Author Archives for Juliana Smith

Searching for Hospital Records


I received the following question this week and thought I’d share what I found here on the blog.
My husband’s grandmother died in Central Islip State Hospital in New York City in 1925. The hospital is now closed and the records apparently have been move to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. We would like to get more information [...]

The Card Catalog: What’s in it for me?


 Last week I was fortunate to be one of the hundreds of family historians who descended on Little Rock, Arkansas for the 2009 Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) annual conference. I want to thank everyone who stopped by the Ancestry.com booth to chat with us. It was great to see so many first-time attendees.
I spent [...]

Tips for Researching in City Directories


I received the following e-mail from an Ancestry Weekly Discovery reader and since the answer could be useful to many of you, I thought I’d answer it here.
I have done extensive New York City directory research. Sometimes addresses appear with an h. for house, particularly if the person also has a business address.  But sometimes [...]

Juliana Smith

Juliana Smith has been an editor of Ancestry.com newsletters for more than eleven years and is the current editor of the Ancestry Weekly Discovery. She has written for Ancestry Magazine and wrote the "Computers and Technology" chapter in The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, rev. 3rd edition. You can submit your Ask Ancestry.com questions by e-mail to Juliana @ Ancestry.com.