August 4-9, 2013
Our sponsor Website:
Feast of Yiddish Language and Culture
IAYC 15th Conference
April
26-29, 2013
DoubleTree Hotel, Pittsburgh - Green
Tree, PA
Online Pennsylvania Birth and Death Records
August 2012 Announcement
The process began on August 27, 2012 when the 1906 records were transported to the Ancestry.com site in Maryland. After each year is complete the records will be placed online and will not be available to on-site patrons. The scanning is expected to run 18 months and gives exclusive online access to Ancestry for three years after which the database will be moved to the Pennsylvania State Archives website where it will be free to all.
The contract also requires that Pennsylvania residents have free access to this particular database on Ancestry. Many libraries and research centers everywhere provide free access to Ancestry. The data to be extracted includes: dates of birth and death, parents' names including the mother's maiden name and hopefully the place of birth.
The group behind the legislation and who led the "fight" for access to records is People for Better Pennsylvania Historical Records Access.
1940 US Census
Online
1940census.archives.gov/
Ancestry.com subscription required
Archives.com free
Familysearch.org free
Pittsburgh Historic Mapping
If you are looking for streets where your grandparents lived you may have trouble finding them because they aren't there anymore. A new tool helps you find old neighborhoods, streets, and landmarks via overlays of Pittsburgh area maps from 1835 to 2010 at 8 different time periods:
Pittsburgh Mapping and Historical Site ViewerPittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project
The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project includes free online access to more than 100 hundred years of Jewish newspapers published in Pittsburgh. The project was funded primarily by Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh UJF and the initial offering was completed in March 2007. The 2012 digitization of the Y-JCC series was funded by the Philip Chosky Charitable Educational Foundation.
In October 2012 PJNP made some major changes to the database. They added more years of archival material and options to search in a range of dates. They also added high lights on your key words on the page. Unfortunately the process is somewhat slower because all documents were converted to PDF files which require extra time to download.
As of May 2013 the offering includes:
- The Jewish Criterion (1895 - 1962)
- The Jewish Chronicle (1962 - 2010)
- The American Jewish Outlook (1934 - 1956)
- Y-JCC newsletters (1926 - 1975)
You can either browse the issues by selecting ranges of years or search for specific key words on a page. The most significant family information usually occurs in the sections for births, bar/bat mitzvahs, confirmations, graduations, engagements, military, marriages, deaths. Adding section names to your search words may help you find these references easier but they can also cause you to miss a good reference if that section continues to the next page.
If you have trouble seeing the full PDF page you may need to select the word 'FIT' from the drop down menu that says: 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, FULL, FIT. This may add another minute or so to the download process.
If you use the icons that first appear with the page you can only download the entire issue or the first page of the issue (not the current page as stated). However, you can hit the ESC key on your PC to get the Adobe PDF icons which let you save, print, zoom, etc. on the current page. Hover over the icons with your cursor to see what each icon does.
You can begin your search and get further information on the project from:
Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project
Pittsburgh Marriage Records Now Online
Familysearch.org (LDS) has added a large group of marriage records to its free online collections. Marriage records from Allegheny and surrounding counties are included in Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885 - 1950. There are additional Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania online collections that may also be of interest, however, the marriage records offer the potential to list birth towns for the bride/groom and those of their parents.
Pittsburgh JGS
JGS Pittsburgh no longer meets on a regular basis. This website will publish Pittsburgh area research developments and announce related meetings. You can join our message group by sending an email message to:
PittsburghJGS-subscribe@yahoogroups.com