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 March 2008 Back to Table of Contents Back to Archives Main Page Section: Feature
Cynthia Van Ness holds the key to one of Western New York’s most treasured and unique vaults: the archives at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. As director of library and archives, Van Ness, a longtime local writer, librarian and history expert, has a keen sense of what folks are looking for at the BECHS, and how to find it. What is the best way for a Western New Yorker looking for information on his or her local family history to begin? We suggest starting with what you already have at home. You may have scrapbooks, photo albums, file cabinets, safe deposit boxes, or family bibles with records of births, marriages, deaths, military service, funeral cards, and so on. Then work outwards in concentric circles: interview your parents, siblings and other living relatives. Once you get a handle on what you can and cannot learn from relatives and records at hand, then start looking for records in libraries, museums, government offices, and online. I put the internet last because it is like candy: cheap, tasty, fast, fun and well-advertised. I use it nonstop. But trying to document all of your family history using only the internet is like trying to find all of your groceries in the snack food aisle. The internet as a viable commercial medium is only about 15 years old. That isn’t enough time to digitize centuries of paper-based record-keeping. What kind of info is housed at the Historical Society? Is there anything you have that might surprise people? For genealogists, we have Buffalo city directories, census records, church records, cemetery records, an obituary index, newspapers on microfilm, and 200,000 photographs of people, places and things in the Buffalo area. We specialize in primary source documents pertaining to Buffalo and the Niagara Frontier. Remember history class? A primary source is a record created by an eyewitness to an event. A secondary source is a record (book, article, etc.) written by someone who did not witness the event but — we hope — studied sources created by those who did. We have letters, diaries, memoirs, personal papers, maps, company records, and other manuscript material. Accordingly, we have vast War of 1812 and Civil War collections. One surprise collection is the Metro Rail papers donated by Ira M. Laurien. Lauren was responsible for safety certification on the Metro Rail and gave us his manuals and technical memoranda from a 10-year construction period. History isn’t only what happened before we were born. If we don’t document the people, places, things, and events of today, then tomorrow’s genealogists and historians will be sorely handicapped and Buffalo’s story will be incomplete. Tell me about the house history files. How does one access this, and what kind of information might one find? We don’t literally have your house history already researched and prepared for you, but we do have some of the pieces of the puzzle for you to study. We have thousands of house and building photographs, dating mostly from about 1870–1970. We have various atlases that show individual buildings in Buffalo, published roughly between 1860-1960. We have city and social directories that may help you identify previous residents. We have census records that show all the occupants of a household at 10-year intervals. We have an obituary index that might lead you to biographical information on previous residents. All of these sources contribute pieces to a house history file that you compile for yourself.
Have you stumbled on any big surprises in your research? Some wildly unexpected items show up here. I’m looking at a poster right now that appears to be autographed by Theodore Roosevelt. We have a wonderful Adirondack vacation diary from the 1890s that is replete with references to alcohol, tobacco, firearms, gambling and all kinds of naughtiness. So much for our prim, respectable grandparents! What would you like to make sure Western New Yorkers know about the kinds of things offered in terms of research at the BECHS? And what advice would you give? I could spend the next 20 years here and still not see everything in this library. But several significant local anniversaries are upcoming, and BECHS will be key to understanding and celebrating them: the War of 1812 bicentennial, the centennial of the New York-Paris Race, this year, and the 150th anniversary of BECHS itself in 2012. My advice is for researchers is to give our online catalog a spin: www.wnylibraries.org. You can limit just to our collection or search several area libraries at once. Pop in some keywords for whatever interests you and see what you get. Is it necessary to make an appointment, call ahead, etc.? Hours are Wednesdays through Saturdays, 1–5 p.m. No appointments are necessary, though researchers should know that a significant portion of the library collection is in off-site storage and needs two-to-four business days to retrieve. We are blessed with more history than we can fit in one room! What’s your background, and are you enjoying your work at the Society so far? I worked at the Central Library downtown from 1994 to 2007. I spent about half of those years in local history, which prepared me well for understanding the collections here. Sometimes I think I died and went to heaven. Which is not to say there aren’t maddening days and frustrating financial limits, because every job has those. The most rewarding thing is inheriting a superb assistant librarian, Sara Lawrence, and being part of an institution that has real and exciting forward momentum. back to top back to table of contents Current Issue | About Forever Young | Where to Find | Advertise | Our Advertisers | Community Calendar | Contest | Clubs | Contact Us | Archives | Home |
