Manhattan · Brooklyn (Kings County) · The Bronx · Queens · Staten Island (Richmond County)
More of my relatives lived in New York City than anywhere else: Mittmans, Sencers, Karpes, Beydas, Rietmans and Pleeths among them. Most came through Ellis Island and settled first on the Lower East Side, then moved out to Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. This page brings together a short history of how the city’s boundaries changed and the records I’ve found most useful for New York City families.
On this page
- At a glance
- History
- Records by era
- Online resources
- Other sources (not online)
- Connections on this site
- Research notes
- About this page
At a glance
| Today | New York City: five boroughs, each also a county of New York State |
| Boroughs and counties | Manhattan = New York County · Brooklyn = Kings County · The Bronx = Bronx County (since 1914) · Queens = Queens County · Staten Island = Richmond County |
| One city since | 1 January 1898 |
| Languages of records | English; Yiddish and Hebrew on headstones and in landsmanshaft (hometown society) records |
| Burials | Mostly outside Manhattan: in Queens and Brooklyn, on Long Island, in Westchester, and in New Jersey |
History: the boroughs’ borders over time
This outline was checked against Wikipedia on 14 Nov 2026. I still need to check it against published histories.
- Before 1874: New York City is Manhattan (New York County). Brooklyn is a separate city in Kings County. Queens County is a group of towns that includes today’s Nassau County. Staten Island is Richmond County. The Bronx is part of Westchester County.
- 1874: New York City annexes the western Bronx, west of the Bronx River.
- 1895: New York City annexes the eastern Bronx. In the same decade, the City of Brooklyn takes in the remaining towns of Kings County (Flatbush, Gravesend, New Utrecht, Flatlands), so Brooklyn and Kings County become the same place.
- 1 January 1898: Consolidation creates the five boroughs. Brooklyn, western Queens County and Staten Island join New York City. The Bronx becomes a borough but stays part of New York County.
- 1899: Queens County’s three eastern towns (Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay) don’t join the city. They become the new Nassau County. The Rockaway Peninsula, formerly in the Town of Hempstead, stays in the Borough of Queens.
- 1 January 1914: Bronx County is created, separate from New York County. Marble Hill, cut off from Manhattan by the Harlem River Ship Canal in 1895, stays in Manhattan.
What this means when you look for a record:
- Before 1898, Brooklyn kept its own records as a separate city.
- Before 1899, “Queens County” can mean places that are now in Nassau.
- From 1898 to 1913 the Bronx was part of New York County, so county records from those years (courts, probate) are under New York County; Bronx County’s own court and probate records begin in 1914. Births and deaths were recorded for the Borough of the Bronx from 1898 (FamilySearch Research Wiki, Bronx Borough page).
Records by era
| Period | Records | Where to find them |
|---|---|---|
| 1820–1957 | Passenger arrivals: Castle Garden (1855–1890), Barge Office (1890–1891 and 1897–1900), Ellis Island (1892–1924) | Ancestry’s New York arriving passenger lists (#627, cited 199 times in my tree); Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation; Steve Morse’s One-Step search forms |
| 1862–1948 | Death certificates, by borough | Ancestry’s index (#540, 110 citations) and extracted index (#539); images at the NYC Municipal Archives |
| 1866–1909 | Birth certificates, by borough | Ancestry’s index (#361) and extracted index (#1199); images at the NYC Municipal Archives |
| 1866–1937 | Marriage certificates (Department of Health, until 1937) | Ancestry’s extracted marriage index (#612); images at the NYC Municipal Archives |
| 1890 | New York City police census, a substitute for the lost 1890 federal census. It covers the city as it was then: Manhattan and the annexed Bronx, not Brooklyn | Ancestry (#1130); index at FamilySearch |
| 1892–1925 | New York State censuses: 1892, 1905, 1915, 1925 | Ancestry; I cite them as individual census pages (1905, 1915 and 1925 are in my tree) |
| 1908–2017 | City Clerk marriage licenses (from 1908; couples married 1908–1937 can have both a license and a certificate) | Ancestry’s index (#453, 154 citations; #129 for 1908–1910 and 1938–1940); free indexes from Reclaim the Records; license images 1908–1949 being added at the NYC Municipal Archives |
| 1910–1965 | Birth index | Ancestry (#512, 70 citations) |
| 1949–1965 | Death index | Ancestry (#574) |
| 1792–1989 | Naturalization petitions filed in New York City: federal courts and the county courts of each borough | Ancestry’s petition index (#483) and records (#256, cited 286 times; #876, 139 citations); the New York County Supreme Court index, 1907–1924 (#252) |
| 1915–1956 | Manhattan voter registers; 1924 voter list | Ancestry (#1189, #501) |
| 1917–1919 | New York World War I service abstracts | Ancestry (#1204) |
| 1899–1991 | Hebrew Free Burial Association burials: Silver Lake and Mount Richmond, Staten Island | Ancestry (#1282) |
Online resources
Indexes and databases
- NYC Municipal Archives: Historical Vital Records. Images of the city’s historical birth, death and marriage records, searchable by name. Of 13.3 million records, 79% were online in November 2026; the City Clerk marriage licenses (1908–1949) are being added now, and Manhattan deaths 1867–1948 are still to come (on microfilm until then). The name indexes were made with the Genealogy Federation of Long Island, so a search can give different results from Ancestry’s or FamilySearch’s indexes of the same records.
Links: archives.nyc · a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov - Steve Morse’s One-Step pages. Search forms that reach the NYC vital records indexes and the Ellis Island and Castle Garden lists more flexibly than the sites’ own search pages.
Links: stevemorse.org/vital/nyc.html · stevemorse.org/ellis/ - Reclaim the Records. A nonprofit that uses public-records requests and lawsuits to get record indexes released, then puts them online free. For New York: the NYC marriage license indexes 1908–2017, the 1924 NYC voter list, a geographic index to NYC births, Brooklyn “Old Town” records, and New York State indexes for births, deaths and marriages outside the city (including a State death index, 1880–2017, published December 2025).
Link: reclaimtherecords.org - Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation. Free passenger records, 1820–1957, with images of the manifests.
Link: heritage.statueofliberty.org - Ancestry (subscription). The New York collections in the table above. These are the ones I’ve used most, with their citation counts in my Reunion family tree.
Cemeteries
New York City’s Jewish families were mostly buried by their landsmanshaft or family circle, in society plots. A cemetery’s own interment search usually gives the plot and the society name, and the society name can point to the family’s hometown.
- Montefiore Cemetery, Springfield Gardens, Queens: interment search by name and month and year of death, giving the plot and society. In my tree: 6 burials, including the Beyda and Salem burials in the Congregation Rodfeh Zedek plot.
Link: montefiorecemetery.org/search/ - New Montefiore Cemetery, West Babylon, Suffolk County, opened 1928: run by the same Montefiore Cemetery Corporation, with the same kind of search. In my tree: 35 burials, many in the Mittman Family Circle plot.
Link: newmontefiorecemetery.org/search/ - JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR). Burial listings and photos for many New York area Jewish cemeteries, contributed by volunteers.
Link: jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/ - Cemeteries in my Reunion family tree, by number of burials:
• Queens: Mount Hebron, Kew Gardens Hills (26); Mount Zion, Maspeth (23); Montefiore, Springfield Gardens (6); Mount Judah, Ridgewood (4); Mount Lebanon, Glendale (4); Linden Hill (2); Mount Carmel and Knollwood Park (1 each).
• Brooklyn: Washington Cemetery (5).
• Staten Island: United Hebrew (4); Baron Hirsch and Mount Richmond (1 each).
• The Bronx: Woodlawn (1).
• Long Island: New Montefiore (35); Wellwood (9) and Mount Ararat (6), West Babylon and Lindenhurst; Beth David, Elmont (7).
• Westchester: Sharon Gardens, Valhalla (2); Mount Pleasant, Hawthorne (1).
Newspapers and directories
- Brooklyn Newsstand. The Brooklyn Public Library’s newspaper site: about 3.1 million pages, 1826–1999, including the Brooklyn Eagle, the Times Union and the Brooklyn Daily Times.
Link: bklyn.newspapers.com - NYPL Digital Collections: New York City directories. The New York Public Library’s city directories (its holdings run 1786–1934), with names and addresses of residents and businesses; 155 volumes online. From 1898 the Manhattan directories (Trow’s) also cover the Bronx; Brooklyn had its own.
Link: digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/new-york-city-directories
Guides
- FamilySearch Research Wiki: New York City. An overview of New York City records, with a page for each borough (record start dates, boundary changes, online collections).
Link: familysearch.org/en/wiki/New_York_City,_New_York_Genealogy
Other sources (not online)
- NYC Municipal Archives, 31 Chambers Street, Manhattan (by appointment): records not yet online, including Manhattan deaths 1867–1948 on microfilm.
Connections on this site
- Family groups with many New York City events: MITTMAN-1 (by far the most), SENCER-1, MITTMAN-13, MITTMAN-5, KARPES-1, MITTMAN-22, MITTMAN-11, MITTMAN-19, MITTMAN-15, MITTMAN-10, BEYDA-1, RIETMAN-1.
Research notes
- How New York City places are written in my Reunion family tree: “New York, NY” means Manhattan. “New York City, NY” means somewhere in the five boroughs when the record doesn’t say which, such as a port of arrival. Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island are named by borough (“Brooklyn, NY”), and places in Queens by neighborhood (“Flushing, NY”), as on a postal address. Older entries are being brought into line, so some places still read “New York, NY” where the borough isn’t known.
- Montefiore or New Montefiore? They’re separate cemeteries, in different counties, run by the same corporation. Find a Grave memorials have been placed in the wrong one and later merged. Check the cemetery’s own interment search. (November 2026: nine burials in my tree corrected to New Montefiore.)
- The borough a record was filed under can differ from where the person lived: the Bronx before 1914, Brooklyn before 1898, and Nassau before 1899 (see History).
- Landsmanshaft plot names in interment searches, such as “Ind. Rohatyner Young Men B.A.” or “First Odesser Society”, can point to a family’s town in Europe.
About this page
Started November 2026. The resources are the ones I’ve used in my own research, with how often each is cited in my Reunion family tree.