Joyce, you are absolutely right! I think our messages crossed in the mail. I have found some records that I can't identify for sure because of the lack of information in the record. I hope to pinpoint more once I get some certificates. I also know, from family lore and reading history, that what you say about the Church is true. We may dealing with a bunch of people who were subservient to the Church in a way that we can't understand today, and also, a bunch of people for whom the word "authority" of any kind meant trouble, not assistance. The records from Castle Garden, in regards to my family, are useless. I have read that Bellevue Hospital maintains patient record books. I have one relative who died at Bellevue as a fairly young man. His occupation was listed as "driver", and I wonder if he didn't die of an accident, as the rest of the family died at home. I wonder if you have explored any of those records? The archive is at Columbia. I was going to go there, or write to them, but I want to get all my certificates back first. My mom has a suitcase full of old mass cards and cemetery deeds. I am hoping to get some information from Calvary cemetery, but they say that takes some time. The good thing is that this seems to have been the only Catholic cemetery of the era. Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 11:14:05 -0700 Subject: Re: [NYC-ROOTS] NY Long Form Birth Certs From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Frances, you will find that on records prior to early 1900's you don't usually get much info unfortunately. I have a couple from late 1800's (death records) and it does not even list the wife's name, only says that they were married. The earlier records on NYC can be a nightmare. Even after birth records were required by law, many did not get filed. This is probably due to a few reasons. People had babies at home, and may not have been aware of the requirement to file those. Your best bet is to look for Baptisms back then but even those are difficult to find. Many of the early churches no longer exist and because you are dealing with NYC even the churches that still exist rarely respond to requests for information. I have also read that the Catholic Church did not believe the govt had a right to this kind of info so often did not follow through with filing marriage records and such, and if you get before 1865 or so, the NYC marriage records are such a mess, than even if the records WERE filed, no one can find them as they are in no particular order. I have sent someone to NYC 2 x's to find a marriage record from abt 1862, and even going through ALL the records there, she could find nothing. NY in general, and NYC in particular can be one of the toughest areas to research properly, due to the lack of documentation. When you get back to early 1800's it is even worse as then even the Census' don't help you, having ONLY the male name, and minimal info on the family--only showing how many people were living in the same household and tehy approx age span (example between ages 10 & 16 etc--it varies on each Census--- IF you can break through that "hump" then sometimes things get easier with earlier records OR recorded histories on families in books that can sometimes be foudn on archive.org or google books. NY can be a challenge, that is for sure. Good luck with your research. Joyce On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Frances Brunner via <[email protected]> wrote: Hi, My name is Frances, and I'm new to this list. I didn't know how to send an introductory message, so here it is, I guess! My family have been born in NYC since the first immigrants came ca. 1835. Most were born in Manhattan, but some in Brooklyn and the Bronx.I have birth certificates back till my grandmother's generation, which would date about 1900. I haven't gotten any yet that go further back. However, I would say that, when I hear "long form", I consider this to be the certificate that was filled up by the hospital and sent into the Department of Health. I don't have one in front of me, but I know that the ones I do have contain the names and ages of the parents, their address (because a copy of the filed certificate would be sent to them), father's occupation, place where the birth occurred, and the name and signature of the attendant. The most recent example I have is my daughter's, from 1984. In the case of my grandmother, her mother had chosen the name Margaret, but whoever filed up the certificate had written "Magdalena", There had been some kind of family dispute going on regarding the name. It took some time to discover this, because my great grandmother was illiterate. When they made the name correction, someone actually crossed out "Magdalena" on the original document, and wrote in "Margaret," and this is how the official amendment was recorded. So, in documents of this era, I imagine that if there were any amendments, you would see this on the long form, too. I hope to pay a visit to the Municipal Archives in the near future. I have identified some birth records that date back to the 1880s. I have a crop of relatives that were born in Manhattan in the 1860s, and can't find any birth records for them. I think I will be more likely to find baptismal records for those people. Their parish churches are still operating. But due to the fact that I have one generation in which some people have birth records and some don't, I can see that registering of births was not strictly required or enforced until more modern times. > Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 08:58:26 -0400 > To: [email protected] > Subject: [NYC-ROOTS] NY Long Form Birth Certs > From: [email protected] > > I was hoping to get a better understanding of the "long" version of NY > birth certificates. Over the years I've obtained many copies of birth > certificates from FamilySearch.org. I was wondering, if these are the long > or short forms? Also, how to the two versions differ? I'm wondering if I > need to go back and order second copies of some of the certs I have. > > TIA > Debbie > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] 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 [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message -- Researching Stephenson/Stevenson, Fleury, Heald, Lindelof, Young, Rubino, Cammarota, Mandracchia, Vaiarelli, Mulhern, Johnson, Haight, Erickson, Munson, Northrup, Sears, Camp, Gunn, Allen, Gorham, Plumb, Beard, Rogers, Eliot, Briscoe, Bradley, Mix, Wilmot, Pritchard, Mew, Stone, Sparke, Bayley, Bailey, Redfield, Redfin, Howland, Tilley, Sturgis, Hinckley, Kirk, Norton, Gerard, and many more...

Is it necessary to blame the Catholic church for everything, especially with no evidence?  The church was the champion of the people, both in Ireland and in New York.  Read a few of Archbishop Hughes' speeches in period newspapers, for example.  And letters from desperate parish priests in Irish newspapers during the Famine, for another.  Or their fiery sermons for land reform later in the 19c.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Irish came from a land where the government was their enemy and their oppressor.  The less they told the government, the better.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In fact, many people, not just the Irish, did not register their birth and marriage events.  Consuelo Vanderbilt, one of the richest women in America, lost her citizenship when she married the Duke of Marlborough.  After divorcing him years later, she tried to regain her citizenship but had problems because her NYC birth had not been recorded by her parents.  This is from her own autobiography, 'The Glitter and the Gold'.------------------------------------------------------Virginia   From: Frances Brunner via <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 2:35 PM Subject: Re: [NYC-ROOTS] NY Long Form Birth Certs I have found some records that I can't identify for sure because of the lack of information in the record. I hope to pinpoint more once I get some certificates. I also know, from family lore and reading history, that what you say about the Church is true. We may dealing with a bunch of people who were subservient to the Church in a way that we can't understand today, and also, a bunch of people for whom the word "authority" of any kind meant trouble, not assistance.