The elusive Fiumefreddos
In the past, I’ve done a lot of work on my cousin Evie’s Welsh ancestors. Unfortunately, I never found much on her Italian ones.
Today, I decided to do something about that and rode my bike to the Family History Center in Lancaster to look up her grandfather’s birth again.
His name was John Fiumefreddo. I remembered finding him on the Cook County birth microfiches there and I had the certificate number with his birth certificate and his date of birth in Chicago as being 3 Sep 1892. With that information, I thought I could find his actual birth certificate on the Family Search website, but no such luck. It was not there.
At the Family History Center, I again looked up the birth certificate. The certificate number had “DS” in front of it. One of the helpers at the FHC suggested I look in the Family History Library to see what “DS” stood for. That told me that “DS” meant the certificate was delayed and that the Family History Library did not have it, which explained why it wasn’t on the website. Instead, it said to contact the Cook County Clerk’s office.
While I was in the FHC, I went to the Cook County Clerk’s website and found that they have records available online. On their Cook County Genealogy page, you register and then enter names to search under births, marriages, and deaths. If you click on a name that appears, it puts that record in your “cart” and then when you “checkout” it charges your credit card and you can download the certificate on-the-spot. Pretty cool, huh?
Leave a Comment May 5, 2010