Friday, July 28, 2006

Looking for Annie Moore #1

Some of us are trying to find what happened to Annie Moore after she came to the USA in 1892, the first passenger through the doors of Ellis Island on her 15th birthday on 1 January 1892. Megan Smolenyak and Joe Beine have also posted information on their blogs, and I have a post further down my stack.

I had some time last night to search a bit on the Steve Morse web site (www.stevemorse.org), which has a search engine for a number of New York City databases:

1) NYC Birth Records, 1891-1902.

2) NYC Groom Marriage Records (1907-1936)

3) NTC Bride Marriage Records (???? - 1937), but not for Manhattan

4) NYC Death Records (1891-1948)

Using these records, I found:

1) Between 1892 and 1910, 15 females named Ann* Moore married, but the grooms names are not available online, except for four of them (one in Bronx, 3 in Kings). There are no bride records for Manhattan at this site, which probably makes searching this database futile for our purposes.

2) In the Death index, there are no deaths for an Ann* Moore born 1876 to 1878. There is one death of a Philip Moore (21 Dec 1903, age 18 in Kings County), who might be the brother of Annie Moore. There are death records for 9 people named Mary Moore (assumed born 1850 to 1860), all in Manhattan except 1 in the Bronx. There are no death records for a Matt, Mathew or Matthew Moore (assumed born 1850 to 1860) in the death index.

Also at the Steve Morse site is a search for Castle Garden passengers. There was no listing for a Matt/Mathew/Matthew Moore, but there was for a Mary Moore (age 35, arrived 15 October 1889 on the "City of Chicago") accompanied by a Mary A. Moore (spinster, age 20).

Next on my list of things to do was to search the New York Times newspaper archives online for the purported Moore people - Annie, Philip, Anthony, Matt/Mathew and Mary. I was looking for obituaries or estates, mainly. I can access the ProQuest database for the Times from 1851 to 2003 via a local San Diego library at home with my library card. The only article with any apparent relevancy was the 2 January 1892 article about Annie and her brothers arriving at Ellis Island. No obituaries or estates for any of those folks. There was a mention of Mathew Moore as the Commissioner of Bridges for the Bronx in 1901.

I'll deal with the census search in my next post. Suffice it to say - these folks really don't want to be found. At least by me!

1 comment:

Joe said...

Nice work, Randy. The portion about Annie Moore in the 2 January 1892 New York Times article you mentioned is online at: Annie Moore - First Ellis Island Immigrant - that might be helpful to others who are taking up the search.

-Joe