Some clarification here: I wasn't knocking Calvary, I was trying to point out how they can make mistakes so that YOU don't go through what I just did, chase my tail trying to figure out where someone was buried. Liz On 10/27/07, LookingBack45@aol.com <LookingBack45@aol.com> wrote: > > In a message dated 10/26/2007 3:48:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, > Mary.Pullara@baycare.org writes: > > In defense of Calvary, I had some terrific interaction with a young lady > who found several plots for me. > > > I also had good service from Calvary, but this was a few years ago. I had > some grave numbers and had them all searched. We did visit the cemetery > eventually but it was on a Sunday when no one was there. The instructions posted > around the cemetey were good enough for us to turn up a headstone that > belonged my grandmother and two of her sons There are, if I remember correctly, 3 > separate cemeteries under the heading of Calvary. also, I did my inquiry by > snail-mail. > > Dee > > > > ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRISH-NEW-YORK-CITY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

As someone new to searching for NYC ancestors, it has been very helpful to find out the likelihood of a "not found" response to be just wrong. In those cases, if we don't check back, we may never find those ancestors. But for us living far from NY, this can be a frustrating dilemma when we can't check for outselves. Recently, the same thing happened to me with Calvary. I was very excited to find the death certificate of a family member who died as an infant. We thought we had all the family graves identified, so there was a possibility that the baby was buried with relatives we didn't know about. But the letter from Calvary came back that there was no record of the grave, even though the death certificate clearly stated Calvary. One week later, a cousin personally visited Calvary and spoke to a very helpful person who was able to find the grave. Unfortunately for us, it was one of those unmarked graves used for people without the money to buy their own, but we got the question answered and now know where she is. This same cousin tells a story of an interment list he paid for from Calvary with an unknown name on it. He spent time and money chasing down that unknown person and could never figure out the connection until later when he requested a grave location for someone else and the response was that original grave. The interment list had been typed wrong! He did get his fee refunded but so much effort was wasted in tracking down that mysterious person in the grave. I've also had many "not found" death certificate requests from Chambers Street Archives, that were later found. For these, I had the exact date of death and county. In one case, a last name was mispelled but that document directly followed the ones with the correct spelling. For another, the microfilm index was missing for that part of the alphabet but no one informed me that was the reason it couldn't be found. For the others, there was no apparent reason. Perhaps the person searching was distracted or just had a bad day, but $19 for me went down the drain for each one, and more importantly, I didn't get the info I needed until much later. Of course, I never would have found most of my ancestors without Chambers Street and Calvary, but mistakes do happen and they aren't rare. So the lesson that Liz and I both learned is that if you re-check your facts and you are pretty certain the records should be in that place, it is worthwhile to question the search or to search again on your own. Being a genealogy newcomer, the experiences, good and bad, shared on this list have been so helpful to me in figuring out what to do next. Melanie Orlando ----- Original Message ----- From: "Liz Haren" <lizharen@gmail.com> To: <irish-new-york-city@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2007 11:51 PM Subject: Re: [IRISH-NYC] calvary cemetery was "no subject" > Some clarification here: I wasn't knocking Calvary, I was trying to > point out how they can make mistakes so that YOU don't go through what > I just did, chase my tail trying to figure out where someone was > buried. > > Liz > > On 10/27/07, LookingBack45@aol.com <LookingBack45@aol.com> wrote: >> >> In a message dated 10/26/2007 3:48:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, >> Mary.Pullara@baycare.org writes: >> >> In defense of Calvary, I had some terrific interaction with a young lady >> who found several plots for me. >> >> >> I also had good service from Calvary, but this was a few years ago. I >> had >> some grave numbers and had them all searched. We did visit the cemetery >> eventually but it was on a Sunday when no one was there. The >> instructions posted >> around the cemetey were good enough for us to turn up a headstone that >> belonged my grandmother and two of her sons There are, if I remember >> correctly, 3 >> separate cemeteries under the heading of Calvary. also, I did my inquiry >> by >> snail-mail. >> >> Dee >> >> >> >> ************************************** See what's new at >> http://www.aol.com >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> IRISH-NEW-YORK-CITY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' >> without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > IRISH-NEW-YORK-CITY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >