New York Irish Case Study

In the 1890 and later time period, there was an ancestor living in New York City who had come from Ireland. He should have been easy to find because he had a known brother and other family members, many records existed for that time period, but because the surname was common, and SO MANY records existed, searching civil vital records, city directories, census, and other records proved unproductive.

One day, the researcher noticed a picture found among family pictures, but this one listed a medical doctor of a different surname. He was searched for in large databases of New York and came up in a New York Times article as coming to America, New York particularly, to visit his nephew, who was the ancestor being sought.

Because of his occupation, location, time period, and other factors the doors opened up to locating this man, who had married an aunt of the ancestor in question. Normally searching a newspaper is the last thing you would do when you are working with a common given and surname, in a huge city setting. Yet with the added information of another relative, the case started once again to move forward. The reason this took place, was because indexes for newspapers are becoming more and more available online.