New York State Research - Livingston County and More

Although my husband has produced a bound monograph of the Brown family in Upstate New York, he continues to work on this line.  Genealogy is never done!

His recent challenge was finding the death date and interment location of Robert Brown (b: Aug. 1931), twin brother of Richard Brown, sons of Arthur Brown.  This search took him to the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Fowlerville, Livingston County, NY.  In a call to the cemetery sexton, my husband was told the cemetery did not keep burial records.  The sexton records who purchased the plots, but does not record actual burials.  My husband was told to call the Town Clerk’s office.

In talking with the Livingston County town clerk he learned that some New York town clerks are Registrars of Vital Records. They keep birth, death and marriage records from 1881, on a town basis, rather than in the county. She was able to tell him that the Robert Brown buried in the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery was not his Robert Brown.

This search began by utilizing the Monroe County Library’s (Rochester, NY) Life Records database.  This database contains:

”Paid death notices from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and Times-Union for the years between 1960 and up to the current date. These are the notices written and placed in the newspaper by the family.

Birth notices from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and Times-Union for the years between 1978 and up to the current date.

Marriage notices from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and Times-Union for the years between 1965 and up to the current date.

If you would like to order a copy of the newspaper article for a particular name, you may have a scanned copy sent to you via e-mail, or a paper copy sent via standard mail. Please follow the directions on the order page. You may request a maximum of three records per day, at $15.00 per record. Allow up to seven days for your request to be processed.

Please note that these newspaper indexes are not the same as Vital Records Indexes. New York State Vital Records indexes contain the names, places, dates and certificate numbers for births, marriages and deaths in New York State, beginning in 1880.”

We found Arthur Brown’s obituary in the Life Records database, and since we were in the Rochester area this summer, we stopped by the Monroe County Library to read it and took notes. That obit mentioned a daughter-in-law, Gladys Brown in Honeoye Falls, NY.  A White Page search for Gladys Brown shows an association with a Richard Brown.  Maybe this is his family!

The next step is to attempt to contact Gladys Brown in Honeoye Falls.

The monograph of Abraham Brown of Newfield, New York and His Descendants is available at the Newfield (NY) Public Library and at the Godfrey (Middletown, CT) Memorial Library.