Sometimes it's Right Under Your Nose
Some of you may have heard a scream around 3:00 last Tuesday afternoon. Yes, that was me. I thought I'd poke around the New York, Death Newspaper Extracts, 1801-1890 from the Barber Collection at Ancestry.com. I thought I had pretty much scoured this database for all of my family lines, but apparently this wasn't the case. I ran across a Mary Tobin with a death date in 1873. I was doubtful that this was our Mary and almost skipped over it. I'm so glad I didn't. It was a reference to an obituary in the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle" that read,

Apr 2 Mary Tobin wid Wm hater [sic] 100y sons Peter George James res s Peter 366 Hudson Ave.

I couldn't believe that it was right there under my nose all this time. I had assumed that she had died before 1870 because I had located Peter in 1870, and Mary wasn't living with him at the time. After all, she had been eighty-six in 1860. This is a good reminder to keep those assumptions in check!

I pulled up the full obituary of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from the Brooklyn Public Library's online collection.

TOBIN. On Wednesday, April 2, 1873, Mary Tobin, widow of William Tobin, hatter, in the 100th year of her age.

Friends and acquaintances of the family, also those of her sons, Peter, George, and James are requested to attend the funeral from the residence of her son, Peter C. Tobin, 366 Hudson av., on Sunday, April 16, at 2 P.M.

Where's Mary?
Since my mom happened to be in SLC, I called her and gave her the information I had found. (O.K., I probably wasn't as calm as that sounds. I believe I actually shrieked for most of the conversation.) She set out for the Family History Library to look for her death record. She located Mary in the index, but then we were in for a letdown. The index gave her certificate number as 144348, but when she looked for the film number of the certificates, she found that certificates no. 143581-160000 are missing and were not microfilmed. Dang!

We didn't give up there though. A search of the 1870 census turned up a Mary Toben, age ninety-eight, in the 19th Ward, 20th District, image 116 of 219. She appeared to be in some sort of institution as she was among a long list of apparently unrelated people, and there were no headers on the census pages except for a page number in the upper left corner. On image 100, there was an enumeration tally page of sorts.

I paged forward and did a double-take. The top of the next page read, "Penitentiary." This was not where I expected to find my ninety- eight-year-old 4th great-grandmother! What could she have done to wind up in the hoosegow?

Browsing through the enumeration, it became evident that this was the enumeration of Blackwell Island and all of its facilities. Another tally page further on gave numbers for the almshouse. I scanned my bookshelves for more information about Blackwell Island. The description in New York, An Illustrated History, by Ric Burns and James Sanders with Lisa Ades (Companion to the PBS Series)" reads:

For the tens of thousands of unfortunate people who fell by the wayside each year, the only recourse was Blackwell's Island--a forbidding cluster of stone fortresses out in the East River, where the city's most desperate and dangerous people were confined.

The island's stark facilities--the penitentiary, the workhouse, the lunatic asylum, the Hospital for Incurables--were routinely filled to capacity, its two dismal almshouses, one man wrote, crowded with "broken down and decrepit men and women, and old chronic cases, sent there to die."

Wow. That's a sobering description, and I couldn't help but be moved by the thought that this could be my ancestor. Tobin is a relatively common name, but with the age matching so closely, and the fact that living to that age was the exception, I'm inclined to believe it is. Not the kind of thing you want to find out in your research, but we have to take the bad with the good.

The Good News Is...
I also did some searching online for more information about Blackwell Island and in doing so, have hope that, although finding what may be my 4th great-grandmother in an almshouse at age ninety-eight was disheartening, this new discovery may help me to locate more information to prove or disprove the relationship. The Municipal Archives of New York has a collection of Almshouse records dating from 1758-1953. Many of these records are also available on microfilm at the Family History Library. (Guess what Mom's doing right now?)

Still Much To Do
While I have definitely have made progress on this line, I also still have a lot to prove. There are several things still nagging at me:

• Mary's age in relation to her "sons." Fifty-three is pretty old for a woman to be bearing children, but then again, you have to think she was probably in good health to have lived that long.
• Why she would be on Blackwell Island in 1870 when clearly Peter was relatively well off? Was she there because of disease? We may never know the answer to this one, but perhaps the almshouse records will help in this aspect.
• Where do the brothers disappear to in various years? I still have a lot of gaps to fill in my research, and I'll want to branch out into vital records, probates, and anything else I can get my hands on.
• Most importantly, the only link I have between this family and my ancestor, Thomas Tobin, is from that interview with Mom's aunt. Because what she said has been dead-on so far, I'm inclined to believe her, but I still need something tangible to prove the relationship between this family and mine.

Clearly, I need to take this case step-by-step and make sure I'm covering all the bases, but if the past day has been any indication, it should be a very interesting ride!

Juliana Smith has been an editor of Ancestry.com newsletters for more than eight years and is author of The Ancestry Family Historian's Address Book. She has written for Ancestry Magazine and wrote the "Computers and Technology" chapter in The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, rev. 3rd edition. Juliana can be reached by e- mail at Juliana@Ancestry.com, but she regrets that her schedule does not allow her to assist with personal research.

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by Maureen Taylor

In my mind, summer is the season for home video. Graduations, recitals, weddings, soccer tournaments, family outings, and vacations make this a perfect time to take moving images of family milestones. If you're the average family photographer then you own at least one home movie recorder. This might be a dedicated video camera or a digital camera with an MPEG movie feature. My teenage kids take a lot of short clips using their cell phones.

About five years ago after years of resisting the trend, I finally purchased a video camera. It uses little tapes that are convenient to tote around and takes pretty good footage. At the time I thought, "I'll buy the camera, download the footage, edit it, and share it with family." It was a statement full of good intentions. Unfortunately I'm still looking for the right hook-up for my computer.

You're probably wondering why I'm mentioning my failures as a home movie enthusiast. Well, recently I just bought a new camera. It wasn't expensive, and I can either upload footage to my computer using the internal USB connection or view it on my television. It's a dream come true for anyone that needs some quick footage. Did I mention it uses AA batteries and is so easy to operate even little kids and non-technical elders can "point and shoot." It's called the Flip. Pure Digital Technologies introduced it at the beginning of May, and it's a sellout at local stores. Once I saw what it could do, I had to have one. (Pure Digital sells two versions of the device for less than two hundred dollars; one records for thirty minutes and the other for sixty minutes.)

The afternoon I bought a Flip, I used it to record my son's drum recital. All I had to do was turn the camera on, push the red button on the back, zoom in (it has a 2X zoom) and hold the camera steady. Then I came home and within a couple of minutes downloaded the footage to my computer. (My son previewed his performance on the camera during the ride home.) You don't need extra cables or software (that's built in). Now that the footage is on my computer, I can make a DVD or email it to relatives. Of course, since it's digital it's also ready to be added to my family history software, a family home page, or for the public on YouTube if I were so inclined. (I'm not!) The quality of the recording can't compete with high-end cameras, but you can't beat its simplicity and size. It fits in a pocket or small purse.

If you've ever thought about using home video to preserve family history, now's the time.

• Take footage of all your special family moments
• Record an interview with an elderly relative.
• Get the kids involved by asking them to shoot movies at events.
• Share your home videos with family and friends.

Point and shoot devices like the new Flip camera, a digital camera with movie capabilities, or even cell phones have a place in preserving family history. Before impulsively pointing the camera, reflect for a minute or two on what you'd like to capture. These devices have limited storage space, so you might not get a chance to record the whole event. Think ahead toward the highlights, and plan for the important moments worth saving.

There's a family history revolution in the works. Instead of using pen and paper, more genealogists are turning to digital devices to tell their family story using pictures, moving images, and audio recordings. Your descendants won't have to wonder if you had the dance moves; they'll be able to see you in action and hear you humming along.

Maureen Taylor writes about family photos in her blog on the website PhotoDetective.com

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The following items were posted to the 24/7 Family History Circle blog over the past week:

• Photo Corner: Good Friends Alec Smith, Edward Everett Allen, and Newton Becklis
• Emigrant Savings Bank Question
• Who Am I? Bicycle Duo
• Beta Version of Family Tree Maker 2008 is Here!

Pre-order now for mid-August delivery! Be one of the first to own Family Tree Maker 2008 and take advantage of a special introductory price of $29.95. Offer expires July 31st.

To pre-order your copy, visit the Ancestry Store.

Want to try it out first? Download the beta version here.

Today's image (in the upper, right-hand corner of this newsletter) is from the Library of Congress Photo Collection, 1840-2000 at Ancestry.

"The Little Church Around the Corner," (Church of the Transfiguration) New York City, 1900 (Detroit Photographic Co.)

from George G. Morgan

If you are of Russian descent and have encountered little of substance in the resources on the Internet, you will be pleased to visit the Researching Russian Roots Site. Here you will find introductory articles concerning how to start your Russian family history research, links to message boards, an extensive list of links to archives in Russia and their mailing/e-mail addresses, details and links for research in Ukraine and Belarus, some individual family trees, and a vast compilation of other Web links in the U.S. Some sites are in Russian (Cyrillic), but most of these offer English versions as well. If you're researching your Russian roots, don't miss this site.

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Click Through to Next Page
I don't know if you have mentioned this yet as you advertise that the Iowa State Censuses are available, but I have found that the 1925 year is extremely helpful. This census year asked for the names of the person's parents (including mother's maiden name), age, and place where they married. People may miss this valuable information if they don't click to view the original page where their ancestor is found on the census. This is a great source of information--thanks for making it available.

Melissa Mailander Curristan

Unusual Census Spellings
An article about finding unusual spellings in the census reminded me of an experience. In the 1900 U.S. Census an ancestor's name of Kubalski was spelled "Cowballski." The same census taker used Smith for all the Schmidts in his area. This was in Wright County, Minnesota.

Mabel Loesch

How Many Children Living? An Important Question
I enjoyed your recent article in the Ancestry online newsletter about spicing up family history by adding interesting details about our ancestors' lives. Your tip about using the 1900 and 1910 census info to find the number of children born to a woman versus the number of those still living was a good one.

That info in the census was of great help to us as we researched my mother's maternal side of the family. Before doing research on my wife's family, we "knew" that her great-grandmother had nine children, which was not unusual for the late 1800's. But we were surprised to learn that the 1900 census said she had fourteen, nine of whom were still alive that year! Upon further research, we learned from various birth, death, and internment records that she actually bore 15 children. We found that three of the children had died very young, 2 of them on the very same day, probably of diphtheria, although cause of death was not recorded.

We were able to locate birth records for twelve of the children, (including the fifteenth one who was born after 1900) and presume that the others, unnamed and unrecorded, died at birth or were stillborn. Without that census info, we would not have been aware of the travail that she and her husband must have gone through in losing so many little ones to early death.

Ed Daniel,
Rockville, Maryland

If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: Juliana@Ancestry.com. Thanks to all of this week's contributors!

Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Weekly Journal please state so clearly in your message.

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The year was 1882 and the United States passed several new laws regarding immigration, the first of which was the Chinese Exclusion Act. The legislation blocked the immigration of Chinese "skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining" and only allowed entry to non-laborers who could be certified by the Chinese government that they were qualified to immigrate. It also required Chinese immigrants who left the U.S. to obtain certification in order to reenter.

The second piece of legislation, passed in August of 1882, further excluded "lunatics, idiots, and persons likely to become a public charge." A fifty cent passenger tax on each person entering U.S. ports was enacted to defray the cost of immigration regulation.

These restrictions came at a time when the Jewish population began leaving Russia in response to the newly enacted "May Laws" of 1882. The May Laws restricted Jewish settlement, forcing many from their homes, and made it illegal to conduct business on Sundays and Christian holidays.

In New York City, Thomas Edison opened a power station on Pearl Street. The station, which provided electricity to one square mile in Manhattan, was the start of the electric utility industry, and its success increased the demand for electricity.

Newly emerging technology took a hit in November as a solar storm wreaked havoc on the telegraph industry, causing delays in the transaction of business. The New York Times of 18 November 1882 reported that "from 9 am until noon, telegraph business east of the Mississippi and north of Washington was at a stand-still . . . An aurora borealis was the first evidence of the overcharging of the atmosphere with electric fluid." Transmissions from Europe were also affected, as was the newly developed telephone system.

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If you'd like to see your ancestor's photograph in the Ancestry Weekly Journal, send it to Juliana@Ancestry.com.

Contributed by Dan Mangan, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania This photograph shows the family of John and Ann Whelan, Irish immigrants, in Perry, New York, taken in the late 1880s. My grandmother, Mary Adeline Whelan Mangan, is a young teenager here, and is seated first row right.	Contributed by Monte Engel, Devils Lake, North Dakota The attached photo is of my mother (right), Dolores (Stenso) Engel and her sister Shirley (Stenso) Sibley. They were about seven and five years of age in 1935 when this was taken in Drake, North Dakota.

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Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

In this epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace describe an epic as vast and varied as the city it chronicles. Drawing on the work of hundreds of scholars who have reexamined New York's past, the authors weave together diverse histories--of sex and sewer systems, finance and architecture, immigration and politics, poetry and crime--into a single narrative tapestry that reads like a fast-paced novel.

Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch, the Indian wars and Peter Stuyvesant's autocratic regime, the English conquest, the rise of slave trading and slave revolts, the invasion and garrisoning of the city during the Revolution. They will watch New York blossom over the 19th century into the country's greatest port, leading manufacturing center, preeminent financial hub, corporate headquarter, and incubator of mass cultural innovations from vaudeville and baseball to Coney Island and the department store.

But the real heroes and heroines of Gotham are New Yorkers themselves, and the authors provide mini-biographies of hundreds of individuals, ranging from the world famous to the virtually unknown. The interplay among New York's fiercely heterogeneous citizens was often abrasive, and Gotham recounts the way clashes between immigrants and old-timers, rich and poor, and blacks and whites flamed into fierce street battles like the Civil War draft riots. Learn more...

Normally this book retails for $29.95, but for one week you can buy it in the Ancestry Store for $25.95.

For more selections like this one, visit the Mid-Atlantic section of the Ancestry Store.

The Official Guide to RootsWeb.com (Print version)
by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG and Tana Pedersen Lord

Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Truman and John Adams, McCullough returns with the story of the Revolutionary War -- a book certain to be another landmark in the literature of American history. In this stirring book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no- accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King's men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known.

Normally this book retails for $12.95, but for one week you can buy it in the Ancestry Store for $9.95. An e-book version is also available for download for $7.95.