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With warmer weather making its appearance, start planning your genealogy-related tours – at least the domestic ones.
Since many of our ancestors came to America via the seaport at New York City (with some remaining there for years), here are some ways to enjoy a mini-vacation while learning about the immigrant experience of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Free Tours by Foot (yes, free, but they take donations) offers walking tours of some of the sections of New York City associated with history and with immigrant life. I’ve visited Lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village that way.
They also offer walking tours of SOHO (South of Houston Street), Little Italy, Chinatown and Brooklyn (including a walk across the bridge). A tour of Harlem is in the works as well. Some of their walks are “food tours,” with stops at ethnic eating places.
As with any walking tour, dress for comfort. At the conclusion of a tour, you pay whatever you wish. At any price, they are a bargain. When you sign up online or via e-mail, you will be given starting and finishing points.
One of my favorite destinations in New York City is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum – a living history site at Broome and Orchard Streets. Its focus is a 19th-century tenement building with each apartment carefully restored in the style of a particular historical period and a specific immigrant family that lived there.
However (according to the museum website), the ongoing development of a new apartment representing the Black experience plus extensive maintenance work has forced the relocation of the existing apartments to other sites temporarily. Watch the website for further information.
Tours (which include neighborhood walks as well), are by reservation only. Typically, there are several per day.
Of course, do not forget the old standby Ellis Island. The ferry from Lower Manhattan doubles as a ride to the Statue of Liberty. While some visitors say they have visited both sites in one day, I believe that a genealogist should devote a whole day to Ellis Island, which from the 1890s to the 1950s was the entry point for many immigrants.
What is more, Ellis Island is also a valuable repository for information about the millions of immigrants who passed through in those years. Even if your ancestors never saw the place, a visit there will open your eyes to much of what many immigrants did face at the end of their journey.
Visit the website for hours and other information.
Genealogical Society News: Check out “The Heritage,” the quarterly publication of the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, sent to members. The latest edition has a couple of fascinating reprints from “Family Tree Magazine.
One is a guide to cleaning and preserving headstones, along with deciphering their inscriptions. The other is a look ahead to the day (likely not so far off) when DNA testing will be able to accurately determine precise historical individual relationships.
Incidentally, note that the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society is now a FamilySearch affiliate library. FamilySearch, of course, is the genealogical arm of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
To achieve that honored designation, a library must meet standards of completeness and availability to the public. However, a library so designated does not necessarily have access to the full range of research materials held by FamilySearch.
For information on the society’s holdings, as well as its public access, visit its website. The library is at 57 N. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre.
Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy writer. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.