Irish genealogical communities are buzzing with the news. It is the topic of conversation wherever two New York Irish genealogists get together. An Irish lecturer cannot leave the podium without mentioning the newest genealogical gold mine for New Yorkers of Irish descent—the Emigrant Savings Bank records.

The Emigrant Aid Society itself was started in 1841, just when the waves of Famine Irish reached New York harbor. The Irish already established in America saw newer immigrants being taken advantage of, on their arrival, by "runners" (those who would take the immigrant who stepped ashore to a prearranged boarding house—for an exorbitant fee—where the immigrant's rent was often high), and "contractors" (who for a price would assure the immigrant of work), and those who were selling bogus bank drafts. To help their countrymen get a fair deal, the Emigrant Aid Society helped direct the immigrant away from nefarious dealers toward more honest Americans.

Mutual-aid societies quickly evolved from neighborhood associations which helped newly arrived immigrants, into regional and national organizations offering aid to their members. The actual organization of immigrant aid societies was the enterprise of those already in the U.S.—saloonkeepers, priests, and grocers. Many immigrants came from small towns and villages where community life revolved around the saloon, church, or market place, so, looking to the grocer, priest, or saloonkeeper for aid was a natural step. The saloon, grocery store, or church often became the meeting place for a variety of efforts to help immigrants.

By the 1850s most Irish immigrants found associations and benevolent societies made up exclusively of their fellow countrymen. By the 1890s Poles had joined many cooperative and self-help societies already established in the Polish neighborhoods. Polish regional and national associations were particularly strong, as they helped immigrants adjust to a new society where the language and customs were different. By 1892 there was a national federation of German benefit societies which later developed into German mutual fire insurance and building societies. In later Italian associations, membership was directed by a common Italian heritage rather than a connection to a specific town or region. The Sons of Italy in America, founded in 1905 in New York City, had over 887 lodges in the U.S. by 1921. The national headquarters today are in Philadelphia. Czechs were also represented; by 1920 there were 2,500 Czech associations.

Other types of aid societies provided burial insurance. Often Jews from specific towns who settled near each other joined together in America to form landsmanshaftn, Jewish immigrant aid societies, where membership was granted according to town of origin in Eastern Europe. The landsmanshaftn often included burial associations, and the group would purchase burial plots for their members.

Knowing the name of the landsmanshaftn, which means "from a town," will often be a clue to an ancestor's town of origin. Learning from the death certificate the name of the cemetery where Ira Schwartz was buried led to finding the name of the town in Poland from which he came. Ira Schwartz, buried in Washington Cemetery in New York City, was interred in the Radomysl Weilkl Young Mens Benevolent Society section of the cemetery. The plot was purchased by the society, and Ira Schwartz was buried in a plot with all his Schwartz relatives, as well as others from the same society. Radomysl Weilkl is the name of a town in Poland to which all members of the society had a connection. Identifying the name of the emigrant aid society or burial association to which a Jewish ancestor belonged is often the only way to learn the name of the small town where he was born. In New York City in the 1920s, as many as 3,000 landsmanshaftn were organized. Although not as many are meeting today as did years ago, many Jewish benevolent societies are still in existence.

In 1854 the Ceskoslvanska Podporujici Spolecnost or CSPS (Czech-Slavonic Benevolent Society) was founded in St. Louis to provide insurance to its members. In 1933 CSPS merged with smaller organizations and became the Czechoslovak Society of America, one of the oldest fraternal benevolent societies in the United States. Centered in Berwyn, Illinois, today there are over 200 lodges, mostly in Czech communities in metropolitan areas.

National Polish organizations were often a conglomeration of many local associations. The Zwiazek Narodowego Polskiego (Polish National Alliance) as founded in 1880 as an association of 18 local nationalistic clubs. In the Polish communities, building and loan cooperatives began early and spared widely. Begun in 1881, the building and loan associations number 550 by 1925. The loan cooperative was usually based on the parish but run democratically. Its purpose was to accumulate funds from small regular contributions upon which members could draw to purchase homes.

Some aid societies became more social and fraternal in character. They provided the community with an ethnic identity by preserving the ethnic culture in the U.S. Today ethnic societies sponsor festivals, native dance contests, costume competitions, ethnic language classes, native sports events, and other diverse activities. They are mainly social centers where Americans can learn about the history and customs of their immigrant ancestors and bring that ethnic identity into their daily lives.

In the interest of fostering this ethnic identity, many national ethnic organizations today maintain libraries and archives. The Czechosovak Society of America houses a museum and biographical library; the American Italian Historical Association of Staten Island, New York, archives organizational records and a manuscript collection on Italian-American history; and the American Irish Historical Society houses a library that contains a substantial collection of books and published material on Irish settlers in the American colonies and the United States.

The Emigrant Savings Bank records date from 1850 and, along with the Irish Emigrant Society meeting records, cover (in nine volumes) the almost 100 years from 1841 to 1933. While they are a gold mine of information for the Irish genealogist, records of other mutual aid societies can be difficult to locate. Of the recently unearthed records in the Emigrant Savings Bank vault (the bank is still in existence), 289 volumes of records were examined by Marion Casey, a leading New York Irish historian, and 58 of the books were deposited, at her suggestion, in the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library, where a day-pass will gain anyone entrance to use the records. For others, tracking down the records of a mutual aid society may take some digging.