Dang those old towns!

Dang those old towns! I find that nothing is more irritating then having FamilyTreeMaker tell me a location doesn’t exist. But then I remind myself, FTM’s quirky database is built on the geographical location today, not the location at the time the event occurred. A lot of those older smaller post offices used as locations in the olden days have simply vanished.

Sometimes those small towns just disappeared from history. Maybe they were flooded out… maybe people just got up and left… often they simply changed their name. Today, if the remnants of the towns buildings still stand we call it a ghost town. But sometimes, the town just drops from the face of the earth, the railroad station that made it so, up and left, taking the towns people with it, the old wood buildings crumbled away over time, and now nothing remains to remind us of its location, except the records which bring it up, and old maps and gazetteers. AHGP has recently posted a gazetteer for 1843 on it’s website as a group project from several of its volunteers. There are a lot of ghost towns in it. Specific information that may help you identify where that dang old town actually was, with one caveat, it had to have existed in 1843.

So bookmark the book on their website, so that when you come across a town in the US that FTM tells you doesn’t exist, you can verify that it actually did – at least in 1843, and place the county with it. I have!

A Complete Descriptive and Statistical Gazetteer of the United States of America
Containing a particular description of the states, territories, counties, districts, parishes, cities, towns, and villages mountains, rivers, lakes, canals, and railroads; with an abstract of the census and statistics for 1840, exhibiting a complete view of the agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, and literary condition and resources of the country.  Before going to the Table of Contents for this book, please read this page, if you don’t you will not understand part of the explanation of the States, Counties and Towns. BTW not sure if the people who prepared this book knew their alphabet, so when looking for counties, they are not always in alphetical order! They also used Ia for Indiana and Io or Iowa for Iowa.

Free Genealogy in Seneca County New York

A guide and directory to Seneca County New York genealogy, containing both online and offline resources for genealogy and historical research. This article contains sources of genealogical data about Seneca County such as biographies, cemetery records, census records, church records, court records, family records, land records, military records, naturalization records, and vital records. The vast majority of the materials on this page are free to access. If they find a particular set of data that is not free they place a $$$ at the end of it to signify it’s currently only available on a membership website.

Do you have any ancestors who resided in Seneca County New York? Try researching those ancestors using this new county guide. This new guide attempts to collect the many sources (over 1,000) of free information available online specific to Seneca County NY and provide a quick and easy jumping off point for researchers.

View the guide online: Seneca County New York Genealogy

 

Index to the Interlaken and Ovid Newspapers, 1822-1994

In 2006 the Interlaken Historical Society created an index to a variety of newspapers which had been published in either Interlaken or Ovid since 1822. This index to over 76,000 items from the Farmer, Interlaken and Ovid newspapers, alphabetical, in a three-ring binder. At present the only method of getting this manuscript is buy purchasing or borrowing it from a lending library. The actual newspapers can be found on microfilm at a variety of historical societies and libraries in New York.

Newspaper covered:

  • Farmer
    • Saturday Morning Review, 1887-1888
    • Farmer Village Review, 1889-1892
    • The Farmer Review, 1892-1904
  • Interlaken
    • The Interlaken Review, 1904-1964
  • Ovid
    • The Ovid Gazette, 1816-1826
    • The Ovid Bee, 1838-1870
    • Ovid Seneca County Bee, 1870-1873
    • The Ovid Independent, 1873-1900
    • The Gazette and Independent, 1901-1914
    • The Ovid Gazette and Independent, 1914-1934
    • The Ovid Gazette, 1934-1937
    • The Ovid Gazette and Independent, 1937-1967

How to access the index:

Stanley I. Reynolds Collection

The Stanley I. Reynolds collection contains research data compiled by Reynolds while researching for various potential D.A.R. members, including birth, death and marriage records for Seneca and Ontario Counties, New York. Included are a record of wills, powers of attorney, guardianship and family records, census and military records, as well letters to Reynolds requesting genealogical information.

The research from volumes 19-29 is likely excerpts and index from the same records now published digitally online by Family Search and known as the New York, Probate Records, 1629-1971.

Microfilm of original manuscripts and typescripts, extracts of Seneca County families from court records, wills, probates, church records, cemeteries, newspapers, and miscellaneous local records, located at the Waterloo Library and Historical Society, Waterloo, NY. Includes index.

Filmed by Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, 1970, 11 rolls, contents and FHL film numbers as follows:

  • Letter file. Film Num. 812840
  • Name file and miscellaneous papers. Film Num. 812841
  • Vol. 1-6 Seneca County Newspapers Deaths Marriages, 1817-1963. Film Num. 812842
  • Vol. 7-9 Seneca County Cemetery records. Film Num. 812843
  • Vol. 10-16 Seneca County Family records Church records, 1808-1884. Film Num. 812844
    • Dutch Reformed Church (Lodi)
    • Dutch Reformed Church (Ovid)
    • Methodist Episcopal Church (Lodi)
    • Methodist Church (Lodi)
    • Presbyterian Church (Lodi)
    • Presbyterian Church (Romulus) Cemetery records, 1818-1836.
  • Vol. 17-18 Cemeteries and Census records. Film Num. 812845
  • Vol. 19-22 Seneca County Wills, books A-U. Film Num. 812846
  • Vol. 23-27 Seneca County Petitions for probate, wills 1-5406. Film Num. 812847
  • Vol. 28-29 Seneca County Wills 5407-6352 Guardianships A-Y. Film Num. 812848
  • Vol. 30-35 Miscellaneous notes and family names, A-S. Film Num. 812849
  • Loose papers and genealogies. 812850

Marriage and death notices from Seneca County, New York newspapers, 1817-1885

More than three thousand marriage and death notices have been compiled from eight local newspapers in Seneca County, New York: Ovid Bee, Seneca County Courier, Seneca Farmer, Seneca Observer and Union, Seneca Observer, Waterloo Gazette, Waterloo Observer, and the Waterloo Republican. Marriage notices make up the first half of this book, and death notices comprise the second half. A separate section has been created for each newspaper. The notices are organized chronologically and the book includes a surname index that makes research a snap. The marriage notices usually contain the full names of bride and groom, residence, and date and place of marriage. The death notices always provide the date of death or the date of the newspaper. Other information may include the date of birth, location of death, and names of relatives yet surviving. Although these newspapers were published in Seneca County, they include notices for the surrounding counties plus many notices for local people who moved to other towns in New York or to other states. By Mary S. Jackson & Edward F. Jackson, published Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, c1997. Notices  Mary S. Jackson and Edward F. Jackson. (1997), 2006, 5½x8½, paper, index, 194 pp.