Tag Archives: familysearch

Introducing archival records info in the Compendium

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I’m happy to announce a new feature of the B&F Compendium of Jewish Genealogy. Last month I added over 150 Polish towns to the Compendium, adding to the over 200 towns I added back in August, and bringing the total number of Polish towns to over 1350. Those new towns were in preparation for the feature I am introducing today.

For nearly 800 towns there is now information on what archival records exist for those towns, and links to the sites that have further information on those records.

The information currently comes from two sources:

The first source is the Polish State Archives (PSA), where I provide links to information on all Jewish records listed in their PRADZIAD database. Additionally, I provide links to their szukajwarchiwach.pl site which provides further information on the records, and in many cases provides the digital scans of the records themselves.

The second source is FamilySearch. As you may know, FamilySearch has millions of microfilms they have collected over decades, which are now on their way to all being digitized and placed on their web site. Unfortunately, most of those films can only be accessed at their Family History Centers or a FamilySearch Affiliate Library. For all of the films that have Jewish records from towns currently in Poland I provide links to the FamilySearch Catalog page that lists the film, as well as a link to the film itself if it has been scanned.

It is my hope that in the future I will be able to add information from German and Ukrainian archives, as well as any other archive with records on Jews from towns currently in Poland, and thus build a complete picture of what records exist for the towns in the Compendium.

Here’s how it works. When you go to a town page (see the full List of Polish Cities), if there are archival records then at the top of the list of resources you’ll see a green box (this may change later) that tells you how many listings exist from each source, and a link to display all of them. If you click on the link you’ll go to a separate page that lists all of the archival records, with links to their original sites to find out more.

As an example, let’s take a look at Kraków. In the picture below you can see part of the Krakow page, and if you look below the crest and map, you’ll see the green box under the heading Archival Records. In the box it says that there are 7 listings from the Polish State Archives for Krakow, and 25 from FamilySearch.

We can then click on the link in the green box to go to the Archival Records for Krakow page. On that page you will see the 7 listings from the Polish State Archives, and then the 25 from FamilySearch. In the picture below you can see the last two listings from the Polish State Archives, and the first two listings from FamilySearch:

For each listing I show the archive that the records are in (or were in, in some cases). For the PSA I note the Fond number and the name of the Fond (in Polish). For FamilySearch I list the Film number, and if there is one, an item number indicating where in the film the records can be found (in films that have more than one set of records).

Note that for each listing there are three links.

For the two PSA listings at the top, there is a link to the PRADZIAD catalog, a link to the szukajwarchiwach.pl site, and a numbered link in the Comments column that goes to the resource page for that listing.

For the two FamilySearch listings on the bottom, there is a link to the FamilySearch Catalog, a link to the film itself (if scanned), and again a numbered link in the Comments column that goes to the resource page for that listing. Note the icon of key with a red X next to the Film links (), which indicates that the film can only be viewed online while in a Family Research Center, or a FamilySearch Affiliate Library (a searchable map of Family Research Centers and FamilySearch Affiliated Libraries). When the film is viewable online from any location, there will be no icon. If the film has not yet been scanned yet, then there will be no film link at all.

It’s worth noting that FamilySearch has indicated that all of their films will be scanned in the next few years, so you should always check the Catalog entry and double-check to see if the film has been scanned. If you find a film that has been scanned that has no link in the Compendium, then please click on resource page link (the Comments number), and add a comment indicating that the film is now scanned so I can add the link. About 84% of all the film listings are locked (viewable only in Family History Centers and FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries), 13% are unlocked, and the remaining 3% are not yet scanned.

I hope people find this useful. As always, let me know what you think and if you find any problems.

SS-5 Form Online Ordering

Ordering a SS-5 Social Security Application

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Recently I was asked about ordering a copy of an ancestor’s Social Security application. The application, called an SS-5 Form, is usually used for genealogy to get the names of the applicant’s parents. If you don’t know the birth date of a relative, it can also be used for that purpose, although that information is available in the public SSDI databases (and parents names are not).

The SSDI

The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is a database of deaths recorded by the Social Security Administration. It’s official name is actually the Death Master File (DMF). When published online for genealogy purposes it is referred to as the SSDI. According to FamilySearch, the SSDI includes an increasing percentage of recorded deaths as time goes on from 1962 (when the index started):

The index includes about 50 percent of deceased persons from 1962 to 1971 and about 85 percent of the deceased persons from 1972 to 2005. It also includes a few deaths from 1937 to 1961.

That said, the database itself shows something a bit different. If you search for all deaths in the database from 1937 to 1961, there are 740,152 results. That’s a bit more than ‘a few’. What’s going on here? Even weirder, if you search for records before 1937 (when SS started) there are also records (a bit over 2500). Something is obviously wrong with these records. Keep these imperfections in mind when using the data. If you’re wondering why the percentage increases, it’s because not every working person was registered in the early days of the system. As time went on, more people participated in social security, and thus more people are also recorded in the SSDI.

So assuming your relative is among those recorded in the SSDI, how do you find their record, and assuming you find it, how do you get the record? One thing first…

Restrictions on Usage

You might have read that congress has criticized the online publication of social security numbers and accused online companies that do so of making identity theft easier. I have argued in the past that in fact that is backwards, but putting that aside, some online services have put restrictions on access to  SSDI data, such as not showing anyone who died in the past 10 years, etc. Recently a law was passed making it impossible to order SS-5 Forms for anyone who died in the previous 3 years. The law also effects the publication of new deaths to the SSDI, but won’t kick in until March (see this article at the Legal Genealogist for more information on that).

Whether 3 or 10 years, however, that doesn’t affect genealogists at all due to another government policy change. Back in 2011, the Social Security administration changed the access rules, where before you could order a complete SS-5 form for any deceased person born more than 70 years ago, they increased it to anyone born more than 100 years ago. Additionally, if the death of the application cannot be proved, then full records are not available for 120 years after the applicant’s birth.

So it’s currently January 8, 2014. That means if the person is known to be dead (i.e. you have a death certificate, or their death is recorded in the SSDI) then they need to have been born before January 8, 1914 if you’re going to be able to get a full record that shows the applicant’s parent’s names. If they don’t show up in the SSDI and you don’t have a record of their death (but you do have a social security number), then they have to have been born before January 8, 1894 if you want to get the applicant’s parents names.

Don’t Order Records That Won’t Help

Keep in mind one important thing. If the person was born more recently than 100 years ago, you can still order a copy of the SS-5. The Social Security Administration will happily take your money and send you a copy of the record, however, they will block out the names of the parents in the copy they send you (making the record mostly useless for genealogical purposes).

Searching the SSDI

To find a person’s social security number (and at the same time confirm that they are deceased according the Social Security Administration) you can search the SSDI on several sites. One good site is FamilySearch’s SSDI search page. Another public search page is Mocavo’s SSDI Search page. I will say that I believe FamilySearch’s to be the most up-to-date database, and they also post what date the database was updated – as of today it was updated with data up to November 30, 2013 – less than two months ago. Indeed my grandfather who passed away in September is listed in the FamilySearch database, but not in the Mocavo one.

Ordering Records

So let’s say the relative you’re researching was born more than a hundred years ago. You find their Social Security number, either through the SSDI or through other means. How do you order a record? Well that’s actually easy. You just go to the Request for Deceased Individual’s Social Security Record page, pay your $27 and order the record.

SS-5 Form Online Ordering
Ordering an SS-5 Form Online

Interestingly for two dollars more you can order the record even without the Social Security number. This is odd because searching for the record without the number would seem much more difficult and more costly than $2.

A Final Thought on the Restrictions

As I mentioned, my grandfather passed away in September. If I wanted to order his SS-5 form, according to the 2011 regulations I wouldn’t be able to order his un-redacted SS-5 form until he would have been 100, which in his case is not too far away – he was 98 – so July 2015. However, because of the new law recently passed, I can’t order the SS-5 at all until 3 years have passed, so September 2016. An extra year and a bit. In general, however, the restriction is likely to be on the 100-year regulation.

Everyone now needs to wait 3 years on ordering an SS-5 now, but if a relative passed away at the age of 80, you’d have to wait 20 years before you could get the un-redacted SS-5 form with the name of the relative’s parents on it. If your relative died before 2011 and you had ordered the records before the regulatory change then, you could have ordered the same SS-5 Form immediately, and received it un-redacted (since the relative was over 70).

New records indexed from Vienna, even more on microfilm

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For those with family from Vienna, the web site Genteam.at is an indispensable genealogy resource. It’s a volunteer-run site that has indexed over 8 million records from Vienna, including many Jewish records including birth, marriage and death records, obituaries, cemetery records, directories of professionals, membership lists of lodges (including B’nai Brith), conversion records, and more. Access to their database is free, you just need to register for a free account on their site before you can search.

Recently, the site added 482,000 new records, including a 180,000 records from the Jewish community of Vienna – marriage and death records from 1913-1928, and birth records up to 1913. I believe this record addition is what brought them over 8 million records, so congratulations to the whole team of volunteers at Genteam.at, past and present, who have accomplished an amazing task.

The records indexed all conform to the Austrian privacy laws, which is why the records end when they do. Presumably next year they will add birth records through 1914, etc. In two years my grandfather’s birth record from 1915 will presumably be published on the site. For more on my grandfather, see Friends from Antwerp – and is that a famous Yiddish poet? and Remembering my grandfather.

Keep in mind that while sites like this (located in Austria) cannot publish indexes to these records due to privacy laws, some later records were microfilmed prior to the current privacy laws, and already exist in the Family History Library. It’s unclear to me whether those records can (or will) be indexed online by FamilySearch.org, or whether they too will not provide them online, even if someone can view the records on microfilm in any Family History Center.

Right now, FamilySearch.org has a record set called Austria, Vienna, Jewish Registers of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1784-1911, which has the images online (over 200,000), but is not indexed. That means you can look at the images and try to find the record you want, but there is no way to search it.

If you search their catalog, however, there exists many more Jewish records from Vienna, including:

  • Register of Jewish births, marriages, deaths, and indexes for Wien (Vienna), Niederösterreich, Austria. Includes Leopoldstadt, Ottakring, Hernals, Währing, Fünfhaus and Sechshaus. 1826-1943
  • Circumcisions and Births 1870-1914
  • Jewish converts in Vienna 1782-1868
  • Index to the register books of the Jewish community, 1810-1938
  • Births, marriages and deaths of Austrian Jewish military personnel in Wien, Niederösterreich, Austria. 1914-1918.
  • Reports the exit from the Jewish faith: 18000 defections from Judaism in Vienna, 1868-1914
  • Names of Jewish infants who were forcibly baptized Christians and left with foundling hospitals in Vienna, Austria. The mothers of the infants were primarily servants and manual laborers from Hungary, Slovakia, Bohemia and Moravia. Each entry includes genealogical data. 1868-1914.
  • Genealogies and biographies of the Jewish upper class of Vienna, Austria, 1800-1938.

Eventually, these records will also presumably make it to FamilySearch.org, and eventually they will be indexed as well. Many of these records are clearly the same records making their way onto Genteam.at – it’s even possibly that Genteam.at is working form the FHL microfilms to create their indexes.

The odd thing is that the online record set covers the dates 1784-1911, while the microfilm record set covers 1826-1943. The question is if the microfilm set only goes back to 1826, then how does the online set go back to 1784? Even stranger, if you click through to the wiki page describing the record set, it says the records cover only the years 1850-1896. Perhaps the online records go back further because they include other record sets like the conversion data, which covers the years 1782-1868 – but if that’s the case then why doesn’t the online set go back those extra two years to 1782? It’s very confusing.

In any case, just to be clear, there are many Vienna records available, even if they apparently run counter to the Austrian privacy laws (which seem to ban the release of birth records for 100 years). As proof that these records are accessible via microfilm, I’ll just end with this birth record for my grandfather who recently passed away at the age of 98, which I acquired from the FHL microfilms with the help of a local researcher a few years ago:

JakobTrauring-Birth-Excerpt

New York records from 1940 Census now searchable!

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New York was the most populous state in 1940 with over 13 million residents. It’s not surprising it has taken longer than some other states to be made searchable in the 1940 Federal Census. Considering it’s importance, it’s also not surprising that it has been indexed early in the process compared to some other states.

Ancestry.com has just made their index for New York available online, after previously only having Delaware, Maine, Nevada and the District of Columbia available. None of the previous states had more than a million residents in 1940 (Nevada had just 110,247 residents), so the jump to New York is actually quite a large one, and certainly a very important one for Jewish researchers.

In 1940 there were nearly 5 million Jews in the US (a much higher percentage, 3.7%, of the US population than currently), and New York was home to more than 2 million of them. In fact, over 90% of those Jews lived in just New York City. Statistically speaking, if you had Jewish relatives in the US in 1940, chances are some of them were living in New York.

As there were many Jewish refugees streaming into the US in 1940, keep in mind that your family would have to have been living in the US at midnight at the beginning of April 1, 1940 in order to be recorded in the census. My grandfather actually arrived in the US by ship on April 1, 1940 and thus should not have been recorded (and as far as I can tell was not) because he arrived some hours after the midnight cut-off for being recorded in the census. The census wasn’t recorded all on April 1, 1940, but rather one of the questions asked by the enumerators was where you were living at midnight at the beginning of April 1, and if you were not living in the US then, then you were not recorded. This is true also of children born on April 1 – they were not recorded (or at least should not have been according to the rules).

Of my relatives that were already living in New York when the census was done, I’ve noticed that their names were transcribed wrong. There are always going to be transcription errors in such a large project, but I wonder if this is a result of Ancestry.com’s rumored use of transcribers in China to do all the work. It should be interesting to see how well the 1940 US Census Community Project does their transcriptions, and if the quality will be higher than the Ancestry.com transcriptions. With over 100,000 volunteers, redundant transcribing and an arbitration process, it certainly seems the community project has an advantage, but we’ll have to see when the databases are completed. Right now the only state that overlaps the two efforts is Delaware, so perhaps if someone had relatives in Delaware in 1940, they could comment on the quality of the two transcription efforts.

The good news is that even with the transcription errors, Ancestry.com still found my relatives due to their soundex search capabilities. If you know your relatives were living in New York on April 1, 1940 and can’t find them, however, try varying your search a bit and maybe that will help. I do strongly recommend that when you see transcription errors, you add a correction to the record. If you add the correct spelling, then future searchers will be sure to find the record. To correct a transcription, click on the ‘View/Add Alternate Info’ link in the Page Tools box on the left side of the record page.

For those trying to figure out where their relatives came from in Europe, the 1940 Census has a great addition to previous censuses, in that it asks where they lived in 1935. Both the city and country are listed, so if your relative moved to the US between 1935 and 1940 then this should show where they were living before they moved to the US.

States fully indexed, by company:

  • Ancestry.com: Delaware, Maine, Nevada, New York, District of Columbia (see status of other states – shows Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia coming soon)
  • Community Project (search on FindMyPast.com): Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Virginia, and New Hampshire – and partial indexes of other states (see status of other states on FamilySearch)
  • MyHeritage.com: Rhode Island and parts of New York

First 1940 Census Images are online!

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1940 US Census Page from Durham, Maine

Above is a census page from the 1940 US Census. Officially the images are not supposed to be released until 9am Eastern (six hours from now) by the US NAtional Archives, so I’m not sure how this is possible. It would seem the National Archives has been sharing the images early to allow companies to get them up faster. The above image is from Ancestry.com’s site, which somehow has a small number of images from DC, Maine and Nevada up already.

The 1940 US Census is being released today. The official launch is at 9:00am Eastern Time. There will be a live webcast before the launch at 8:30am. If you can get through, the official site for the census is http://1940census.archives.gov/.

Since I wrote about it last time, genealogy company MyHeritage has announced that they will also be indexing the 1940 Census images and providing free access online. They join Ancestry.com and the Archives.com/FamilySearch.org/FindMyPast.com consortium (The US Census Community Project) in indexing the census.

So now all the 1940 census record sites you should know about are:

The official National Archives site: http://1940census.archives.gov/

The US Census Community Project: https://the1940census.com/

Ancestry.com’s 1940 Census: http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2442

MyHeritage: http://www.myheritage.com/1940census

and of course, Stephen Morse’s Unified 1940 Census ED Finder.

One interesting thing about the 1940 census is that is was the first census to have a census time, not just a census day. In other words, in the past the census was recorded based on what the state of the population was on April 1, but in 1940 the census enumerators were instructed to base their information on midnight, April 1, so if lets say a baby was born on April 1, 1940, they won’t show up in the census (since they were not born by midnight). In a strange twist of fate, I have another interesting example in my family – my great-grandmother, grandfather and great-uncle all arrived in the US by ship on April 1, 1940. If the enumerators followed the rules, they shouldn’t be in the 1940 census. I’ll have to wait until the images for New York are up to find out, however. Another great-uncle should, however, be in the records as he arrived earlier. Any strange stories in your family connected to the 1940 Census?