View the List of Registered Voters for New York City for 1924
See the 12th Newsletter from Reclaim the Records that describes their latest acquisition. It is the List of Registered Voters for New York City for 1924.
Below are 2 emails:
-
One from Brooke Schreier Ganz describing the database
and one from Allan Jordan describing practical lookup tips
Subject: **New Records**: The List of Registered Voters for New York City for 1924
From: Asparagirl <asparagirl@dca.net>
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2016 20:05:02 -0800
X-Message-Number: 7
And now for some election-related news that, for once, everyone will like!
Reclaim The Records has acquired and posted the List of Registered
Voters for New York City for 1924! It's hundreds of thousands of
names, perhaps over a million -- we don't know the exact number yet.
This list was first available in paper format ninety-two years ago,
published in a city government newsletter, then stored in shrinkwrap
and locked away in the New York City Board of Elections warehouse for
years. But now thanks to Reclaim The Records, the New York City
Municipal Archives, and our first-ever joint project with an
individual genealogist -- JewishGen's very own VP Phyllis Kramer! --
they're finally online! (Phyllis really deserves the credit for this
one, as it was her idea to try to get voter materials in the first
place.)
This list is broken up by the five boroughs (counties), then by
Assembly District (A.D.) within the borough:
- Bronx - https://archive.org/details/votersList1924NYCBronx
- Brooklyn - https://archive.org/details/votersList1924NYCBrooklyn
- Manhattan - https://archive.org/details/votersList1924NYCManhattan
- Queens - https://archive.org/details/votersList1924NYCQueens
- Staten Island - https://archive.org/details/votersList1924NYCStatenIsland
The list was originally typeset instead of handwritten, so it's very
easy to read, and the new digital photographs are excellent. And all
the images were OCR'ed -- meaning automatic image-to-text -- by the
Internet Archive when we uploaded them. That means you can do a
(slightly buggy) **Text Search** of the records right away, right now,
even though there hasn't been a formal indexing project yet.
Most importantly, if you see a relative's name on this list, you can
request a copy of their original voter registration file! Those
one-page original voter registration files have tons of genealogical
goodies in them. For naturalized citizens, that also means you'll
finally find out in what exact court and on what exact date they were
naturalized -- because that information had to be provided on their
form in order to prove they were a citizen and had the right to vote.
Was your grandma a registered Republican, Democrat, Socialist, or
Other? In what exact court and on what exact date was your grandpa
naturalized? Now you can find out!
Read our full newsletter here, with all the details and the links to
the records:
http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=2af2a58d17&e=8bd0102c13
[TinyURL version: https://tinyurl.com/jt9gvsn ]
Or you can check our website:
https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/records-request/8/
As always, the records we post are in the public domain and totally
free, no logins or paywalls or usage restrictions. You can also
download the list as PDF's for offline use, if you prefer. Happy
searching!
- Brooke Schreier Ganz
Founder, Reclaim The Records
Mill Valley, California
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: **New Records**: The List of Registered Voters for New York City for 1924
From: "A. E. Jordan" <aejordan@aol.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 11:36:49 -0500
X-Message-Number: 3
asparagirl@gmail.com wrote:
> posted the List of Registered
> Voters for New York City for 1924! ...
>
> This list was first available in paper format ninety-two years ago,
> published in a city government newsletter, then stored in shrinkwrap
> and locked away in the New York City Board of Elections warehouse for
> years.
This is a nice addition to the online world!
As the poster said, if nothing else it helps with one critical point for many
people .... to vote you had to prove you were a citizen either by
naturalization or birth. If your family member is there they had to be a
citizen, but if they are not there that does not mean anything more than they
did not vote in that particular cycle. I have also used voters in other ways
... see below.
It helps to know where the people lived because this version is organized by
Assembly District and Election District and address. You can try using 1925
NY State Census AD/ED numbers for your family, but I tried for one of mine
and it appears that the districts had been at least partially reorganized
between 1924 and 1925.
It also appears that this database will let you search by street name if you
know what street your family lived on. But for example my family was on South
2nd Street and I had to play with the variations in the search feature to find
it. Some South addresses were in a SO and some as S and 2nd was in mostly
(when it was found) as 2D. Don't search individual house numbers because if
your family did not vote you will not find it if they were in a single family
address. Get to the street and fiddle to find the right numbers and see if
they are there. Also the way the data was formatted typing for example 168
South 2nd Street would get nothing because the street is separated from the
house number.
Also New York City voters records are available from the late 1800s forward
at the NY Public Library. They have them on microfilm by year with a gap
which if I recall is right around 1905 which is very inconvenient because of
the 1905 NYC Census.
The printed records, like the one that was just scanned, also exist at the
New York City, City Hall Library (same building one room over from the
Municipal Archives). I was able to see the original paper and work with it
at the Library but as I recall it requires an advance request and they try to
be cautious since it is the original paper not microfilm. It was bound into
books and as I recall was actually alphabetical at least for the years I was
looking at sorted by the AD and ED.
In addition to searching to see if your family exercised their civic duty
(voted) and using that to confirm that they were citizens I have used voters
rolls as a tool of last resort to locate people in the NY Census. This only
works if they were citizens and voting but one of my great great uncles was
a judge and assembly man in New York so I knew the family would be voting for
him. I got the voter's roles for 1094-1905 and earlier and I searched to find
the family without knowing their address or AD/ED numbers. I knew what area
of Manhattan they lived it and from a general knowledge of Manhattan, or with
a little research of streets, you can figure out which AD/EDs to look at. I
worked through them and sure enough I found the family and using the AD/ED
and address worked backwards to the 1905 Census to find them and then I also
used earlier records and was even able to find the family in the 1890 Police
Census... the earliest official record of my great great grandmother in
America!
Happy hunting ... and always I am happy to answer questions about NYC records
and research.
Allan Jordan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: **New Records**: The List of Registered Voters for New York City for 1924
From: Ira Leviton <iraleviton@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 18:29:10 +0000 (UTC)
Dear Cousins,
I have only one small comment to add to Allan Jordan's excellent summary about
why these voter records are potentially so useful. The E.D.s in the voter lists
are "election districts," and have nothing to do with the E.D.s in the census,
which are "enumeration districts." Don't use the E.D. from a census to look up
an E.D. in a voter list.
Until there's a function that allows searches by name, it will be much easier
for those with a knowledge of New York City streets to use these lists (the
older parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens tend to have lower E.D. numbers,
but there are many exceptions, and many streets have been renamed since 1924).
Ira
Ira Leviton
New York, N.Y.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: The List of Registered Voters for New York City for 1924
From: "A. E. Jordan" <aejordan@aol.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2016 18:02:32 -0500
X-Message-Number: 4
Ira Martin Leviton wrote:
I have only one small comment to add to Allan Jordan's excellent summary about
why these voter records are potentially so useful. The E.D.s in the voter lists
are "election districts," and have nothing to do with the E.D.s in the census,
which are "enumeration districts." Don't use the E.D. from a census to look up
an E.D. in a voter list.
Thanks for the compliment, but sorry your message is not correct. The districts in
the 1925 NY State Census are Assembly District and Election District not
Enumeration District.
Someone just asked me to help them find an address in Manhattan. They had the
person's address and listing from the 1925 Census.
What I did for them (so everyone can see how this works) is first I checked the
address and AD/ED on the census and then I went to the link that shows all the
voters files for Manhattan. I had to use my cursor to point at each file and wait
for the title to appear to see the AD numbers. The file images are not in numeric
order.
The one I wanted was AD 7 and when I found it I clicked on the file and then on the
magnifying glass which permits you to search inside the file (don't use the search
you see above that is searching the site not the image file).
I skipped the ED number and went straight for the street which was West 93rd. As I
explained in the first post sometimes or maybe always it appears the search needs
to be 93D in this example. That is how they abbreviated streets that we would
write as "rd". That worked but the highlighting is fairly faint on my screen.
Then I looked for the house number and found it at the bottom right column. I
started down and did not see the name but since it went to the end of the page I
advanced to the next page and low and behold one of the people was there.
I double checked the ED was an exact match with the Census but with the AD from
the Census I got close enough to use the search feature, but the AD and ED matched
the 1925 Census.
Allan Jordan