Forgotten no more: Ellis Island's hospital showcased on PBS

As you may have read here at 100 Years in America, the story of Ellis Island is close to my heart. I am particularly interested in the side of the island whose saga had long gone untold: the hospital. My great-grandmother and her young son spent time there one-hundred years ago during his bout with measles after their arrival from Hungary in 1909.

I was excited in 2007 to learn of Lorie Conway's decade-long research into the Ellis Island hospital. I highlighted her work along with my great-grandmother's story here and quickly purchased her book Forgotten Ellis Island: The Extraordinary Story of America's Immigrant Hospital.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend a screening of the Forgotten Ellis Island film, but now look forward to the national showing on February 2nd of the PBS special, narrated by Elliott Gould. According to the website, PBS' Forgotten Ellis Island "is a powerful tribute to the best and worst of America's dealings with its new citizens-to-be."

Visit the Forgotten Ellis Island website (particularly this nice tour of the book and film) for additional details about Lorie Conway's journey back into the history of this long-overlooked side of the beloved island on which so many of our ancestors spent their first days in America.

A lot can happen in 100 years

The start of a new year is always a time of reminiscing about the past. Here at 100 Years in America, I often broaden my focus more widely to include the past one-hundred years: how the world has changed and how my family's lives have changed within that world. Last year I found a newly-published non-fiction title that provided an interesting visual look at many changes that the world has seen over the past century.

Earth Then & Now: Amazing Images of our Changing World by Fred Pearce is a collection of images from various places throughout the globe. The appeal of the book is the fact that each image of a place as it looks today is paired with a companion photograph taken sometime back in the past one-hundred years. Pearce has chosen striking images that speak for themselves and, as he says, "are worth a thousand words". They include:

• Mostar's bridge in Bosnia-Herzegovina (of specific personal interest to me since I visited and crossed the bridge only a few years before it was damaged during the war)
• New York without the Twin Towers (I have memories of standing on the roof of my great-uncle's townhouse and seeing the beautiful view of New York City)
• Skye Bridge of Scotland (another place I've visited and enjoyed)
• Zermatt, Switzerland 1900 vs. today (a part of the world that has a special place in my heart)
• Panama Canal
• Seattle's "Hooverville" of 1937 vs. today
• Hong Kong: a barren Chinese Island in 1880 vs. today
• San Francisco 1906 vs. today
• Sao Paulo, Brazil 1902 vs. today
• Nepal kathmandu
• Vancouver
• South Dakota dust bowl vs. good farmland today
• Zugspitze, Bavaria 1925 vs. today
• Many more...

There are 300 before and after photographs within this book. It is a wonderful look at our world and its changes over the past one-hundred years.

If you like the idea of "past and present" photographs, you might also enjoy images of Legrad, Croatia's Holy Trinity Catholic Church in my article Međimurje: Meeting place of rivers and cultures and also past and present photos of the home my great-grandfather built at "The waves' rippling song": South Beach, Staten Island.

A Croatian genealogy how-to guide: tips to get you started

As far as I know, there are only two sites in the blogosphere that currently focus on Croatian genealogy in the English language: 100 Years in America and Ćurković.ca.

I have been a fan of Ivan Ćurković's blog since I discovered it over a year ago. It is nice to have a fellow blogger writing about the world of my ancestors, even though we do not share a family connection and we are usually focusing on different regional areas.

As a son of Croatian immigrants living in Canada, Ivan has connections to family back in Europe that many of those researching their ancestors may not have. He also has something that I wish I could share: a proficiency with the Croatian language!

Ivan has traced his Croatian ancestors back nine generations (that's 300 years) to an area of what is now Bosnia-Hercegovina called Buško Blato and maintains a website about the genealogy of families from the area at BuškoBlato.org.

Ivan has recently put together a series of articles that have very helpful tips for those getting started and/or wanting to make further progress on researching their Croatian roots. At this point, he has three installments in his series. I'm looking forward to more in the future! Here are parts one, two and three:

• Starting Your Croatian Genealogy Research
• Online Tools to Expand Your Croatian Genealogy Research
• Finding Church Records for Croatian Genealogy
  

If you have Croatian roots I highly encourage you to read Ivan's articles and browse his blog for ideas and inspiration. Thanks, Ivan, for being such a good neighbor in the online world of Croatian genealogy!

The "forgotten borough" remembered

With roots in Staten Island, the "forgotten borough", I'm one of the ones working to remember its history, particularly in the early 20th-century when my family first settled there. Its story is one of fascinating turns and twists, and it remains today the outsider of five New York City boroughs: a member of the family, yet with its own individual personality.

Want a little introduction to the history and uniqueness of Staten Island? Take some time to view these online video tours:

• A Walk Around Staten Island with David Hartman & Historian Barry Lewis


• Staten Island: A World Beyond the Ferry from the Office of the Borough President

Thanks to the relatively new Staten Island Genealogy Blog for recommending these online video tours and other good resources for Staten Island researchers.

I wish I'd been invited to this wedding...

...don't you?

All the guests look like one big, happy family. The musicians look like they must have provided a lively bunch of music for the crowd. Everyone seems to be having a great time, with just a few exceptions (including the bride, who is looking off to the side with a serious expression on her face).

This photograph belonged to my great-grandmother. It was taken before I was born, more than likely across the Atlantic. It may have been the wedding of a cousin, or perhaps some friends of the family back in what is now northern Croatia (probably Hungary at the time). More than likely this photograph was sent to my great-grandparents' address in Manhattan from loved ones back home. Unfortunately, I cannot identify a single person in the photograph, although some of them look like they have features that could indicate a relation to my family.

It would be interesting to learn just who this bride and groom were, when and where they were married, and the names of some of their guests. But even if I never learn that information, I'll still enjoy being drawn into the wedding celebration by way of this photograph.

Don't you wish you were invited, too?

Image source: Wedding of unidentified bride and groom. Sepia photographic print. Unknown year. Privately held by Lisa, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,]. 2009.

Note: You can click on the image for a closer view.

For more mystery photographs, visit the 9th Edition of footnoteMaven's Smile For The Camera Carnival: "Who Are You - I Really Want To Know?"

Have roots in NYC in the early 20th-century?

Thanks to the Works Progress Administration (WPA), you can obtain copies of photos of your family's residences in any of the five boroughs taken from 1939 to 1941. Originally created for tax purposes, the images were adopted by the city's Archives Department and are now available to interested parties, including family historians.

For further details about obtaining photos of your family's home, see the Staten Island Genealogy Blog's Obtaining Photos of Your Ancestral Home or visit NYC.gov to place an order. Prices start at $35 plus shipping.

All for naught: How long will your family history collection last?

I recently read with interest an obituary for an old friend of mine: the VCR. Donna Pointkouski wrote a glowing tribute to her old pal after reading a Chicago Tribune article about the last producer of VHS tapes closing its doors this year. It has been quite awhile since my family parted with most of our VHS tapes and began converting treasured family videos to DVD, so it was not too difficult for me to read the news of its final demise. It was a humorous reminder of the changes that our world is facing.

I had previously enjoyed watching another tribute to obsolete technology on the History Channel's Modern Marvels program. The December 19 episode entitled Retro Tech focused on other old friends of mine: the typewriter, the film camera, and more.

Both the show and Donna's "obituary" reminded me that a couple of months ago I had read the online article Are We Losing Our Memory? or The Museum of Obsolete Technology by Alexander Stille. (Thanks to Practical Archivist Sally Jacobs for recommending it.) Written in 2002 as part of the book The Future of the Past, it remains a fresh reminder of the challenges that historians and archivists are facing as they race to keep up with changing technology. The article focuses primarily on the struggles of the National Archives and Records Administration as it works to choose which materials to save, preserve the materials that it has deemed valuable, and ensure that these items will be accessible in the future.

This reminded me of the small collection of records that I still have in my attic. It's nice to look at them sometimes, but I cannot enjoy their true audio value. Long ago my last turntable went the way that my last working VCR did in more recent years.

But on to more serious concerns raised by this subject: my role as amateur family archivist. How do the issues voiced by Alexander Stille's article apply to my personal family history collection, so painstakingly gathered over many years? Specifically:

• Treasured family photograph prints, most from the early decades of the 20th-century through the 1990s


• Paper copies of family letters and records
  


• Scanned digital images of family heirloom photos and records whose originals are no longer accessible


• Audio tapes of my grandfather's voice


• A wedding video on VHS (provided none too cheaply by video photographers)


• More recent images taken via digital camera
  

How will all of these items stand up to the test of time? Some better than others, it seems. As Susan Kitchens explains in her article entitled Preserving Your Digital Memories, digital materials are more vulnerable than physical ones, such as photographic prints and paper documents. What I value and enjoy viewing via digital media today may not be usable by those a generation or so after me.

Are you as concerned as I am that much of our family history collections will have been gathered all for naught? Susan recommends the Library of Congress' Digital Preservation website's What You Can Do webpage. Stop by Susan's blog Family Oral History Using Digital Tools for a link to an online quiz about digital media to test your knowledge of the technology to which so many of us are entrusting much of our genealogical collections.

I personally intend to continue to educate myself on technology and its realities, along with the options I have for preserving my treasured family memories. Thanks to Sally and Susan for the good tips. I hope you'll consider their good advice as I am. I have too much time, effort and heart invested in my family research and collections to let it all be lost easily.