Earlier this week I visited the National Archives at New York City (NYC) twice. I was very pleased with my visits. I was looking for naturalization records of 2 people in my family tree. Both were naturalized in NY courts in the late 1800s. I had located the relevant index record on ancestry.com that I had all the information I needed. I was almost 100% certain that the 2 index entires I found were my guys.

I simply registered, requested the records, examined them a few minutes later, and then bought copies for 75 cents per page. Unfortunately, the courts of the 1800s did not seem to require very much information so there were only 4 pages of records available and I bought them all. Therefore, the total bill came to $3.00 and I had copies of the whole court record for both. I learned only a few things I had not known from the index so that was disappointing but still well worth 3 bucks.

By the way, you are under no obligation to buy the copies if you don’t want them. But who would not want them if they were the people you are looked for. Still, nice to know in the event that the record turns out not to be the person sought.

The National Archives at New York City is in the process of moving so all records are not there but the naturalization records are there. Here is the National Archives press release.

So for now they are still at Varick and Houston streets in Manhattan but the big move is expected in a few months. Here is a link to the National Archives at New York City so you can get the latest info and you can easily get from there to the main national archives page in case you are interested in another location.

The people there were so helpful and recommended an external site (the German Genealogy Group ) with a naturalization index. Two evenings later, I was checking on that site and found a potential match for John Tracey and decided to revisit the NYC National Archives to be sure.

Since the index record did not have all the info they needed to find the original court record, they checked the record on Fold3. With the info I had found on the German Genealogy Group website, they easily found the index in Fold3 which had additional information. It had both the information they needed to find the court record but also enough info that I knew this was not the John Tracey I has looking for. So I did not get the record I hoped to find. But it was not a wasted trip as there plenty of other things to do.

I had initially thought I’d title this post “Not my John Tracey” but it is really about the NYC archives and how nice and helpful the staff and volunteers are so I decided on “My visit to the National Archives at New York City”.

Certainly worth a visit if you are interested in genealogy and visiting NYC.