How to Access Free New York Genealogy Records Online

If you’ve ever tried requesting birth or death certificates from your deceased relatives, you know there is a huge backlog. It could take years for you to actually receive your request. So, this is actually big news. New York is making it a whole lot easier to access records without leaving your house.

Thousands of New York Genealogy Records Going Online for Free

The New York State Library and New York State Archives are teaming up with FamilySearch to digitize and share thousands of historical records online, many of which have never been available digitally before.

The goal is to give people access to important ancestry and historical documents from anywhere in the world, not just inside a research library.

What Kind of Records Will Be Available?

Some of the records being digitized are incredibly detailed and locally significant. According to the state, collections include family, local and county histories as well as some genealogy journals and association records.

There’s also a separate effort that’s already made nearly a quarter of a million pages of archived documents available online for the first time.

Those records include colonial deeds and wills, land grants for Revolutionary War veterans and records tied to British loyalists.

Volunteers Are Digitizing Rare Historical Collections in Albany

A volunteer team working with FamilySearch has been on-site in Albany since January, scanning books from the New York State Library’s collection to bring them online.

Many of these materials are rare and deeply connected to local communities, meaning they haven’t been widely available until now.

State officials say digitizing these collections not only preserves them, but also opens the door for more people to explore their family history without needing to travel.

Why This Matters for New Yorkers (and Anyone Researching Family History)

This collaboration is expected to significantly expand access to genealogy resources for researchers, students and educators and anyone that's just curious about their family history.

The New York State Archives alone manages more than 250 million records dating back to the 1630s, and now more of those documents are becoming accessible online.

Meanwhile, FamilySearch already provides access to billions of searchable names and digital images, all for free with an account.

How to Access These Records

As more records are digitized, they’ll be added to FamilySearch’s online database, where users can explore them for free with a login.

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So if you’ve ever wondered where your family story really started, this might be the easiest time yet to find out.

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