This reprint from the 2001 newsletter has a lot of useful information about how to do family history research.
Commemorative Biographical Record of Dutchess County, New York (See below.)
Printed August 15, 2001
STFA Annual Newsletter
by Lanaii Kline
When I began to research my family history, I started with my dad’s family. His family came to America in the mid-1800s from Scandinavia. I encountered a dead-end prior to the point that my dad’s ancestors left Sweden and Denmark. Then I began to trace my mother’s ancestors. My mother was a Stoutenburgh. I had some trouble finding information about my mother’s ancestors between 1800 and 1870, but I found a wealth of information before 1800 in New York records. The early New York Dutch were incredible record keepers.
Once I located the Stoutenburgh Teller Family Association, I found relatives who filled in some of the details and introduced me to the Family Circles.
Family Circles
In 1916, Maud Stoutenburg’s husband, Walter Graeme Eliot, published two and a half circles that included the descendants of Pieter Stoutenburgh. These circles are like a family tree starting with Pieter Stoutenburgh. It’s really impressive to see the number of people to whom each of us is connected. This doesn’t even include the Stoutenburgh cousins born after 1916.
Stoutenburgh Family in Print
If you are serious about documenting the major events in your Stoutenburgh ancestors’ lives, you have many resources at hand. You can buy the church records from various historical book publishers. The Higginson Book Co. has reprint books. Visit their site at www.higginsonbooks.com.
I visited the Hyde Park Historical Society when I was in New York last fall. They have several books that recount the founding of Hyde Park and thus have information on the Jacobus Stoutenburgh family. I ordered reprints of some these books from the Higginson Book Company. I highly recommend Commemorative Biographical Record of Dutchess County, New York (See below.), published in 1897 by J. H. Beers & Co. of Chicago.
Ancestry, Inc. is another source of New York records. I found baptismal records for Dutchess County through my subscription to www.ancestry.com online documents. They also have good information about Revolutionary War soldiers as well as Civil War soldiers. Both Genealogy Library and Ancestry are making online copies of the actual census records available online through subscription. You can go to a regional office of the National Archives and access census and military records images too.
Don’t forget to visit USGenWeb.org and the LDS Church site, familysearch.org. Through the USgenweb site, you can go to a given state’s genealogical web site and from there to county web sites within that state. Some county web sites have put baptismal, birth, death, military, marriage, and cemetery information on their site.
The LDS Church web site has patron submitted information as well as some baptismal and marriage records. I found the patron submitted information to have many errors. The information taken from marriage, death and baptismal records is accurate but the transcribers at times adjusted the spelling of the names in the records. Also, the baptismal information on their web site doesn’t include the names of sponsors or witnesses that appear in the actual record. The Ancestry web site provides more complete information for New York baptismal data.
If you have questions about how to locate records or other information, please contact us.
Lanaii Kline, Editor
Happy researching!
Commemorative Biographical Record of Dutchess County, New York
In 1916, Maud Stoutenburg’s husband, Walter Graeme Eliot, published two and a half circles that included the descendants of Pieter Stoutenburgh. These circles are like a family tree starting with Pieter Stoutenburgh. It’s really impressive to see the number of people to whom each of us is connected. This doesn’t even include the Stoutenburgh cousins born after 1916.
In 1916, Maud Stoutenburg’s husband, Walter Graeme Eliot, published two and a half circles that included the descendants of Pieter Stoutenburgh. These circles are like a family tree starting with Pieter Stoutenburgh. It’s really impressive to see the number of people to whom each of us is connected. This doesn’t even include the Stoutenburgh cousins born after 1916.
Then, if you are an ancestor of Jacobus’ son William, the Hyde Park Historical Society has copies of a 1940 book that you may want to purchase. The book is entitled,