As you might recall, the Italian Genealogy Group's website is one of my top go-to sites for genealogy research, and I'm not even Italian! If you have any New York City family from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, Italian or not, their website is a must-visit. Their indexes (indeces?) have been invaluable in helping me locate vital records located at the city's Municipal Archives.
For the most part, the content of the site is the same - mostly birth, marriage, and death record indexes for the five boroughs of New York, though I believe their records, like most other genealogy sites, are constantly being updated and added-to. The site, however, has a fresh, new look - more modern, and definitely more user-friendly. But probably my most favorite part of the update is the addition of an index for records from the Fresh Pond Crematory in Middle Village in Queens. That's where my great-great grandfather Rudolph Stutzmann was cremated in 1946 and though he's one of my most well-rounded ancestors, research-wise, any additional records are only a plus. "No thank you, I already have too many records on that ancestor," is something I would never, ever say. In addition to vital statistics such as age, marital status, last residence, birthplace, date of birth, date of death, information on the next of kin, and funeral home, some files apparently contain obits and correspondence, so that's awesome. As it turns out, my great-grandmother, Helen Meta Haas Stutzmann, was also cremated there in 1968, as was what appears to be a previously unknown, at least to me, stillborn child of hers. Though my father has stories about his grandmother, I know very little about her life and death. So I'm very excited by this new find, and having a new course of research action to pursue. To be honest, there may be even more new features but I got so excited by the crematory addition I haven't gotten past that yet!
And just FYI, the IGG works closely with the German Genealogy Group - if you check out the latter's website, their databases have also been updated with the same information. So if you've used either website before, and if
you have NYC ancestry I hope you have, it's probably worth your while to
check them out again and see if you can find out anything new. We owe a
huge debt of gratitude to all the volunteers from these groups who have given
much of their time to provide us all this invaluable info for free.
You can visit the Italian Genealogy Group website here. The German Genealogy Group website can be found here.
This is a great update! I use the GGG site a lot but have not touched it in awhile. In the past I have preferred the GGG over the IGG because the IGG site used to have music linked to it's home page. As soon as I opened it up at work everyone would know I was researching...and I found the music tended to slow down the speed with which the page would load. But I'll check them both out right now. Thanks for the update and what an exciting find. :)
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