Mount Zion Cemetery, Maspeth, Queens New York Database

As I sit here ready to post on our blog it is snowing. We weren't supposed to get snow here in New York. It's even supposed to be 50 today. Crazy weather. 

Mount Zion Cemetery is located in Maspeth, Queens, New York. They have an online interment database on their site. I absolutely love when cemeteries do this. I wish more did. 

Mount Zion Cemetery

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Margaret Brown "Unsinkable Molly"

On a trip to several cemeteries in our area, I decided to search and see if I could find some infamous graves. My very first one, which I don't think many know around here on Long Island, was Margaret Brown   (nee: Tobin, 1867-1932 ). She is better known as Molly Brown or "Unsinkable Molly".
She was a first class passenger on the ill-fated Titanic. Margaret was married to James Joseph Brown ( also known as J.J.) Margaret lived till 1932 and was buried, along with her husband,  in Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury New York. It was a beautiful day when I went. The church bells were ringing making it even more beautiful. Here is the footage I took:

March 25, 2014 Update

We have updated and added some more cemeteries which you can look through here. Not all cemeteries are listed as this is a work in progress. We will be adding world wide cemeteries real soon.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

March 25, 1911 is a tragic date in New York history. 146 people died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Here is a list of the victims:

List of victims

We are researching the young woman named Clotilde Terranova who jumped to her death from the 10th floor. We have Terranova's in our family. Do you have ties to any of the victims? Please comment and share your story.

Historical Markers

Historical markers may be another source of information. Your ancestor might have lived in a historical place. They might have fought on a battle field. Maybe they were involved in a plane crash.

Most markers have dates which can be quite helpful. We have found a historical marker database where you can look up markers. There may be a picture and the coordinates of where the marker is listed. You can also add markers too.

Historical Marker Database

Hart Island New York City Database

Did you know....New York City purchased Hart Island in 1868 to serve as its Potter’s Field—a place of burial for unknown or indigent people. It is the tenth Potter’s Field in the City’s history. Previous New York City Potter’s Fields were located at the current sites of Washington Square, Bellevue Hospital, Madison Square, the New York City Public Library, Wards Island and Randall’s Island. 

Harts Island also has a searchable database of people buried there but only as far back as 1977. 

Here is the link:

Harts Island Database

And don't forget to check out the FAQ also as there are restrictions on visiting the island if you do find out you have a relative buried there.

FAQ

Here are the 2 maps of the island and where the graves are.

Map 1

Map 2

Newspapers: Brooklyn Daily Eagle ( New York )

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was published from 1841 to 1955. It was later revived again for a short while. The paper has been made into digital format but so far only from October 26, 1841 to December 31, 1902. This they say is Phase I. Always check back to see if they have added more.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle Newspaper

Irish Buried in Vermont

Do you have Irish family from Vermont that you are researching? Here is a link to inscriptions from Vermont cemeteries.

Click Here

There was a lot of Irish immigrants who came to the United States through Boston. Some of my Kilgallons did. Some may have migrated to Vermont.

Newspapers

Looking for newspapers for a certain state? Here is a site that has most of the United States newspapers. Categorized by state this may help you in finding an obituary or even some archived issues. Hope this helps some people out there.

50 United States Newspapers

Alternative To.....

As we research we find some programs or websites that work for us and some that don't. I was reading about the Google Reader and thought that would be something I might use. But alas Google discontinued it. So I wanted to find something that was very similar to it. And I came across this site:

AlternativeTo

I am in love with this site! You can see what other software or programs are out there. As you can see I searched for "Genealogy" and you can see a few of the hits it came back with. You can use this for websites too. And not just for genealogy. Just about anything. Let me know what you think.

Genealogy Software Reviews

When researching our family history we try to find the best programs to suite our needs. Sometimes that turns out to be a little difficult at first. But through trial and error we succeed...sometimes. One person has taken all the trial and error and made it a lot easier for us by listing them on his website. He then had other people review these programs too.

Don't forget to take into consideration that everyone has different opinions about things. And we all might need different programs to make our research work for us. But with these reviews at your fingertips it is so much easier to choose.

Free Sites For Genealogy

Most of our sites here on Frugal Genealogy are going to be free sites to use for genealogy. If it is a paid site it is there only because you will be able to search the site and get a little information for free.


Pixlr:  The most recent site we found was a photo editing site called Pixlr. This site you can scan those old negatives you have and then switch them to a photo to use digitized or to print out all for free. You don't even have to download any software to use this as it is used right from the site itself. This is also great for some of us who collect vintage photos from flea markets and garage sales. Some only have the negative or tins for sale. So this will be a great program to use to bring these back to life. Maybe with your help some may even find their way back home where they belong.

Newspapers: If you look on the right hand side of our site here you will see a link for Newspapers. These are free sites to look up newspapers that are digitized online. You can find obituaries, wedding announcements, birth announcements and just any kind of news. Most places back in the day would post in their local paper who was visiting who and if they were going or coming back from a trip. Some even had announcements of divorces or even criminal news. The links we have are not the only ones out there as we will be adding more as we find more. You can always help by commenting down below or at our facebook page if you find any free sites we don't have listed.

Speaking of our site check out the right hand side for other links to many sites where you can find free information for researching. As always if a link is broken just let us know on our facebook page and we will fix it as soon as possible.

Genealogy of the Brewster Family 1892

Here is another e-book online you can look at for free about the Brewster family. There is no publisher or no copyright.

Click here.

Elder William Brewster and The Brewster Family

Here is the link to the Elder William Brewster and the Brewster Family of Portsmouth, New Hampshire:

Click here

Author: Brewster, Lewis Waterbury, 1830-
Subject: Brewster family
Publisher: Portsmouth, Press of A. G. Brewster
Language: English
Call number: 31833012068919
Digitizing sponsor: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
Book contributor: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
Collection: allen_county; americana
Notes: No TOC Markings appear in scan

Using Wild Cards

Did you know you can use "wild cards" in researching some of the genealogy sites? With Ancestry.com you can search by using two characters. The first one is "?" ( without the quotation marks ). This is great to use if your ancestor's last name could be spelled differently down the years like one of mine Weed, Weede Wede. Entering lets say Weed* or Weed? can bring up different results you might not have found.
Using the "*" to at the end will bring up different spelling like with the name Ann, Ann* ( Anne ) and so on.

When using Google search you can search by putting the persons name you are looking for in quotation marks like this:
"John Smith"
This way it won't just pull up "John" or everything with the name "Smith". You can even be more specific by Entering it this way:
"John Smith New York"
This also works with dates too. Even looking up obituaries.

So give it a try and see if this helps narrow down your searches.

My Heritage and Billiongraves Working Together

Sometimes it takes just a group of people to get the ball rolling. Recently My Heritage teamed up with Billion Graves to work together in a project that benefits not only each other but millions of people researching their family history. Both companies are linked together to help researchers find more information.
A group of 80 My Heritage employees from Israel got together and decided to try out the Billion Graves App for themselves. They photographed a whole cemetery in Israel. If you want to read the whole story you can read it here.

Don't Forget!

Don't forget to look over marriage certificates that you have of your family. The witnesses actually might be related. The same with christenings and baptismals. I found this out with my great grandmother's certificate.

Look at the names. Not sure who Stephen Saunders is but I found that last name in other probate papers. And Marguerite Bourke is related to Bridget my great grandmother. Always check over every detail. And in some cases if it doesn't make sense at the time come back to it later.