Crowd-sourced, online transcription
and indexing projects have become popular in genealogy over the last few years.
Both Ancestry.com, through their World
Archives Project, and Familysearch
Indexing ask people to volunteer their time to transcribe and index genealogy
records. The New York Public Library recently launched a transcription project
called Emigrant City. Developed in collaboration by two departments of the
public library (NYPL Labs and the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United
States History, Local History and Genealogy), "Emigrant City invites you
to help transcribe recently digitized mortgage and bond record books from the
Library’s collection of Emigrant Savings Bank records."[1]
The Emigrant Industrial Savings
Bank, based in New York City, was founded by the Irish Emigrant Society and opened its doors in 1850. It
was originally located on Chambers St., beside the current Municipal Archives, a
location ideally suited to attracting a large number of Irish depositors who
lived in Lower Manhattan. In all over 170,000 accounts were opened between 1850
and 1883 with the vast majority in the names of Irish men and women.[2]
The 6,400 mortgage and bond books that are to be transcribed date from between
1851 and 1921[3].
Inevitably, there will be a healthy number of bank customers in the books who were Irish-born or the American-born
children of Irish immigrant parents. In fact, the second person who received a
loan from the bank was New York-born Mary O'Connor. She received a $2,000 loan
on 22 January 1855.[4]
This is a project to keep an eye
on, especially if you have New York City Irish ancestry. You can read more
about the Emigrant City project on the dedicated
NYPL website.
[1] Armstong,
William. Emigrant City: An Introduction.
4 November 2015. New York Public Library. http://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/11/04/emigrant-city:
accessed 7 November 2015.
[2] Salvato, Richard. A
User’s Guide to the Emigrant Savings Bank Records. New York, NY: New York
Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division. 1997. Available at http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/emigrant.pdf:
accessed 17 December 2012
[3]
Sutton, Philip. Emigrant City: Two
Stories. 4 November 2015. New York Public Library. http://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/11/04/emigrant-city-two-stories:
accessed 7 November 2015.
[4]
Sutton, Philip. Emigrant City: Two
Stories. 4 November 2015
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