Discover yourself at your local library

by Cheyenne Dorsagno

We are each living links between the past and the future. Our ancestors thought of us as symbols of potential, as their legacy carried on. To following generations, we’ll be clues to uncover so they can further understand their own identity.

You can start compiling a family history to honor your ancestors, immortalize yourself, and enlighten your descendants. To do so, start by visiting your local library.

Subject: Utica Public Library. Source: Kenneth C. Zirkel, WikiCommons

Your nearby library has likely been cataloguing years of local newspaper articles and collecting any books published detailing the history of your locality. And many libraries give back to their communities with their Genealogy departments (made up of tools that help you track your ancestry). In this pursuit, history gets personal.

The Utica Public Library

The Utica Public Library is assisted by Mark Radlowski – a self-taught, volunteer genealogist. He himself has amassed an Ancestry.com tree with nearly 30,000 people. He’s submitted his DNA to connect to relatives throughout the U.S., Canada, and Poland. Some have been as distant as fifth cousins while he hasn’t been able to determine a point of relation for others. But despite any remaining plot holes, he’s created a larger picture of his family by identifying connections around the world.

“Some are interested in speaking with you, some are not,” said Mark.

He uses free internet translation resources to speak to his Polish family.

So, the greatest tool lies in our biggest barrier. Now more than ever, we’re all living with a global perspective.

“My siblings are scattered throughout the United States,” said Mark.

Mark’s curiosity was fed by the fact that his grandfather died when his dad was 6, so he knew very little about his family history. Fifty years of research came to fruition when he uncovered a record of where his grandfather was born in Poland.

“What I find very interesting is that most people don’t know about their extended family,” he said.

Subject: Starowieyski family tree. Source: Wikibenchris, WikiCommons

At one point, his family discovered that his mother grew up living next to her second cousin, but they never knew that they were related!

For anyone who pops in while Mark’s volunteering, he can share his expertise and help the public use the library’s resources to pursue ancestry clarity. With his help, I learned that my family came from Southern Italy and first settled in Niagara Falls in 1912. And our last name used to be spelled differently!

Mark’s introduction helps make the journey less intimidating, as there’s a wide variety of resources out there.

“There’s no single resource that works for everything,” he said.

Furthermore, the records can be hard to navigate.

Libraries amass physical records in their archives

The library amasses physical records like city directories and Genealogical Magazines. It has access to birth, death, and marriage records. And other records – like personal biographies, family histories, and yearbooks – are dependent upon the public’s donations. So, they’re incomplete archives. But they’re always growing, as the public may be incentivized to donate to the library as a way of memorializing the part they’ve played in the community.

If you take up your genealogy search, you’ll also be dealing with plain old human error. Records may have been poorly scanned, names may have been misspelled, and priests may have “horrendous calligraphy” (record-keeping often begins at churches). Certain cultures have unique hurdles, such as in the fact that Polish names are often written in Latin.

Where do you start?

Further still, it’s hard to know where to start when there’s such a wealth of information online.

One amazing resource is fultonhistory.com, coded and operated by Mohawk Valley’s own Tom Tryniski. This feat was detailed by the Columbia Journalism Review. His pursuit began when a coworker gifted him an old postcard, and he wanted to learn the background of the strangers in the image. Point taken: any keepsake of ourselves has the potential to spark an interest in anyone anywhere anytime. From there, Tom went to the library and started digging through newspapers. Eventually, he found himself having moved into a new home so he could be closer to the library and start archiving millions of newspapers for free public use.

Subject: Man reading a newspaper. Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, WikiCommons.

Re-enter Mark! While Mark made a point of how impressive the website is, he also said that it requires some finesse to navigate. There’s even a Reddit thread with tips on how to use it! And that’s just one potential resource for discovering your history.

The Utica Public Library also uses other online databases like cyndislist.com (linking to genealogical websites), ancestry.com, myheritage.com, findagrave.com, etc.

For additional personal support, consider Whitesboro’s Dunham Public Library – it has a Facebook Genealogy Group.

While the task of uncovering your ancestry can be intimidating, there’s a lot of help out there, and the payoff can be worthwhile.

“I found myself by exploring what I could find online,” said Mark.

“The more you learn about your extended family and your ancestors, the more you learn about yourself and how you connect to your larger community.”

About Cheyenne Dorsagno

Cheyenne Dorsagno

Cheyenne Dorsagno is an Italian-American born and raised in underdog Utica, NY. She studied English at SUNY Oneonta with a minor in Professional Writing and an Editor-in-Chief role at the newspaper. Currently, Cheyenne strives to make our big world a little smaller by introducing locals to their neighbors via human-interest pieces shared on her blog, Our Neighborhood. She’s pursuing creative writing in her free time and various freelance writing in her professional time, such as by copy-writing.

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Cheyenne Dorsagno

Contributing Author

Cheyenne Dorsagno is a wonderfully talented writer and contributing author on Mohawk Valley Today. Cheyenne highlights artists and creatives along with culture and trends that are happening throughout the Mohawk Valley. She brings her positive energy to everything she does.