Trail Magic

There is a phenomenon known as "Trail Magic" to hikers of the Appalachian Trail which is an event that lifts your spirits and gives you hope of continuing after flirting with thought of giving up. "Trail Magic" could be anything, ranging from a break in storm just long enough for a hiker to progress along a dangerous pass to free cookies from a nice picnicking family. Although I have not yet had the pleasure of experiencing "Trail Magic" in its original meaning, I have certainly just experienced the genealogical research version of it.

I FINALLY HAVE A LEGITIMATE LEAD!! And it was completely by accident that I found it. While doing some 1920 census record checking, I stumbled across a match on Florence and George Koehler living in the Bronx. If this is my great-grandmother, she would have been the correct age of 20 at the time of the census (I still don't know when George was born so I can't cross-reference his age of 25 against anything yet) and they were apparently living with George's parents. While that wasn't enough to make an assertion that it was really them, I got very giddy and decided to see where they lived in the Bronx. It was in doing this that I found the coolest website EVER for NY genealogy research.

New York is particularly annoying when it comes to genealogy research. I love the city for its culture and museums but they are absolutely terrible when it comes to working with genealogical data. Their Hall of Records is a nightmare of bureaucracy and from what I can tell, a lot of valuable information is kept hidden behind lock and key. That is why me finding www.stevemorse.org is so great. Whoever you are Steven, I love you! The site is chock full of historical maps to the city (updated for the modern era and lain over a Google maps picture of the city so you can locate where your ancestors lived) and vital records! Vital records are extremely difficult to find if you are not sure of a specific date and/or location of the event and New York charges $20 per date just to check if a record exists (they keep the money even if it doesn't). I am lucky enough to know from my grandmother's important date list that Florence and George were married on December 7, 1919 but was never able to confirm it. Thanks to Steven Morse, I was able to!

There is a link from his site to the Italian Genealogical Group who have done a fantastic job putting old marriage and death records from NY online (located here www.italiangen.org). If you're not familiar with genealogical research, it's difficult to explain how annoying it is to have to reference all the different sites that MIGHT have your family information in it. Its not until you dig around a little bit on Goggle that you stumble across this gem of an organization that has hard to find records not even paid sites like Ancestry have and it's entirely free! It was through this site I was able to confirm that New York City does in fact have a record of a George Koehler and Florence Black being married in the Bronx on Dec. 7, 1919.



There are so many things this means, I cannot even fathom the depth of its importance to me. Aside from being able to research one generation closer to when my family came to the US, I am also putting back together pieces of my family puzzle that were lost decades ago. I will be able to trace my family movements, where they lived, who they were, what they did. I'll finally know my great-grandfather's birthday and the information about my great-grandparents so I can add them back to the tree. Then again, it's not that they were ever gone from it; the overgrowth of time had simply gotten to thick so see through on the Koehler family tree. These sites truly were accidental but amazing finds.

I submitted for a copy of the marriage record about a week ago and, in a few weeks, I will have it to review and add to my tree. I could not be happier! Trail Magic indeed!