases were known for evocative calligraphy.
The traveler who uses a guidebook without maps will spend most of the trip lost.
Image ID: 5056887
Archetypes
The Rare Book Division at NYPL holds a scarce copy of what is understood as the first travel narrative published in Western Europe. The Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam by Bernhard von Breydenbach describes a journey east to the Holy Land. The volume, composed in Latin and later translated into French, was printed in 1486 and features vivid color woodblock illustrations of Venice and Jerusalem that detail costumes, commercial activity, architecture, and xenolinguistics.
Christian folklore depicts sixth century monk St. Brendan, Abbot of Clonfert, as having journeyed to unsettled western lands from Ireland on the back of a flippered sea giant.
[St. Brendan holding mass on the back of a whale.] 1621. Image ID: ps_rbk_cd14_210
The literate public in Western Europe could read about the exploits of world peregrinators in the anthology volumes compiled and edited by Ramusio, Hakluyt, and Purchas. In 1596, The Voyage of John Huygen van Linschoten to the East Indies was an adventuresome two volumes that described customs, geography, sailing-routes, and “wares, marchandises, trades, waightes, myntes, and prices” of India, Indonesia, and the Far East. The Voyage was a best seller, translated to English in 1598, and likely a major provocation to organize for the future merchants of the Dutch East India Company.
Cosmographer
History has accepted that the first written account of the New York Harbor region, in any language, is the letter from Giovanni “Janus” di Pier Andrea di Bernardo da Verrazzano to King Francis I, datemarked July 8, 1524. Writing in Italian from Dieppe, France, just north of Le Havre, which port would evolve as a major embarkation point for passenger vessels carrying immigrants to New York in the late 19th century, Verrazzano reports a voyage along the coast of Florida north to Newfoundland, the “land which the Lusitanians found long ago.” Multiple copies of the original draft were transcribed and at some point translated into French legible for the King, whom was traveling in the south of France that summer. It is not known when the King received the correspondence, and the original has not survived. The most reliable extant transcription was discovered in Rome and determined to be a copy dispatched to financial backers of the expedition in Lyons and Rome.
La Nova Francia. 1556. Image ID: 1812155
The letter by Verrazzano “is the earliest description known to exist of the shores of the United States.” The Master and crew of the Dauphine encountered "a new land which had never been seen before by any man, either Ancient or modern." Scholars have noted the literary and nautical sophistication of the Captain’s paragraphs.
Indigenous inhabitants set "huge fires" along the seashore, signaling to Verrazzano and crew that the land was populated. Sailing north along the coast and stopping briefly along the way at the Delmarva Peninsula, the men ventured inland and found an old woman and a young woman, each with a group of children, deduced by some scholars to be Nanticoke. They gave the old woman food but leisurely took "the boy from the old woman to carry back to France." Verrazzano says that they also intended to "take the young woman, who was very beautiful and tall, but it was impossible... because of the loud cries she uttered.” Violent encounters are expressed as blankly as if measuring fathoms or describing plant life. The woman contested the genteel kidnapping until the men abandoned her to the woods, and “took only the boy."
The description of what is understood to be New York Harbor is one paragraph. "I will now tell Your Majesty about it, and describe the situation and nature of this land.” With “about 30 small boats” and “innumerable people aboard," the locale is "densely populated," an observation that would likewise apply almost five hundred years later. The land itself, an eternal, prime, vital source in both the history and future of NYC, is noted less for its real estate promise than the "signs of minerals" which Verrazzano surmises were "not without some properties of value." The Delaware tribes who greeted the sailors were "dressed in birds' feathers of various color and they came toward us joyfully, uttering loud cries of wonderment..." Just like Halston’s table at Studio…
"I shall now tell Your Majesty briefly what we were able to learn of their life and customs..." Verrazzano describes the sartorial patterns, the “rich lynx skins,” hair braidings, and jewelry made of red stones and blue crystals and copper sheets. While the Delawares emphasize pageantry and self-adornment, they are not vain. When the crew offered mirrors to trade, the Indians “would look at them quickly, and then refuse them, laughing.” And though these possessions might be traded and treasured, the Indians “are very generous and gave away all they have.” The Western Europeans perceive the lack of narcissism and the absence of selfishness in the Delawares as savagery.
Verrazzano highlights physical details of the men and women, noting facial geometries, height, and skin color. The sea captain, as with his successor navigators, presumes “they have neither religion nor laws” and “do not know of a First Cause or Author… nor any kind of idolatry.” The crew sees no houses of worship and do not interpret any behavior as an act of prayer. Still, Verrazzano admits that these assumptions result from his inability to understand the indigenous languages. Some of the tribesmen stave any engagement with the Europeans, and signal from the shores that the ship not anchor but continue moving. In a footnote, Verrazzano relates to the king how these men treated the newcomers mockingly by dropping their garments to moon the ship.
The letter ends with a highly technical “cosmographical index,” where longitudinal and latitudinal detail, spherical mathematics, “the motion of the sun,” and rising tides support a study of the measurement of the earth. In his letter, Verrazzano nods to the radical shift occurring in the perception of the “opinion of all the ancients, who certainly believed that our Western Ocean was joined to the Eastern Ocean of India without any land in between. Aristotle supports this theory by arguments of various analogies, but this opinion is quite contrary to that of the moderns, and has been proven false by experience.” The cosmographer is aware of the intrepid intellectual revolution ignited by seafaring world exploration.
"He was the first to explore the gap between the Spanish ventures to the south and the English enterprises to the north,” says one historian, and “the first commander to bring back anything resembling a detailed account of the natives of North America.” He christened the regions of New York bay Nouvelle-Angouleme, after the French city and seat of counts in the patrilineage of King Francis I. The bay was named for the King’s sister, Margarita, “who surpasses all matrons in modesty and intellect.”
Before the 1524 voyage, Verrazzano is said to have prospered as a “corsair,” or pirate, for French interests. The account of his last voyage, in 1528, was recorded by historian Paolo Giovio, whom heard it firsthand from Verrazzano’s brother, Gerolamo, and which was later augmented in verse form by Giovio’s nephew. In the West Indies, with six crewmen, the Florentine “disembarked on a deserted island…
… which seemed covered with tall trees.. The men were “taken by cruel people who suddenly attacked them. They were killed, laid on the ground, cut into pieces and eaten down to the smallest bones by those people. And there also was Verrazzano’s brother who saw the ground red with his brother’s blood, but could give no help, being aboard the ship… such a sad death had the seeker of new lands.” (Wroth, p.259)
Henry Hudson. Image ID: 1205412
Tough Captain
Henry Hudson embarked on four voyages to find a north Atlantic passage to Asia, sailing north, northeast, west at forty-two degrees, and finally northwest, where the English captain perished.
In 1610, as part of a new edition of the History of the Netherlanders, a multivolume work first published in 1605, Emanuel van Meteren, the Dutch consul in England, first published an account of Henry Hudson’s voyage to the New World. In addition to Meteren’s personal encounters with Hudson, the chapter was based on the 1609 journal by Half Moon captain’s mate Robert Juet. An “elderly man, cynical, skeptical, and dangerous,” the Englishman Juet would have “a sinister influence on Hudson’s fortunes.” Juet’s journal has become the canonical work in reference to the famed voyage, Hudson’s third of four in search of an alternate, northerly route to Asia. Van Meteren’s publication is an early 17th century example of a primary sourcework related to the subject of description and travel employed for historical efficacy.
Meteren’s narrative is not commercial in intent; he is a chronicler, and in the few paragraphs devoted to the Half Moon voyage to what Americans would later call New York Bay, the reader learns that Hudson led a nasty crew whom were seasoned by tropical weather, unfit for artic climates, cruel to the Indians, and intolerant of their obdurate Captain. Comprised of Dutch and English ethnicities, each band of swabbies often expressed with prejudice vulgar metaphors relating to primate species against one another.
On his first and second voyages, Hudson sailed as an agent of the Muscovy Company, based in London, which conducted trade with Russia and was founded upon a geopolitical friendship between Queen Elizabeth and Ivan the Terrible. Hudson believed he might sail directly through the North Pole, which he and Calvinist cartographer Peter Plancius anticipated as a region of melting ice and warmer climates as a result of the six months’ midnight sun between the vernal and fall equinoxes. Hudson failed in proving this theory, and on the next trip sailed north to Nova Zembla. The ship’s log which Hudson wrote on this excursion has been published. The crew slaughtered walruses, claimed to have seen a mermaid, and, increasingly hungry and cold, pressured the skipper to turn back when the ship reached the Lofoten Islands.
Returning a second time with little fanfare, Hudson lost favor with the Muscovy Company, but was soon invited to the Netherlands by the directors of the Dutch East India Company, “the seventeen gentlemen.” The Company held a trade monopoly on the long and perilous southern routes to Asian markets, and eagerly sought to advance any potential routes north. In addition, the United Netherlands—the territories which severed allegiance from Spain in 1576, causing ongoing regional conflict—were brokering an armistice with Spain. The Dutch were apprehensive that the agreement would demand that Spain share trade routes to Asia. When van Meteren, who liaisoned with Hudson in London, arranged for the explorer to visit the growing cosmopolis of Amsterdam, the “seventeen gentlemen” were not all in agreement that Hudson was the right choice. Some were suspect of the communications Hudson had recently received from Pierre Jeannin, Minister to Henry IV of France, in collusion with a formerly ostracized director of the Dutch East India Company; but it was a short-lived courtship. Though England and the Netherlands were enemies in world trade, and a British explorer sailing for the Dutch in the 1600s was akin to a Russian astronaut during the Cold War flying to the moon in an American rocketship, the two nations shared the greater enemy of Spain, which superpower each nation might beat to the rich trade in the “land of spicery” if a northwest route was trailblazed.
Image ID: 1263042
The voyage began north, with no intention of a westernly direction. The Half Moon later turned south from the unnavigable ice waters Hudson believed would have taken him and his crew to India. At “Nova Francie” the crew seized provisions from the indigenous people “by force,” and Hudson directed the ship westward.
The Juet journal “called the attention of the Dutch to the desirableness of the North River region and its value for the fur-trade.” Like Verrazzano, Juet is technical, describing time and space in fathoms, hourglasses, degrees, leagues and soundings. The land is “high and pleasant.” From the coastal waters, the crew catches mullets a foot and a half in length and sting-rays that take four men to haul on deck. “The people of the Country” come aboard the ship and trade green tobacco and maize for knives and beads.
Crossing the mouth of the harbor, five men in canoes scouted the upper bay and paddled through the Kill van Kull, an area running between Staten Island and Bayonne which Juet describes as having “very sweet smells.” The men are then “set upon by two Canoes” carrying a total of 26 Indians. Juet details the bellicose exchange between the parties in the same bloodless monotone as sea-depth or weather conditions. “…One man was slaine in the fight, which was an English-man, named John Colman, with an arrow shot into his throat.” Juet does not say what triggered the confrontation. The next day Colman was buried at the shores of what is said to be Sandy Hook. Hudson’s crew renamed the place Colman’s Point.
Not unlike an episode of Mad Men, tobacco and alcohol abound. First contact with the indigenous tribes relied on trade in the nicotine weed, less perhaps as a commodity than as an object of goodwill in the art of giftmanship. But even when the Indians made a “shew of love,” offering up other tradestuffs like oysters and beans, Juet repeats that “we durst not trust them.” Juet tells how the crew invited several Indians to the ship to get them drunk on wine and “aqua vitae,” testing “whether they had any treacherie in them.” It was determined that they did not. Still, the crew somehow managed to capture two Indians, one of whom was later released while the other escaped by diving overboard.
Juet details a raid by one of the "people of the Mountaynes" who paddles along the ship’s stern to steal pillows, shirts and “bandaleeres” from Juet’s room through the cabin window. The raider is shot through the chest while the Half Moon cook chops off the hands of an abettor in the canoe.
Nineteen days in, the ship reached the future site of Albany. After trading knives and beads “amicably” with tribes along the upper Hudson and clashing with arrow-shooting canoemen at the lower, the skipper, sensing well the increasingly mutinous agitations of the crew, favored sailing back towards England rather than turning north to “winter in Newfoundland.” The increasing presence of freshwater proved that the river was not a trans-oceanic passage.
Anticipating a brief layover before continuing to Amsterdam, where his wife and children dwelled, Hudson docked at the port of Dartmouth on the southern coast of Great Britain. He traded dispatches with the East India Company and bunked for over a month on the berthed Half Moon. Hudson was then detained by English government authorities, forbidden future communication with the Netherlands, and restricted from re-embarking. The journals, maps and charts produced on his third voyage were confiscated. As a result, Stokes relates how subsequent coastal maps of the New York region made in England were much more accurately detailed, including a 1624 map that makes an early reference to the “Hudson” river. Dutch maps lacked the benefit of Hudson’s intelligence, seized like atomic secrets by enemy nations in World War II.
Hudson may have possessed maps forwarded him by cavalier John Smith of Jamestown, Virginia. On his New York voyage, it is surmised that an unknown crewmember may have drafted a map of the harbor that later circulated in London. The map is said to have been obtained furtively by a Spanish diplomat named Velasco and couriered to Spain, where it was discovered in the 1880s in Spanish government archives. On the map, variations of the term from which “Manhattan” derives its Eastern Algonquian etymology are used to identify the areas on either side of the Hudson River. Algonquian linguist Ives Stoddard proves that the correct original meaning of the term is “place for gathering the wood to make bows,” in reference to the abundance of hickory trees at the lower tip of the island. Though “Manhattan was the first Native American place-name to be recorded by Europeans between Chesapeake Bay and the coast of Maine,” the term, at least here, was also ascribed to New Jersey. Likewise, in his mate’s log, Robert Juet refers to the western bank of the river as "Manna-hatta," as if New Jersey was an antecedent in the naming of Manhattan Island. Though Juet likely was just confused, and a strong theory holds that the Velasco map is a fake, the mortification of Manhattanite identity is psychically fixed.
Image ID: 806879
Johannes De Laet, a Dutch scholar and bibliognost, published a popular series of books on geography and government, the Novus Orbis, which covered the whole of the coastal Americas, from the West Indies to New France. De Laet’s 1625 edition includes passages from the alleged journal of Hudson’s third voyage penned by Henry Hudson himself, and since lost. De Laet was also a director in the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, and naturally eager to promote the opportunities of the Company’s new colony. The 1625 edition predated the infamous business agreement between Peter Minuit and Lenni Lenape tribesmen, when the Dutch purchased claim to Manhattan for sixty guilders. Fifteen years earlier, Hudson had signed a contract with the Dutch West India company for 800 guilders. Hudson’s journal is quoted at length, describing ingratiating encounters with the indigenous people, which include a meal of game pigeons and a “fat dog.” Remarks upon the forests, fishlife and Indian manners are excerpted. “It is as pleasant a land as one can tread upon,” says Hudson.
Hudson’s third voyage brimmed with mutinous intent, yet without action. When Hudson sailed under the auspices of England a final time, on the ship Discovery, the voyage barely reached the mouth of the Thames before Hudson kicked off one of the crewmembers, for unknown reasons. As ill-will brewed, Hudson unwisely chose to winter in the arctic no man’s land of Hudson Bay, where the crew survived on ptarmigan. Suspecting that Hudson was secretly stashing food for himself, his son, and favored crew, a fractious band of mutineers formed and overtook the captain. Ransacking Hudson’s cabin, the rebels found hidden stores of beer, biscuits, pork, butter, peas and aqua-vitae. Hudson, his son John, and seven sailors were forced into a shallop and shoved off upon the arctic ocean void.
The only sources for what occurred during and after the mutiny are found in exculpatory passages in the journal of Abacuck Prickett, one of the survivors of the fourth voyage; and an incomplete series of documents discovered in the London Public Records Office in the 19th century concerning the fangless proceedings against the mutineers, none of whom were punished or sentenced. Prickett’s journal presents the writer as innocent, while instigators of the mutiny are cited as the two crewmembers who died en route back to England, Henry Greene, shot by Eskimos, and journalkeeper Robert Juet, who starved to death.
Image ID: 1263031
Lawyer Man
A milestone proto-guidebook to New York is A Description of New Netherland, published in 1656 and authored by Manhattan’s first attorney, Adriaen van der Donck (1620-1655). An early firsthand account of the colony and surrounding lands, the Description concludes with an invented conversation between a Dutch “Patriot” and a "New Netherlander" colonist. The Patriot asks, Is the colony prosperous to the homeland? Is it defensible against attacks and piracy? Does it offer "good opportunities for business?”
Naturally, the New Netherlander answers favorably to all three. The priorities of new world expansion are sharply reflected in the "Conversation," in order to play upon the interests of possible settlers and merchants. Before issues of rights, government or law, "trade is the object," says the New Netherlander, "and on trade we must depend." The Netherlands and Spain were battling a global trade war that would soon find Spain supplanted by Great Britain, which nation would surpass the Dutch as a world superpower; not least of its victories would be the peaceful yet forceful ejection of the Dutch from the region to which they were the first Europeans to lay claim.
Map Of New Netherlands, With A View Of New Amsterdam, (Now New-York) A.D. 1656. Image ID: 805898
In laying out the commercial advantages of the colony, the New Netherlander cites business abuses and corruption in the early decades of Dutch West India Company rule. Here, "interest," meaning personal greed, was the toxic influence upon merchants. "Informed persons know that not a quarter of the profit made on company merchandise flowed into the company's coffers, yet when loss was incurred, it was borne by the company alone.”
For biographical and intellectual context related to van der Donck and his works, see the cogent, enlightening introduction by scholarly New Netherlander Russell Shorto which opens the 2008 edition of the Description. Shorto characterizes the work as a certain prophecy, noting the visions of promise implied in the lawyer’s “raw and rough classic.” With a taxonomic zeal, van der Donck promotes the trade colony to inspire the migration of homeland Dutch. “New Netherland,” the Description opens, “is a very beautiful, pleasant, healthy, and delightful land, where all manner of men can more easily earn a good living and make their way in the world than… any other part of the globe that I know…” Four hundred years later in New York City guidebooks, it is a familiar schpiel.
A New York Tour Guide in New Jersey
“Never any Relation before was published to my knowledge,” writes author Daniel Denton in A Brief Description of New York, published in 1670, six years after the Duke of York claimed New Netherland for Great Britain, and nearly twenty-five years after van der Donck’s Description. Denton is the English language successor to van der Donck; he enjoys the beauty and prospects of the new lands and hopes people will settle them. It is tempting to exult the Description as the first true guidebook to New York City in English, if one is gripped by the conditioning of superlatives. Like van der Donck, Denton wrote with the intention of publishing for a mass audience, and facts are based on his own first person experience.
The work is densely subtitled: … with the Places thereunto Adjoyning. Together with the Manner of its Scituation, Fertility of the Soyle, Healthfulness of the Climate, and the Commodities thence produced. Also Some Directions and Advice to such as shall go thither: An Account of what Commodities they shall take with them. The Profit and Pleasure that may accrew to them thereby. Likewise a Brief Relation of the Customs of the Indians there.
The “Fertility of the Soyle” promotes the economic sustenance of the land, ripe for property; the “Healthfulness of the Climate” eases concerns about the livability of the regions; and the “Commodities thence produced” suggests that the place is good for business.
Denton’s account provides “some Directions and Advice to such as shall go thither,” in support of the “profit and pleasure that may accrew” on behalf of visitors. Though this is the familiar vernacular of guidebooks, Denton is not writing for passing visitors, but permanent settlers. Denton’s guidebook intends to set at ease the fears of potential newcomers vying for a life in the unknown frontier world. Denton casts himself as one seasoned in the ways of the region, as well as “Customs of the Indians there.” This detail might ease fears of Europeans biased by reports of Native American violence against whites, as well as invoke the virtues of exotica about the local inhabitants. Curiosity is tempted, and a certain objective, early and unformed anthropology is nodded to. Denton is generally fairminded in his depiction of Indian tribes.
The pamphlet is prefaced “To The Reader,” and the author unfolds a plainspoken but mystical creed of the traveloguist, a “brief but true relation of a known unknown part of America.” Denton asserts he only writes “but what I have been an eye witness to,” since so much hearsay is bandied about in reference to such phenomena as undiscovered riches in the “Bowels of the earth not yet opened.” Denton signs off that he “desireth to deal impartially with every one.” No European is unavailed the opportunity of a trip to the colony of New York.
In the opening paragraphs, Denton describes the geographical boundaries of the colony, “betwixt New England and Mary-land.” The author also includes a pitch for newcomers to acquire lands in New Jersey and form landowning groups, known as Associates, after receiving patent approval from the Governor. By 1670, Jersey had been divided by proprietors into East and West. Denton himself writes his New York book as a founding landholder in Elizabethtown, in East Jersey, after having decamped with other migrants from the future Queens County.
The early paragraphs also plug the military advantages of the region, noting that the “violent stream” at Hell-Gate is a “place of great defence against any enemy,” and that the “Fort at New York” is “one of the best Pieces of Defence in the North parts of America.”
Denton then proceeds to note things practical and sensual. His work confirms that guidebooks will always be viable research resources, the type that take on new life when the initial use has expired, like phonebooks or fire insurance maps. Denton details the abundant fruit, timber, marine life, and herbs native to the habitat, the mulberries and plums and huckleberries; the oak, birch, hazel, maple and cedar trees; the Sheepshead, Perch, Trout, Eels and Whales; and the “Egrimony, Violets, Penniroyal, Alicampane” which support what “the Natives do affirm, that there is no disease common to the Countrey, but may be cured without Materials from other Nations.” The York soil is arable for English grains, tobacco, flax and hemp. Such details, along with the litany of land-dwelling wildlife, paint a portrait of virgin territory, soon adulterated.
Denton depicts a forebear to the Belmont Stakes in Long Island, where because of “fine grass… once a year the best Horses in the Island are brought hither to try their swiftness, and the swiftest rewarded with a silver Cup, two being annually procured for that purpose.” This unexpected reference may possibly be the first to the practice of horseracing in New York.
Denton spends a good length describing the Indians, prefacing that “there is now but few upon the island,” and though they “are in no ways hurtful but rather serviceable to the English,” Denton demonstrates ontological pre-American supremacy which bodes somewhat apocalyptically 350 years later:
“It is to be admired, how strangely they have decreast by the Hand of God, since the English first setling of those parts… and it hath been generally observed, that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians either by Wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal Disease.”
17th century Lenni Lenape tribes of the region play “Foot-ball and Cards,” and imbibe “strong drink" over drinking games. Denton casually notes that sometimes these games end in a drunken murder, which might then provoke a revenge murder “unless he purchase his life with money.” The money is made of black, white, and periwinkle shells.
Denton notes the tribes’ sartorial habits; the vital rituals of marriage and death; the peoples’ combat behaviors; the legal system of Council before the Sachem; and the biannual “Conjuration” of the priests, when invocations are made and money is offered to the gods in return for war favors or a successful corn harvest. Naming customs and language patterns are explained, in addition to medicinal practices, the relationships between the sexes, and “their Cantica’s or dancing Matches,” which are portrayed as if a 1960s Happening in a Wooster Street loft space, where, facepainted “black and red… with some streaks of white under their eyes,” they “jump and leap up and down without any order, uttering many expressions… wringing of their bodies and faces after a strange manner, sometimes jumping into the fire…”
It is also noteworthy that, divine genocide aside, Denton deliberately impresses the reader of how well the English get along with the Indians, unlike the rapacious and bloody relationship the Indians had had with the Dutch.
Denton concludes the Description by enumerating reasons that settlement is a smart decision. Skilled workers populate the region and one “need not trouble the Shambles for meat, nor Bakers and Brewers for Beer and Bread.” Matched with the elysian natural resources, “where many people in twenty years time never know what sickness is,” Denton argues that “I may say, and say truly, that if there is to be any terrestrial happiness to be had by people of all ranks, especially of an inferior rank, it must certainly be here.” In this first English guidebook to New York, one finds the god-spurred manifest destiny of the white man, the primacy of real estate, and the opportunity for “all ranks” to aspire and succeed. These seedings reflect both the beneficial and malevolent values of future Americans, who, “with God’s blessing, and their own industry, live as happily as any people in the world.”
Last Notes
The genesis of NYC guidebooks is found in these multiform 16th and 17th century literary works, which reflect the exaltation inspired in those whom have had first encounters with the New World. In the letter to the King, the mate’s journal, the intellectual’s travelogue, and the published “true relation,” one simply substitutes the sailing vessel for the red doubledecker tour bus.
Image ID: 808019
Bibliographic Guide
Search the NYPL catalog by subject, using the sample subject headings suggested below. In addition, browse the catalog record of individual titles for likewise subject headings.
This is an introductory list of noted Western European mapmakers, and publishers, writers, or anthologizers of exploration narratives in the late Medieval period through the Renaissance.
Jasper Danckaerts was a Dutchman who kept a journal on his 1679-80 voyage to New York and other colonies.
Hoffman, Bernard G. From Cabot to Cartier: Sources for a historical ethnography of northeastern North America, 1497-1550. University of Toronto Press. 1961.
Wroth, Lawrence. The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano (1970) by Lawrence Wroth is seems the most prodigious work on the subject, with copious biographical detail and bibliographical explication, and chapters called “What Verrazzano Knew,” and “The Voyage of 1528 in Manuscripts and Printed Books of the Sixteenth Century Literature.” Published for the Pierpont Morgan Library by Yale University Press.
Chadwick, Ian. Thorough and informative website devoted to Hudson by a retired journalist, producer, and devoted Hudsonaut.
Janvier, Thomas A. Henry Hudson, a brief statement of his aims and his achievements: to which is added a newly-discovered partial record, now first published, of the trial of the mutineers by whom he and others were abandoned to their death. 1909.
Juet's journal. The voyage of the Half moon from 4 April to 7 November 1609, by Robert Juet. Introduction by John T. Cunningham; edited by Robert M. Lunny .
Purchas, Samuel. Purchas His Pilgrimes, Vol III includes Hudson’s four voyages, the Juet journal, Hudson’s journal excerpt, and the journal of Abacuck Prickett, mutineer.
As with most New York historiography, see the Index of Stokes’ Iconography under “Explorers.”
An Italian family has supper, East Side, New York City, 1915. Image ID 464293
Over four million Italians entered the United States between 1880-1930. Are your ancestors among them?
An Italian family looking for lost baggage, Ellis Island, 1904. Image ID 79878
To get started exploring your Italian roots, you can begin as you would with all family history research:
Start with what you know, find out what your family knows, and use genealogical records to work your way backwards and uncover the unknown.
Both United States records and family knowledge are essential in revealing what is arguably the most important piece in progressing with your Italian genealogy quest: your ancestors’ town of birth. Italian records are kept at the local level, so this elusive detail is necessary for locating ancestors prior to their immigration to the United States.
Though your research will undoubtedly take you to many libraries, archives, and records repositories, the following resources will help you discover generations of Italian ancestors—all without having to leave your home.
This select list of websites will help you search for records of your family and guide you in locating Italian repositories where records are stored.
FamilySearch
An Italian family sits for its portrait in a Chicago tenement near the Hull House, 1910. Image ID 464271
FamilySearch is the largest source of online records for Italian genealogical research (Powell). Explore the Italy research page to find records of births, marriages, deaths, Catholic Church records, censuses, military conscriptions, and more. You will need to know your family's ancestral town to search many of these records, as only some collections are indexed and searchable by name.
If you are not yet ready to research Italian records, FamilySearch also provides access to a range of United States records, including censuses, passenger lists, vital records indexes, and many others. See tips for Italian genealogical research in FamilySearch’s Wiki and Learning Center.
A group of Italians in the railroad waiting room, Ellis Island, 1905. Image ID 212054
Records may include each passenger's name, age, town of last residence, destination, sex, occupation, literacy, and country of origin, among other details. This data is also available through Steve Morse’s One Step website.
Portale Antenati
The Portale Antenati (The Ancestors Portal) offers access to records held in State Archives throughout Italy, including civil registration documents and military records. Though some State Archives’ records have yet to be digitized and indexed, this portal also includes contact information and collection details for each archive.
Comuni-Italiani
Comuni-Italiani provides information and statistics on Italy's regions, provinces, and municipalities, and is a useful tool for locating Town Archives throughout Italy. Because Italian towns and parishes created nearly all genealogically useful records, your research will most likely lead you to the Town Vital Records Office for the community where your ancestors lived.
An Italian family en route to Ellis Island. Image ID 212020
Use Comuni-Italiani to find the contact information of municipal offices throughout Italy. This resource provides a list of all towns in each province, and may assist you in locating ancestral towns for your family.
Italian Catholic Church Directories
Church records can be immensely helpful in your Italian genealogy research. Unlike civil records, church records were recorded systematically and uninterruptedly since the 1500s.
With knowledge of your family’s ancestral town, you may search for town parishes through ChiesaCattolica.it, the website of the Italian Catholic Church. The parish search engine, Parrocchie.it can also be used to locate churches throughout Italy. While these directories only provide information on active parishes, records of churches that are no longer in use might have been transferred to a nearby church, such as the town’s Mother Church or cathedral.
A group of Italian street laborers, working under the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railway, New York City, 1910. Image ID 464269
Attend the library’s class: Italian Genealogy Resources: Finding Records for an Italian Ancestor to learn more about the history of Italian immigration and record keeping, how to find your family’s ancestral town using U.S. records, and how to begin research with Italian records.
This past month in New York City, political issues have surrounded the Painted Ladies of Times Square like googly-eyed tourists with cameras on selfie sticks. The uproar fittingly abides the municipal brouhaha over the last 100 years that has possessed the behavioral pressure cooker of Times Square. 'Twas ever thus that vice, unlicensed peddling, mass crowds, and tabloid fever constitute the Glittering Gulch, The Big Stem, the Blaze Bowtie.
The Painted Lady. Image ID: 1200778
Historical research using newspapers and government resources shows numerous examples of city brass and ink-smudged quill-slingers alarming the public over the commercial activity of New York street life.
“Gone are the Apple Marys,” lamented the NY Times in 1923, “and the woman with the baskets festooned with pretzels.” These “nomads of the hawking industry” were shoved from the curbs of Printing House Square and Wall Street by “the organization of merchants in specified zones,” and “the fixing by ordinance of districts in which unlicensed street vendors are not allowed to peddle” (NY Times, Aug 19, 1923).
Pretzel Vendor. Image ID: 79779
“The latest effort,” noted the New York Herald Tribune in 1932, “to weed out fakers and hawkers from New York streets reminds the sociologist that the crop is perennial.” The reporter cites “economic conditions” of the burgeoning Depression as instigators of the “pitch men,” whose “foisting of valueless merchandise” includes rubber balls that don’t bounce, toy balloons that don’t fly, “discarded factory machine needles” demonstrated with sleight-of-hand to mend women’s stockings, and squawking devices which mimic the sound of songbirds and roosters. Though technically illegal in the blocks of Times Square, hawking is rampant on the Flamboyant Floodway, with pitch men pocketing up to $25 a day, or $435 in 2015. The Forty-Second Street Property Owners Association objected to the “craft vendors” hoodwinking passersby by “comparing their merchandise with that of regular stores” (NY Herald Tribune, Apr 17, 1932).
Two years later, the Broadway Association of merchants and property owners, agitated by “sidewalk loafers, lobby dancers, rubbish droppers, peddlers, panhandlers, and clip joint steerers,” activated a semi-annual cleanup of the Bright Light Zone by the NYPD, “for the benefit of tourists and taxpayers.” Squadsmen in “Whalen blue shirtsleeves” used nightsticks like pushbrooms, and enforced Chapter 23, Article 3, Section 23 of the Code of Ordinances against the likes of 700 unemployed musicians whom routinely milled, gabbed, loitered and lounged between West 47th and 48th Streets” (NY Herald Tribune, Jul 5, 1934). Years before, the Ordinances had already made it illegal for “peddlers, hawkers, and venders” to “use or suffer or permit to be blown upon or used, any horn or other instrument” to “cry his or her wares.”
NYC Street Peddlers. Image ID: 806175
The Painted Ladies find a more vivacious precedent in the performers of the old Times Square burlesque house, which “popular but often frowned-upon stepchild of the show business” was assailed by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the New Deal Deco 1930s. The Mayor shut down all licensed burley houses as a “menace to public morality;” demanded that theater operators submit a code of ethics that would regulate performances; compared the burlesque acts to “sewage” at an annual meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union; and imposed a language ban which made it illegal to use the word “burlesque” on all signage or promotional material related to the venues.
Eltinge Theater, West 42nd Street. Image ID: TH-56721
As women who exercise public toplessness in NYC today do not break the law unless they pursue a commercial intent other than tips, in the 1930s it was legal for “girls on the stage to be naked from the waist up if they do not wiggle.” Burlesque houses exploited this discrepancy, outwardly conforming to the new regulations but continuing to suffer into the 1940s, when theaters like the Eltinge and Republic, on Forty Deuce, promoting “Frolics” and “Follies” under the language ban, were again shut down. (New York Herald Tribune, May 3 & Jul 18, 1937, Apr 12, 1942; Variety, Dec 15, 1937) .
The NY Herald Tribune described a “New Clean-Up Drive” in 1939, anticipating the gargantuan crowds of visitors to the city for the World’s Fair. A new state law made “begging, singing, dancing in subways, streetcars and buses” a crime. Similar to signs in the Times Square pedestrian plazas today warning tourists that it is an optional and uncoerced act to tip Elmo, Spider-Man, or the Naked Cowgirl, “placards requesting passengers not to give alms or buy articles or services from peddlers” were put up in subways and bus stops at a cost of $900,000, funded “largely by the sales tax” (NY Herald Tribune, May 14, 1939).
Mayor LaGuardia Clean Up. Image ID: 1680167
In 1947, the Times reported on another “crackdown” on street peddlers, citing an estimated 1,000 arrests made by the NYPD each month. Thirty years later, when Ed Koch signed two anti-street peddler bills, there was an estimated 800 unlicensed street vendors operating in town (NY Times, Sept 8, 1979).
When panhandling in New York subways and public places was ruled a form of free speech by U.S. District Judge Leonard B. Sand (who is played by actor Bob Balaban in the current David Simon HBO series Show Me A Hero), the Chief of the NYC Transit Police was 2015 Police Commissioner William Bratton. The NY Times quoted the skepticism of transit officers whom were “not certain exactly what constitutes panhandling under the law and are reluctant to take action against people who have no other means of support except begging” (NY Times, May 12, 1990).
Last week, the Times noted that the Painted Ladies—brushstroked in red, white, and blue by an unofficial manager and bodyguard—are “mostly immigrants” and “many speak little English.” The increased front-page attention was causing the women paranoia about “officers from the Labor Department who were said to be around.” When the same newspaper in 1896 wrote about Flower Boys, “the peddlers who sell roses and violets along Twenty-third Street and Fourteenth Streets, at elevated stations, and along Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Park Row, and Sixth Avenue,” the gaslight era reporter explained that “they are all Greeks… know very little English,” and live in a “dilapidated tenement” in four rooms occupied by thirty to forty young men. The “master of the premises” is “George the Greek,” who, “when Spring comes… wends his way to Bleecker Street and inspects the newly arrived Greek immigrants, who find temporary lodgings in that part of the city,” and “picks out several score of those who know the least English and the least about the value of American money.”
A similar, if less adolescent, stable of vendors in 1946 operated out of a former café in a “dirty little building” on West 41st Street and 8th Avenue. These men sold chestnuts from pushcarts on the street, and the illegal but generally unhassled racket was puppeteered by “Angelo, King of the Chestnut Stabbers” (NY Herald Tribune, Nov 27, 1949).
As the below two headlines prove, there is a routine precedent of civic solutions to headline headaches:
In the most populated city in the U.S., defined by constant change, the traces of unchanging patterns found in local history collections and reflected on the cover of the morning’s city tabloids are, for the reference librarian, an intellectual ripsnorter.
City Laws
For information about city laws and government proceedings, or legislative actions by the state of New York, the below subject headings, guidelines, texts, and hyperlinks may be useful to navigate.
The Common Council was a legislative body formed by the mayor and officials selected from the Board of Alderman, which in colonial New York assumed a gallimaufry of duties, including "to regulate commerce and public safety, monitoring strangers, setting the price of bread, drawing up the rules of the city market, and controlling ever-present hogs" (Encyclopedia of New York City / Jackson). From 1686, when for a spate Boston was the capital of the Dominion of New England—including New York—to 1898, when the city consolidated into what would become the five boroughs, the Common Council and Board of Alderman shifted authority according to several successive charters, and eventually morphed into what is today the lawmakers and district representatives of the City Council.
Chamber of the Board of Aldermen. Image ID: 804937
FindLaw is a thorough online database where New York Penal Codes are freely searchable.
And surely see the guide on Local Law Research put together by the Municipal Library downtown at 31 Chambers Street.
Tabloids & Times Square
The history of Times Square demands its own research guide. For this post, the Times Square clippings files in the Milstein Division collections provided excellent traction to the subject, in addition to keyword searches of New York City newspapers and the Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive available in ProQuest databases. An outside point of entry to information on shifts in crime in the neighborhood since 1990 is the crime statistics database COMPSTAT (“Computer Comparison Statistics”) tabulated by the New York Police Department. However, clotheless body art panhandling is not one of the enumerated offenses.
NY Press Patrol. Image ID: g00c72_001
The sensationalization of the Painted Ladies has also notched the belts of the city’s top two tabloids as if showdown gunslingers at high noon. The Daily News initially triggered the topless turbulence and the Post counter-squibbed with an undercover expose, perhaps less for municipal morality or feminist fanfare than headline hullabaloo.
NYPL digital databases feature only recent issues of each scandal sheet:
However, select date ranges of the forefather of the New York Post, which originated as the New-York Evening Post, are searchable at America’s Historical Newspapers (1801-1876) and 19th Century Newspapers (1890-1898).
The Library of Congress free online newspaper resource Chronicling America includes a detailed publication chronology for individual titles:
New York World journalist Nellie Bly, who once faked insanity to go undercover and investigate conditions at Bellevue Hospital and Blackwell's Island. Image ID: 1121847
Lewis Carroll unlocked imaginations all over the world when he dreamed up Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat, and the whole cast of characters in Alice in Wonderland.
Mad Hatter design, Radio City Music Hall, 1933.
Collection of The Billy Rose Theatre Division.
Carroll’s creative masterpiece turns 150 this fall, and NYPL is celebrating with a major exhibition—and, of course, with book recommendations.
We asked our library experts to name books that remind them of Alice in Wonderland, whether it’s characters who have to make red pill/blue pill kinds of decisions or settings with a similar fantastical feel.
Children
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, tells the story of a young girl who finds a doorway that leads to another world parallel to her own. Initially intrigued by what appears to be an improved version of the world she lives in, Coraline soon learns she is in danger when it turns out this new world is not what it seems. —Christina Lebec, Bronx Library Center
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster captures that same “anything-can-happen” joie de vivre. Milo, who was always bored (until now), has fantastical and frightening adventures in places like Dictionopolis, Digitopolis, the Mountains of Ignorance, and he even takes a jump to the Island of Conclusions. —Rebecca Dash Donsky, 67th Street
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle. Teenager Meg Murry is terrified when her father, a brilliant scientist, disappears. Desperate to find him, Meg enlists the help of three strange women, her kid brother, and their dog. Together, they travel through space and time to find her dad. —Arielle Landau, Digital Experience
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. Charlotte Makepeace has gone off to boarding school. In a strange turn of fate she is transported back to 1918, waking up as “Clare”—a girl with a different sister, a different home life, a different identity. She is haunted by what is expected of Clare, of living up to Clare, while at the same time making room for ‘Charlotte’ in this strange world. Throughout the book Charlotte/Clare not only gradually learns to enjoy herself in this new world, but begins build a relationship between past and present, between herself and the strange contexts to which she suddenly finds herself thrown into. —Andrew Fairweather, Seward Park
Young Adults
Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter tells the story of Alice a girl who fights zombies to take revenge for the murder of her family.—Lilian Calix, Hamilton Grange
The narrator of Placebo Junkies by J.C. Carleson is a "professional lab rat." By undergoing a host of experimental medical procedures, Audie puts herself through unimaginable physical torture for cash paid out by shady researchers and immoral drug companies. As you follow her down the rabbit hole, you begin to wonder how she can survive the grueling extra rounds of experiments… and how her unbelievable story can possibly end. —Gwen Glazer, Readers Services
Splintered by A.G. Howard. Alyssa believes she is mentally ill, until she finds out that Wonderland is real and she must past a series of tests to save her family from a terrible curse. —Lilian Calix, Hamilton Grange
Graphic Novels
For younger readers looking for that “down-the-rabbit-hole” feel, Doug TenNapel’s graphic novel Ghostopolis is a cool place to start. It tells the tale of a kid who tumbles down into the land of ghosts and must figure out who is good and who is evil, while trying to get back to the land of the living. TenNapel’s visual style is eye-catching and darkly beautiful. —Caitlyn Colman-McGaw, Young Adult Programming
In the Batman universe, Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth is heavily influenced by Alice in Wonderland, with direct quotes and disturbing imagery. —Carmen Nigro, Milstein Division
Adult Fiction
When Alice timidly asks, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”, the grinning Cheshire Cat mischievously replies, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” As in Carroll’s classic, the cats in Haruki Murakami’s imaginative Kafka on the Shore are equally baffling, beguiling and wise. —Miriam Tuliao, Selection Team
Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin is a fictional account of the life of Alice Liddell, the muse of Lewis Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Dodgson). As she turns 81, Alice looks back on her life as a privileged little girl living in Oxford and then as a young woman, wife and mother. It’s a world of society balls, romances, a world at war, tragedy and heartbreak. But in the beginning, she is just a determined little girl asking a shy family friend to write down his stories of an impatient rabbit, a grumpy queen, a Mad Hatter, and a grinning cat. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street
Abarat by Clive Barker is the story of Candy Quackenbush, from Chickentown, Minnesota, who travels to the parallel world of Abarat. Abarat is a world of islands, one for each hour of the day (plus a last, “25th hour”), filled with odd and sinister characters. The book is lushly illustrated with Barker’s own paintings. —Kay Menick, Schomburg Center
How about The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson? Terisa surrounds herself with mirrors in order to reflect herself constantly; a way to fill an otherwise empty life. Then Geraden from the land of Mordant appears. In Mordant, all magic revolves around mirrors and this leads Geraden to believe Terisa is a magician of supreme power. She goes through the mirror and into a world of intrigue, magic, and where women are second-hand residents. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Ned is an over-worked, time-travelling restorer, shuttling back and forth from the 21st century to the 1940s looking for a ugly Victorian-era tchotchke called the bishop’s bird stump. It’s needed as part of a restoration project of the Coventry Cathedral which was destroyed in a Nazi air raid. When his co-worker Verity, inadvertently brings something back from the past, Ned and Verity must hop back to 1888 to put things right and try and keep from altering history. This is a time travelling, screwball comedy of errors as Ned and Verity go down the rabbit hole and insinuate themselves into a verry, verry proper British household. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street
Beyonders trilogy by Brandon Mull. A boy falls into the mouth of a hippo while cleaning the tank at work in the zoo. He emerges in a foreign land where an evil emperor rules and he is destined for greatness. By allying with key individuals he is able to overcome a threat and discover his potential. —Alexander Mouyios, 67th Street
Un Lun Dun by China Miéville is about a young girl going to an otherworld that mirrors our own in odd, terrible and wondrous ways. You will never look at broken umbrellas and giraffes the same way again. —Judd Karlman, Castle Hill
Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend.
!["Most Popular Firefighter" Contest, New York Evening Journal, circa 1924](http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/most%20popular%20firefighter.jpg ""Most Popular Firefighter" Contest, New York Evening Journal, circa 1924")
![New York Times, "Serial Statues," Feb. 26, 1877](http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/serial%20statues_0.png "New York Times, "Serial Statues," Feb. 26, 1877")
!["The Glorious Fourth," Harper's Weekly, July 8, 1871](http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/Harper%27s%20Weekly%207-8-1871.png ""The Glorious Fourth," Harper's Weekly, July 8, 1871")
!["We must have the booths," The Subterranean, June 20, 1846](http://cdn-prod.www.aws.nypl.org/sites/default/files/Subterranean%2C%206-20-1846.png ""We must have the booths," The Subterranean, June 20, 1846")
