If you move in genealogy circles, you've probably already heard that Find My Past recently added transcripts of the Archdiocese of New York's baptismal and marriage records to its databases. If you're only a family history hobbyist, here's the scoop: Find My Past has recently added baptismal and marriage records for the Archdiocese of New York. You heard it here first...or seventh. ;)
I don't use Find My Past a lot...I've found the website nominally useful for Irish and British records I'm searching for, but other than that, I haven't found anything on the website that I can't already find on Ancestry or FamilySearch. But I have some marriage records from the 1870s-1890s for Roman Catholic Irish ancestors that have been impossible to find...so I decided to give this new database a whirl. I knew my 2x great-grandparents Michael Tormey and Ellen Prendergast were married in New York; I knew it was probably around 1885. But I have never been able to find a marriage record for them. It's been beyond frustrating. I didn't expect it to be so easy to find them in this database. But there they are, married May 10, 1885 in St. Gabriel's Church in Manhattan. Unbelievable. You labor and labor to find a record and then, BOOM! It just falls in your lap.
So if you have Catholic ancestors from New York City, definitely check this out. You need a subscription but you can buy a one-month subscription or pay-as-you go credits (also, some genealogy societies, such as the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, provide access with membership). Right now, it's only the transcriptions available but I think the plan is to have images uploaded to the website soon as well. Not sure of that time frame, though I think it's in the "months" range. Also just to note - if your ancestors lived in Brooklyn or Queens, they would have lived in the Diocese of Brooklyn, so they won't be in this database. But if you've been hitting some Manhattan, Bronx, or Westchester roadblocks, you might want to check this out.
Websites used for this research:
Findmypast.com