52 Ancestors Challenge Week 17: "Document" - NYC Vital Records Free Online

Recently, on March 15, 2022, New York City's Municipal Archives finally made their vital records accessible online for free. For years and years and years I was either traipsing to Chambers Street in Manhattan or a Family History Center (FHC) in Plainview, Long Island to view these records. In either place you could view the image for free but very often I would order the certificate online rather than making the visit. It would cost about $20 online but if I knew I wanted a physical copy and I had a certificate number from one of the many databases that indexed the NYC Vital records, it was not worth the cost of a train ticket and/or parking and the price of gas to make the trek. In-person though, you could view the record for free or purchase it at a reduced cost. At the Archives I think it was $11 in-person and the FHC charged the cost of a photocopy, if their machine was working.

I can't even estimate how much money I have given to the New York City Municipal Archives over time, easily hundreds of dollars. So many of my ancestors were born, married, and/or died in the City of New York. Now to get these images online for free in the convenience of my living room. Woo-freakin'-hoo!

I am actively trying to download as many of them as I can now before, God forbid, the City decides that charging for access was making them revenue they need. Thus far I have converted 3 marriage records for all 3 sets of my great grandparents who were married in the City of New York to jpegs and uploaded them as images to Ancestry. 

Now, you ought to be aware that images uploaded to Ancestry become accessible to all Ancestry users. That means if you have an image you don't want someone to copy into their own tree, don't put it up. 

I am struggling to find some of the records that the City indicates should have already been digitized. Even with a certificate number, though, they don't come up. Hmm. Anyway...

Very often the cost of purchasing a document is prohibitive to the researcher. For example, my students in my summer genealogy course through St. John's University's Division of Library & Information Science often only have the resources to finance access to Ancestry.com for the month duration of the course. They come to rely on the index of these NYC vital records. I always explain to them, though, that the index is really no substitute for the document itself. You might not even have the right record if you don't look to see the other information on the record. Betcha there is more than one John Smith who died in the City of NY in the year and month that your John Smith did. How do you know it's your John Smith if the index doesn't show you his parents names and/or the burial location? Huh? Things like that.

In short, genealogists want the document.

There are all sorts of juicy tidbits that may appear in the margins on the document. Marginalia does not get indexed. For example, my favorite New York City Death Record is for my third great grandmother Mary Carillion-Henry. I know, only a genealogist would have a favorite death record. Kind of creepy, April. It is my favorite death record because of this little note, though. It was the gateway to discovering Mary's parents, siblings, and more accurate spelling of their surname. Look at this:

That is the signature of Mary's son, August Henry, the informant at the time of her death. It states that he "Could not ascertain  Mother's maiden name." 

Gorgeous! Because that tells me not to trust any instance of August recording his mother's maiden name. He doesn't know!

And that doesn't show up in any index. You have to see the document to see that. 

So go look for them, especially now if you have family members who passed through NYC! Stop looking at me. Go look! https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/