The Files:

Vitals – Births, Deaths, marriages recorded in newspapers

News Stories – Items which are outside the Vitals type, but contain similar information.

Hidden Names – Names mentioned in above items, but not principals in the items

Sources – Listing of the source newspapers, by number [referenced in other items]

INTRODUCTION

     The purpose of this project was to extract marriage and death records published in periodicals in St. Lawrence Co. N.Y prior to 1850. New York State had no state-wide system for reporting vital records until 1847, and stopped collecting them in 1849. They did not require Town Clerks to register them again until 1881. Therefore, the19th century vital records of New York are spotty at  best, and non-existent for most of the century.

     Other than family Bibles, a few registers from clergymen, and gravestone inscriptions, the only other source of vital records in St. Lawrence Co. prior to 1847 were the very few marriage and death notices which appeared in the various early newspapers of the county.  Birth notices were almost unheard of until much later in the era, and even then, the name of the child was almost never listed.

   This dependence on the periodicals of the time would not be a problem for genealogists if ALL the marriages and deaths were reported, but sadly, this was not the case.  Marriage notices were always paid for, either in cash or in cake, and the only way a death notice appeared for free in a paper would be when the death was of particular interest.  The sadder the cause of death, or the more bizarre the circumstances, the greater the chances that the death would be reported as a news item, if not an obituary.

     As a result of the policy of payment for notices, the vast majority of marriages and deaths in the county before 1850 went un-reported. The well-to-do families of the time had their lives fairly well chronicled in the papers, while the common working man was unlikely ever to have his name in print. For instance, the Ogdens and Olins had many notices over the years, as we would expect, and Horatio Peck's marriages and death are recorded.  However,  an 1849 list of people who had letters waiting for them at the Ogdensburg Post Office included a Fanny Gilhooley and Karl Kartzenschwans, the type of working people unlikely to be able to afford a marriage notice, and their relatives would not have been able to pay for an obituary if they had died.

     It might be useful to describe 19th century newspapers for those who have not had the experience of looking through very many of them. First of all, most were 4 pages, that is to say, one very long rectangle folded once along the middle, forming 4 pages. The first page was almost universally dedicated to articles on such subjects as the history of Greece or why women should not become preachers. Page 2 was usually a continuation of that sort of generic prose, but perhaps more political opinion thrown in. Newspapers at the time were much more political than are the ones of today.  By page 2, and certainly by page 3, the small amount of local news would be inserted.  This would be the only material actually written by the editor .  The rest of page 3, and all of page 4 would be dedicated to ads and legal notices.

     Before the advent of the telegraphic news services, news items were shared among newspapers of a similar political bent.  Each paper had several "exchange" papers, to which they would send a copy of their latest edition, in exchange for reading the news from the contributing periodical.  This system worked well enough, but often resulted in marriage and death notices being listed in a St. Lawrence Co. paper because the exchange partner would ask at the bottom of an announcement: "exchange papers will please publish" or perhaps "New York papers please copy". As a result, it is not possible to tell if a marriage in Vermont actually had some connection to St. Lawrence Co., or whether it was simply published at the request of an exchange paper.

     The marriages in this list comprise just over half of the citations, and deaths (plus two birth notices) make up the other 48 %. To give an idea of what a small proportion of marriages and deaths actually got listed in the papers, we can compare the 1848 Vital Records with the list of newspaper accounts. In 1848, the Town Clerks reported 407 marriages in the county, which was by no means all of them.  In contrast, this project only lists a total of 59 different marriage citations in 1848.  There are also only 59 deaths listed here for 1848, out of the 739 reported to the County Clerk.

  The records reveal some clues about life and customs of the 19th century.  For example, marriages most often took place in the bride's home. This information helps researchers determine where a bride was from, even if it is not stated in the citation.  Another fact revealed in the death records is that drownings were much more common at that time than they are now. More than 80 of the 1500 deaths listed were drownings. Some of the reasons include the dependence in the past on water transportation, the prevalence of crossing to Canada on the not-so-frozen St. Lawrence, and the use of water power, which necessitated working around dams and spillways.

  The deaths of 34 Revolutionary War soldiers are recorded in this list, along with 5 War of 1812 veterans and 3 soldiers of the Mexican War. There may be more than these, but their military service was not mentioned in the death notice.

     Although there are 4801 citations listed in the vital records section of this list, these do not represent 4801 individual St. Lawrence Co. residents for the following reasons:

1. during much of the county's history, there were several newspapers being published simultaneously.  Many (perhaps 20%?) of the citations listed here were repeats which were printed by these competing papers.  This situation is not necessarily bad, as many times the different notices differ slightly in the amount (and quality) of information given.  As an example, Harvey Church Jr.'s death was reported by 3 different periodicals, and each citation is slightly different from the others.

2. the 4801 citations include notices for many non-residents of St. Lawrence Co.  At least 50 of the marriages reported here were between two Canadian citizens, and hundreds of the citations involve people from other counties and states. Perhaps as many as 300 Canadians are mentioned.

3. certain individuals have more than one notice listed, for multiple marriages, and perhaps multiple death notices. Without actually counting, it is not possible to say how many separate individuals are actually mentioned in this list

     It may be useful at this point to mention a few things which this list is NOT.

1. It is NOT a true transcription of the notices. The 19th century printers followed a very stylized and formal way of writing death and marriage notices. For example, the early papers rarely gave an actual date of an event, but would say something like "on Tuesday last"  or "on the 13th ult." (meaning on the 13th of last month).  Also, placenames have changed in the last 100 years or so, and the modern name was substituted for the original, so that researchers who are unfamiliar with the county could go to a map and find the place in question. For example, Ogdensburg was always spelled with an "h" at the end, East Pierrepont is now called Hannawa Falls, and Depau has been changed to Hermon. The modern day "Ontario" has also been used instead of the pre-Confederation "Canada West".

2. It is NOT a complete transcription.  Many notices of State Senators, foreign leaders and people without any obvious North Country connection were omitted.  If a marriage or death from another place at least seemed to have a local connection, then it was included here.

3. It is NOT a representative sampling of marriages and deaths. Most of the papers cited here were either from Ogdensburg, Canton or Potsdam and because of that, most notices were from the areas around those villages since local people would have had much easier access to the editor's office. The eastern end of the county is sorely under-represented, and Ogdensburg is certainly over-represented.  Slightly more than 60% of all the citations in this list were taken from the St. Lawrence Republican, published in Ogdensburg.  There are more than 20 years of Republican issues existing on microfilm.

4. It is NOT a complete collection, meaning that there are several years for which no newspapers survived. Even the prodigious St. Lawrence Republican has two one-year gaps.  The earliest available newspapers are the St. Lawrence Gazettes from late 1817.

5. It is NOT strictly a pre-1850 list. There were a few newspapers of the county which are only known because of one or two surviving issues of the paper in the 1850's.  These few issues were extracted because they could not be easily used by researchers otherwise.  An example of this are the two extant issues of the Gouverneur paper The St. Lawrence Free Press

6. It is NOT strictly a St. Lawrence Co. periodical project.  Several events listed in Jefferson Co. papers and the Malone Palladium were included because they directly mentioned St. Lawrence Co. people. The pre-1850 Plattsburgh newspapers were not included here, and are numerous enough that they could form the basis of a project themselves.

7. It is NOT necessarily very accurate as far as the spelling of names. Obituaries and marriage notices were set in type by teenage apprentices, not the erudite editors who spent their time composing the political hyperbole common at the time. The type was small, and the apprentices would make the best sense they could out of a hand written death or marriage notice. One Ogdensburg editor felt he owed his readers an apology for the boy's mistake the previous week in which "were shipped" was substituted for "worshipped".  One 1847 paper had the date "Paril 7" instead of "April 7" right on the front page.  Mistakes like these made it easier for the transcriber to justify correcting what seemed to be obvious errors in the spelling of names.

A few more caveats:

  The St. Lawrence Republican often seemed to use the phrase "in this town" interchangeably with "in this village", whereas in fact, some of the events listed as "in this town " may have meant "in this Township" (i.e. Oswegatchie). The Town of Madrid was split just before the Civil War into the Town of Madrid in the south, and the Town of Waddington in the north. To add a little more confusion, during the period covered by this project the village we now know as Madrid was called Columbia Village. As a result, researchers need to be aware that if a citation says a person was "of Madrid", it means that he or she was either from what we now call the Town of Waddington, or the Town of Madrid.  Anyone actually from Columbia Village itself is listed here as living in Madrid Village.  Speaking of Towns, it should be noted that in the rural society of the 1800's, most people lived on farms and not in villages.  Many villages share the name of the Town they are located in, but it must not be automatically assumed that a citation like "in Potsdam" necessarily means in the village of Potsdam.

   Given the small percentage of marriages and deaths actually recorded here, the fact is that most researchers using this list will be dissappointed and will not find the citation they had hoped would be here. But all is not lost! The Watertown, Plattsburgh or Canadian papers may have the sought-after information, and many of them have been microfilmed. It must also be admitted, that if a citation was NOT published in the St. Lawrence Co. papers, it is far better to find it out by means of a quick glance in this book than to find it out after dozens of eye-straining hours at a microfilm reader.

   The second section of this project lists some news items found in the various papers.  Because the focus of the list was vital records, most news items were only included if they were found on the same photocopy from the microfilm as the vital records.  Therefore, there are likely to be many more "bed and board" notices, fires, emancipations, business dissolutions, etc which do not appear here. Another item not included here which may offer help to researchers is the list of letters left in the Post Office. Each month or so, the Postmaster of Ogdensburg and several other villages would publish a list of people who had mail waiting for them. The US Post Office did not begin delivering  until decades later, so people at this time would have to go to the Post office to pick up their mail. Until 1847, they had to pay the postage as well. Although these lists offer no genealogical information, they would indicate the presence of a person at a specific point in time.

     Finally, there is an index which will indicate some maiden names and names that might otherwise be overlooked. Please note: names were put in the index only if they were a different surname than the subject of the notice. For example, the fathers of brides and grooms do not appear in the index, because they would normally be found during a researcher's scan of that surname. Similarly, Catherine Barber does not appear in the index of news stories, because she has the same last name as her husband, who appears is in the title of the article.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Pre-1850 Vital Records Project

     This project could not have been done without the help and cooperation of several institutions and their employees.  The Ogdensburg Public Library provided microfilm of much of this material, plus access to a great amount of other genealogical information which was used as a resource.

     The Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University was also a huge help with its microfilm collection, film readers and Interlibray loan system.  The Special Collections unit was also a big help in providing access to some materials which have never been microfilmed.

     The St. Lawrence County Historical Association in Canton was also very helpful in providing original, un-microfilmed materials, plus access to their large collection of reference materials, particularly the cemetery lists.

     I am indebted to the above libraries and their staffs and I hope they find this project worhty of their support.

         John M. Austin             August, 2003