Finding New York State Newspaper Articles and Obituaries on the Free FultonHistory.com Site

If you do research in New York and haven't used fultonhistory.com, or have tried to use it and have been frustrated please read on. If you don't do research in New York or already find a lot of good articles and obituaries on the site, then you can stop reading now.

FultonHistory.com is a private site that contains a large number of newspaper images in pdf form from all over the state of New York. And it's free! I have found hundreds of important death notices, obituaries and articles in the newspapers on this site, but when I first tried using the site I got frustrated. So my goal with this post is to share some of the techniques that have worked for me in hopes that they might work for you.

Areas Represented on the Site

From the latest downloadable index of the site there are over 55 counties represented with at least one newspaper. Many counties have 3 or more newspapers and some counties have many papers. New York (Manhattan) has 43 newspapers on the site! Buffalo, where I research a lot, has about 7 papers. Some of the mid-state counties around the finger lakes have large collections. Cayuga county has 39 papers on the site, Onondaga has 39 also. What's great is rural areas are well represented as well as metropolitan areas.

Navigating the Site

The site might scare you when you first arrive—my daughter was sitting next to me while I was preparing this post and she looked the home page of the fultonhistory.com site and said "what's with the scary goldfish!" To put that comment into perspective, she's almost sixteen and is an artist, so she knows what weird is. Just stay with me here.

Home Page of fultonhistory.com. Click on the "Enter" button to go to the search area.
If you sit and watch this page, you'll hear some narration and the story of the site.

Now, after clicking on enter you 'll come to this screen:

The main search screen of the site.
To go to the FAQ Help Index, click on the link at the top right of the screen.

I would strongly advise that you read, or at least attempt to read the FAQ page, there's some helpful information in it, it gets pretty technical, but it's worth the effort:

This is the FAQ Help page. To see a list of the papers, you'll want to click
on the link indicated by the red arrow on my screenshot.

The screenshot below is the Index Page. For a better index, click on the link to download an Excel file that's much easier to use than the index pages are on the site.

The index page is difficult to navigate, but the Excel file that you can download
(follow the red arrow on the screenshot) is well worth the download.

The screenshot below is the downloaded Excel file that lists all of the papers and the years they cover as well as the counties they are in. This is a very useful file that you'll probably want to keep handy as you use the site.

The downloadable Excel index file is very useful - it list all the papers on the site
(pay careful attention to the titles of the papers) and lists the counties they are in also.
There's also a map at the bottom of the Excel file that shows the regions
the site owner has organized the papers into.

Find the Newspaper Title You're Interested in Searching in the Excel File

My best success has been to search within the newspaper(s) of the area my ancestors lived to find records about them. You can do a search of the whole site, but if the name of your ancestor was common, you'll probably have so many results you'll tire quickly of scanning through them.

This is where knowing how to search the site becomes critical. Let's look at an example of how to search the site effectively.

Searching the Site Examples

Here's what the search form looks like, it will be on the upper left of your screen:

This is the search form, notice the pull down menu right under the blank
form field at the top of the screenshot. This is a key to using the site effectively.

Let's walk through how to do a search for a couple I was searching for recently; Henry Gansz and Katherine E (Schneider) Gansz who lived in Buffalo, New York. Notice that there's no place to put in a First Name or a Last Name or a place! You can search using four different methods, see the screenshot below:

The four different methods to search the site show when you click on the
pull down menu next to the search box.

I have used all four methods, but my most successful way of searching has been using "boolean." Don't let that scare you off, it's not that hard to learn how to use it, and the results can be fantastic.

Boolean search is primarily using the words AND OR and NOT on this site. I use the word AND by far the most.

An example from the family above:

Henry Gansz AND Katherine AND Schneider

This search would give me search results that list "Henry Gansz" "Katherine" "Schneider" all on the page of the paper, but not necessarily near each other in the paper. Using these words I didn't find what I was looking for. I quickly figured out that "Henry Ganz" didn't show up under any search results, so I shifted my approach. Here's the next search I tried:

Gansz AND Katherine AND Schneider

With this search I received 30 results, one of which was the obituary I was searching for, but I had to wade through all 30 results to find the information I was looking for, and I got results from Brooklyn, Buffalo, Syracuse, Geneva and a few other places. Since I knew that the family lived in Buffalo, I can get a better result if I search only Buffalo Newspapers. Here's how that search would look:

Gansz AND Katherine AND Schneider AND (Filename contains (Buffalo NY))  

When I looked at the names of the Buffalo papers, they all are titled "Buffalo NY Courier" "Buffalo NY Courier Express" "Buffalo NY Evening News" etc. The site owner has title papers in this way to make them easier to group together in searches. So when you look in the Excel index you look for the area you're interested in and search for papers. Another example would be newspapers for Rochester, New York. The titles of the papers all start with "Rochester NY" so you would add the AND (Filename contains (Rochester NY)) to the end of your search words to see only results for Rochester, New York newspapers.

Using this last approach, I had only 14 results, all of them from Buffalo papers. Here's the file I was looking for:

Search result using: Ganz AND Katherine AND Schneider AND (Filename contains (Buffalo NY))

By clicking on the blue link, you get a screen that displays a pdf of the page of the paper that matches your search result:

The pdf of the page of the paper displays to the right of the search results.
Move your mouse over the bottom right of the screen and you'll see the pdf
toolbar to zoom, download or print the file. I always download the pdf's
and then search them in Adobe Acrobat since they are text it's the fastest
way to find the name you've located on the page.

Here's what the obituary for Henry Gansz looks like when zoomed in:

The obituary for Henry Gansz found on FultonHistory.com.

As you search papers you'll learn how the paper was organized and techniques to make your searches more effective. For example, when I look in the Buffalo papers I often add the word "Died" to my search when I'm looking for an obituary (which is most of what I look for). For the above search it would look like this:

Gansz AND Katherine AND Schneider AND Died AND (Filename contains (Buffalo NY)) 

One thing I've learned about a lot of the papers I research in is that they uses the term "nee" to refer to the maiden name of women. The term is French in origin, but common in many of the newspapers I have researched in upstate New York. As you will notice in the above obituary, it refers to Katherine E. Gansz as "(nee Schneider)." This is very useful when looking for women who have married when you don't know who they married. In this example if we were looking for Katherine E. Schneider in an obituary for her husband, but didn't know her husband's name, we could search for: Katherine AND nee Schneider AND Died AND (Filename contains (Buffalo NY)) if we believe she lived in the area.

Limiting Your Search by Dates

To narrow your search even more, you can put a date range in your search:

Gansz AND Katherine AND nee Schneider AND Died AND (Filename contains (Buffalo NY)) AND 1911~~1913

This search returns only one result, the record we're looking for!

Closing Thoughts

A couple of important things to remember:

1. Experiment - try different combinations of words
2. Be Patient - it takes a while to get used to the site
3. Remember OCR - OCR is for optical character recognition scanning - this is how the papers were scanned and so, letters are often incorrect which means words are often misspelled in the text you're searching. As you noticed in the example above, Henry showed up as "Menry" in the search results!
4. THE SEARCH RESULTS ON THE LEFT DON'T ALWAYS DISPLAY WHAT YOU'VE FOUND! I don't know how to explain this, but make sure and read the results carefully. If you don't see the words you searched showing up in the search results on the left, try clicking on the link to the pdf, download it, then search it in Adobe Acrobat by clicking "Ctrl F" and typing in the name you searched. It sounds laborious, and it kind of is, but it can make all the difference in the world.

I hope this post is valuable for you. FultonHistory.com is a fantastic resource, but it takes some learning and experimenting to find what's there. Another good tutorial on how to use this site is located here: http://whereyoucamefrom.blogspot.com/2014/01/tutorial-searching-fulton-history.html

Happy Hunting!

A New Way to Find a Record About Your Ancestor

FindaRecord.com is a fairly new website designed to make finding online record resources for your ancestor's from multiple websites easier. Although the site is still in Beta, it seems to perform well in locating record resources currently online. 
The way the site works is by geography. You go to the site, findarecord.com, and click on the Search Now button. You'll then go to a page with a Google Map at the top (see below). Click in the search box at the top of the map and enter a location that you're looking for records for, in the example below I've entered "Indianapolis, Indiana." 
You'll notice to the right of the screen is a form with a series of buttons. You can choose a date range by typing the years in the "From" and "To" boxes. You can narrow or broaden the type of records you're searching for by clicking whether you want to view records from "Free" or "Paid" sites. You can select the type of record by clicking on "Birth" "Marriage" "Death" "Census" "Military" "Misc". You can search for records that are offline (think the Family History Library Catalog) also by clicking the "Offline" button. 

When you're ready to see the search results, click the orange "Search" button. You'll then see a list of records below the map. that looks like this:

The list can be very long and will list the basic name of the record collection and the website it's found on. If you click on the Details button, you'll see a screen that will give you more information about the record collection without leaving the findarecord.com site.

By clicking the "View" button, you'll open another browser tab and go to the web site where the record collection resides, so if you select "Paid" sites, you may be visiting sites that require a fee or subscription. 

But There's More!

You can also download a Google Chrome Extension (see screenshot below). With the extension, when you're on FamilySearch.org in the Person View you'll see a little blue tab to the left of your screen with "B M D" for "Birth" "Marriage" "Death". If you click on any of those letters it will open a tab and search for record collections that match the geographic information you have in Family Tree for that person and the time period of the event. Furthermore, if you then click one of the record collections "View" buttons, it will enter the information from Family Tree in your search box along with the dates and places and attempt to find records in the collection that match your person. "Attempt" is an important word here, because at this time the system uses the maiden names for women in the search, so you would have to manually go back in and update your search results by changing the surname to the married name to find many of the records for women.

Offline Record Searching

I did a quick test to locate offline records for Indianapolis, Indiana and my results were not exactly what I hoped for. I was searching for Marriage Records for Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana and the search didn't narrow down enough and I had too many results to wade through. Most of the records were for the Family History Library Catalog listing, and I liked the fact that they are attempting to search the Catalog for me without having to go to the Catalog web page, but the results need some refining. I need to remember that this is still Beta, the concept is great. 

Summary

I think this may be a very valuable tool as they continue to refine it's capabilities and connections with various web sites. For many LDS researchers who will begin getting access to Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and FindMyPast.com over the next few months, this tool may become incredibly useful for quickly finding out which sites have records for your ancestor online. If it works well, and it looks like it's headed that direction, you should be able to more quickly locate the record collections you're looking for and ultimately find a record about your ancestor. On the negative side, I think the type is too large in the titles of the results - most of the titles of the collections I get back in my search results are too long to fit on the screen and get cut off (and I'm on a fairly good sized monitor). Overall this is an exciting new tool that I'll be experimenting with over the next few weeks. Check it out at findarecord.com!

Valuable Posts from Other Blogs

Week of April 13, 2014
In an effort to share what I consider to be valuable posts from other blogs I hope to do a weekly post with links to these posts. This is the first post of this type.

Three Reasons Why Everyone Needs to Cite Their Sources

From the Mocavo.com Blog. This post from the Mocavo.com is a great reminder of the importance of citing sources. Read more...

Attention Indexers! Your Feedback Is Needed

From the FamilySearch Blog. FamilySearch is looking at a new way of indexing where the indexer's essentially become Arbitrators during the process. If you're an indexer you'll want to read this. Read more...

Tips and Tricks: Writing a Good Reason Statement for Changing a Record

From the FamilySearch Blog. A valuable reminder that when you make a change to a fact about your ancestor on FamilySearch Family Tree you should write a good reason statement for why you changed it. Read more...

Step-by-Step Process for Accessing and Finding New York Probate Records on FamilySearch

From GeneaMusings. If you do research in New York, this is a good overview of how to find records in the New York Probate Records on FamilySearch. I've found a number of very important records myself in these records, but because they're not indexed many people may feel overwhelmed with trying to "browse" through millions of pages. This blog post does a great job of explaining how to search the records. Read more...

Civil War Records Free Online at Fold3.com Through April

Information Courtesy of hackgenealogy.com (great site and blog on technology and Genealogy). Fold3.com has one of the best collections of military records online and they're allowing you to search and download Civil War Records for free through the end of April! Read more...

Paying Taxes... Or Not

From the Ancestry Blog. With April being that special month where we "give" back to the government, Ancestry.com posts a timely article about the use of tax records in your research. Read more...

They're Not All Online

Recently my wife and I visited her family in Orchard Park, New York about 15 miles south of Buffalo. We have made this trip many times over the past 37 years, and for the last 20 years I have always used a day or two to do research on Linda's Family History. It's interesting trying to explain to the family, who aren't into genealogy, why I need to leave the family and drive to cemeteries, libraries and old churches while I'm there. I usually say I'll be gone for about 4 hours and then return in about 8! Even Linda get's tired of that. But on to the story.

About two years ago on our trip I was talking to my Mother-in-Law about her family and where they had attended church growing up. She told me about St. Peter's Church and how the family had attended there for years. So, I decided to contact St. Peter's and see if they had the original records, or where the records might be. They told me they did have them and I was welcome to come and look at them and make copies. Now, if you're thinking while you read this "well, any genealogy researcher should think to check with the family and find out the church they attended and find the records..." you're right. But often we form habits in our research. We look for the same type of records we've used in the past and had success with and overlook those we haven't found, or had success with. Because my research had been heavily in Virginia for many years, and as far as I've been able to tell the churches my family attended kept poor records or no records, I didn't research church records much. I didn't think I would find much. What a mistake, as you'll see.

I drove over to St. Peter's church and met some nice people who showed me a church record book that began in 1900. I was disappointed. The records I needed were 1850-1895 roughly. So, I asked the kind woman if they had any earlier records. She said that she thought they did, but wasn't sure where they were, but she had an idea. We walked down the hall to a large closet. Peering inside we saw old paintings, old frames, and stacks of old books. She was a little embarrassed, but also a little overwhelmed by the sight. As we looked at the stacks of books I looked for the oldest looking book I could see. I spotted it about ten books down in a stack, all of them covered with dust. We extracted the book and opened it to find that it was the first record book of the church that covered the years 1830-1900. The records were in German. We went back to the office and I spent the next 5 hours or so putting sticky notes on pages and then copying them. I found records of christenings and births with full dates, parents, places. These records pre-date any governments records and are more complete and accurate because the information was given at the time of the event by the participants. I was in Heaven.

Fast-forward two years to our trip of just a few weeks ago. Again, I spent a day doing research. I hadn't been able to find the Schneider family in St. Peter's Church records before even though my Mother-in-Law insisted they had attended that church. I did some online research and found that there was another church within a few miles of St. Peter's that was also a German Evangelical (Lutheran) church. The church is now called the United Church of Christ at Ebenezer. I called them and they also had the records and were happy to have me come and view them and make copies. And, yes, I did find the Scneider family in the records. One particular record made me feel the importance of this find. Anna Elisabetha Schneider was born in November of 1870 and died in August of 1871. The church christening and death record are the only records of her life.

Burial Record for Anna Elisabetha Schneider, daughter of Wilhelm Schneider. Burial 9 August 1871 Died 7 August 1871, Age 8 Months 25 Days. Ebenezer United Church of Christ, Ebenezer, Erie, New York.

While I was talking with the Pastor and secretary at the Ebenezer Church I mentioned that they really should get their records microfilmed. The Pastor said "yes, we really need to do that, I think I'll stop by the LDS church in Orchard Park and ask them about getting them filmed. You know they do that." I then explained that I was LDS and that I knew that the church would film them for free and provide a copy of the film to the church as well as free online access to the records. Hopefully he has contacted someone by now and the records will be filmed and put online.
I have learned from this lesson to not always look for the same type of records, and that church records can be incredible. But, they're not all online.

Indexing News and Links

Two important posts at the FamilySearch Blog today on indexing.

Indexing Coming to Tablets

The first post is about the future of indexing on tablets. When the new web version of FamilySearch Indexing is released later this year you'll be able to do indexing on your tablet. The article also discusses that fact that SmartPhones won't be supported because of the tiny screen size that will make it nearly impossible to effectively index. Read the whole blog post:  New Indexing Program: Tablet Support and the New Learning Experience

Are You Ready to Try Indexing Intermediate Projects?

The second post is about the challenge of providing "beginner level" indexing projects to the ever increasing population of indexers. I've seen this problem firsthand as many of the indexers I serve are beginners. There are so many beginners that beginning indexing projects are quickly taken and often beginners aren't comfortable trying intermediate level projects.

One thing I have learned about the labels "beginner" and "intermediate" is that they aren't always an appropriate label for the records. Because there are so many variables that make a project easy or difficult, often the project is a mix of records that are easy and some that are difficult. For example, some pages of a census record may be recorded by someone with very hard to read handwriting while other pages are very easy to read. So, is the project a beginner level project or an intermediate level. Or there are the obituary projects that are mostly typewritten, but the number of rules and the complexity of many obituaries make them more challenging to index. You get the picture. Read the blog post here:
Am I Really a Beginning Indexer?

Do We Really Need Another Genealogy Blog?

That's a question I've been mulling over for a few months now, and I guess by this post I am saying that we do. My purpose for this blog is to provide a place for me to share links, thoughts, research techniques, etc. with a particular focus on the LDS Family History Community in the Tooele, Utah area. Because I currently serve as a Ward Family History Consultant and an Assistant Stake Family History Director, I am hoping this blog will be a way for me to disseminate information to those I try and help.

Am I Qualified?
First, I'm not a professional genealogist. I don't have a degree in genealogy—in fact I don't have a degree in anything. I do have 38 years of research experience, and I did take classes at BYU in genealogy. I continue to research and try to stay abreast of new developments, research techniques, etc. My strongest areas of research experience by geography include; Virginia, New York, Indiana, Missouri, England and Germany. My German research skills are intermediate, primarily because of the language, but I can read (with the help of some guides) most German documents written in Kurrent Script. I have extensive experience in New York, Virginia and Indiana research also, I would consider myself advanced in those states.

What Will You Find on This Blog?
I will attempt to post weekly updates that will include;

• links to blog posts from other blogs that I believe will be of value to my readers
• news of developments in the LDS genealogy community
• tips and tricks that I think my readers can use
• stories of success and failure (to learn from)

I hope this will be a resource that you will be able to use to further your genealogical research and indexing activities and hopefully might inspire you along the way.

Best Regards,

Kim