Locating Society Records
If we do not already know that our ancestors were members of a lodge or ethnic organization, we will first want to know if an immigrant aid society was in existence where our ancestors resided. Many of these are listed in city directories of the times or in more recent histories of a city, a city neighborhood, or an ethnic community within the city. (Most ethnic societies were founded in urban areas where the number of immigrants could support the organization.) Richard Purcell's article on "the Irish Emigrant Society of New York" in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review of Letters, Philosophy, and Science was referenced in a recently published bibliography. Published in 1995 by Ann M. Shea and Marion Casey, The Irish Experience in New York City: A Select Bibliography lists published material, manuscript material, and dissertations on the Irish in New York City.

Learn if there is a similar ethnic association still in existence in the locality, and contact them for information. In Sligo in New York: the Irish From County Sligo, 1849-1991, James Richardson discussed a local Irish ethnic society. It may be that the records are kept locally, that they were deposited in a national organization, or that they simply did not exist. Though aid societies were formed at various times, they did not all keep formal records. Some groups died out when the need they served was no longer there.

If the immigrant aid society did not evolve into an ethnic cultural society—a natural outgrowth when immigration rates dropped off—the record may be lost today. After you search the immediate geographic location for the records, check to see if there is a national organization where the records may be located. The Sons of Italy's home office in Philadelphia houses records of many lodges that are no longer in existence and the original registers of lodges that are active today.

Paul Wassermann and Alice E. Kennington briefly describe ethnic organizations in America. In Ethnic Information: Sources of the United States, second edition, the authors compiled names, addresses, and information about ethnic associations today. They are arranged by ethnic group and each section includes club, organization, library, and historical society details.

Ethnic groups have had information collections published on their individual organizations. Brian E. Cooper has edited The Irish American Almanac and Green Pages, which encompasses historical societies, Irish gift and book stores, Irish genealogists, and information about Irish agencies important to the Irish community in America. For an overview of the ethnic group in America, read the specific chapters and relevant articles in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by Stephan Thernstrom. Arranged alphabetically by ethnic group, each chapter has a section on ethnic cultural life, including organizations. For example, it details the Polish Falcons of America, a fraternal benefit insurance society founded in 1887, which maintains a Polish museum in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, office.

As genealogists and historians we have experience tracking down elusive sources (and ancestors). When we first begin genealogical research, one ofhte first steps we take is to join a local genealogical society. Doing ethnic research follows the same path-joining an ethnic genealogical society. Here you may find others who have used the records you are trying to locate or know something about their whereabouts. Articles may be in print about mutual aid society histories and records, published in the ethnic society's journal. "Historical Treasures from the Vaults of Emigrant Savings Bank" was published in the most recent issue of New York Irish History (1995), the journal of the New York Irish History Roundtable. American societies devoted to the history of our ethnic heritage have interests in records that often overlap our genealogical pursuits.

Let us suppose that your ancestor, Ann Prendergast, a native of Mt. Mary, Co. Galway, left her account at the Emigrant Savings Bank to her daughter, Mary Ann Jennings. This may be the link that ties your family to Ireland. Though Ann's parents, Robert Dillon and Mary Ann Kelly, are already dead in 1852, Ann's brother John and her sister Eliza, still living in Ireland, may have resided on the family farm in Mount Mary (and their descendants may still be there today). We may never have learned Anne's maiden name, as her first husband and father of her two children (one of whom was our ancestor) was Edward Jennings—she later married Patrick Prendergast. This entry in the "Test Book" of the Emigrant Savings Bank takes us back a generation, but more importantly, places us in a specific place (Mount Mary, County Galway, Ireland) and time (1853), with family in the native country. Finding out that our ancestors belong to a mutual aid society may open the door to the place in the native country frm which they came.