Find your Troy-area ancestors, Irish or not

1787 – 1895

An index to death notices of 9,682 names that were published in ten different Lansingburgh, New York newspapers from 1787 to 1895 was created by staff at the Troy Public Library in 1938 through 1939. A two Volume set of these death records is in the Troy Room at the Troy Library.

The Troy Irish Genealogy Society was allowed to scan these books so the records could be made available on-line for genealogy researchers. A one Volume book of marriage records from the same ten newspapers and for the same time period was also indexed. Those marriage records also have been scanned and will be added to the TIGS website.

With these 108 years of marriage and death records you will be able to follow the family surnames and the major events in their lives, with the marriages, followed by deaths and in many cases a subsequent remarriage. For many of the deceased married woman, the husband’s first name is shown in parenthesis. The data base also shows 492 alternative spellings of certain surnames.

Lansingburgh, by the way, for those not in the Capital District Region, was the first chartered village in Rensselaer County and was settled around 1763. In 1901 Lansingburgh became part of the City of Troy, New York.

This indexing project was inspired by the previous work done by the Philip Schuyler Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1935 under a Works Project Administration grant. Transcriptions from that project, The Troy Newspaper Project, can also be found on the TIGS website www.troyirish.com under PROJECTS.

The ten different Lansingburgh newspapers were:

• American Spy
• Federal Herald
• Lansingburgh Advertiser
• Lansingburgh Chronicle
• Lansingburgh Courier
• Lansingburgh Democrat
• Lansingburgh Gazette
• Lansingburgh Daily Gazette
• Lansingburgh Times
• Northern Centinel

Under RESOURCES on the TIGS website, www.troyirish.com you will also find an informative article, “Newspapers in Rensselaer County,” which identifies which of the above newspapers are available, on microfilm or hard copy, at the Troy Library.

These historical records are extremely important to genealogy researchers as the bulk of the records predate New York’s 1880 law that required reporting of deaths. Outside of church records or the newspaper account of these deaths, you will most likely not find these records anywhere else.

In addition to the name of the deceased, most entries show the age, date of death, names of newspapers that reported the death along with the newspaper date, page and column number where you will find the notice in the appropriate newspaper.

It is important to note that the residence for the deceased is not just Lansingburgh, but may cover all area of New York State, other States and even foreign countries.

An Index of 12,731 Death Records Appearing
in Lansingburgh Newspapers 1787 to 1895