View the Grosvenor Room's Frequently Asked Questions...

Atlases

The collection has about 100 atlases covering Buffalo, Erie County, other New York state counties; U.S. History including the Civil War; Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Prussia; and general world atlases. Many date from the mid-to-late 19th century and can be used to identify local property owners, national boundary changes, or lost villages.

Buffalo Collection

This collection consists of an estimated 4,000 volumes about people, places, and things in Buffalo and Erie County. A popular component is the scrapbook collection, which consists of about 400 scrapbooks, compiled between 1930 and 1975.

Cemetery and Church Records

The library has microfilmed local church records, mostly Roman Catholic, showing births, deaths, baptisms, confirmations and marriages. Subject headings to use when searching our on-line catalog are:

Registers of births, etc. - New York State - Buffalo

Church records and registers - New York State - Buffalo

Also try searching the names of individual churches in our Catalog.

Forest Lawn Cemetery is Buffalo’s largest cemetery and has good burial records.

Gertrude A. Barber compiled many area tombstone lists. Click on her name to see our holdings.

There are a few volumes of Buffalo & Erie County cemetery records in book form. Some titles are:

Graves of Revolutionary soldiers located and marked by Buffalo Chapter DAR...
A list of Revolutionary War soldiers' graves in Erie County, New York
Old cemetery on Genesse [sic] Road, three miles from Bowmansville...
Records from the old North Street Cemetery removed in 1901...
Buffalo N.Y. Concordia Cemetery on left of Walden Avenue near Jefferson St...
List of soldiers and sailors interred in the cemeteries of Buffalo [Civil War]
Cemetery of St. John's Evangelical Church
Old cemetery stones, Maplewood Cemetery, Town of Concord

Census Records & Indices

The Department owns every Federal and State census microfilm for Erie County and some for other parts of the state or country. After 1820 we have few census films or indices for states other than New York. We have no census records from other countries.

City Directories & Telephone Books

Buffalo's first city directory was published in 1828, and can be found reprinted at the back of the 1878 Buffalo City Directory. The next one was published in 1832, and Buffalo City Directories have usually been published on an annual basis ever since. We have the complete set on microfilm.

In general, Buffalo city directories list only Buffalo city residents until the 1950s, when the suburban directories began to be published. There are very few directories that list town, village, and rural residents of Erie County prior to the 1950s.

The library also has many city directories from other cities in New York State and around the country. The library does not save old out-of-town telephone directories.

View our Frequently Asked Questions about City Directories...

Genealogies

The genealogical collection, about 5,500 volumes, is composed largely of American family history and biography; publications of genealogical and patriotic societies; English parish records and visitations; books on royalty and nobility; and an extensive series of newspaper genealogy columns covering a 50-year period.

Heraldry & Crests

The Department has dictionaries and encyclopedias of coats of arms in Amercia, Britain, Croatia and Dalmatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Scotland, and Wales.

Local History Files

The following files were created in-house. Most are no longer being expanded.

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Local Newspapers & Journals

Buffalo and Erie County newspapers 1842-, plus some newer weeklies, are available on.

• Prior to 1842, local newspapers are not microfilmed and the original bound volumes are in the Rare Book Room.

New York State Newspaper Project: Erie County Newspapers on Microfilm http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp/115.htm
who has which local papers. It is a union list of all microfilmed newspapers from Erie County giving holdings of area repositories.

Western New York Index
An index, 1983-1996, of the Buffalo News, Business First, the Western NY Genealogical Society Journal, and a few other periodicals.

Local History and Genealogy Research Referrals

The library has compiled a list of researchers not affiliated with the library, but who can work for an hourly rate to assist your in-depth research. This listing does not constitute an endorsement by the Library. More...

Map

The Library's collection is comprised of an estimated 80,000 maps. Included are local, regional, state, national, and international maps, including nautical and aeronautical charts. We own U.S. topographic maps for the states east of the Mississippi, with the New York set shelved in Special Collections for easy access. Also available are Buffalo Ward maps for use in census research, and election maps showing current councilmanic districts, county legislative districts, senate, assembly, and congressional districts.

Military Records

Official records of a soldier’s military service are found in the National Archives (http://www.nara.gov/).

The Department has a number of resources to help establish an ancestor's military record, including:

DAR Patriot Centennial Index
Index to Mexican War Pension Files
Index to War of 1812 Pension Files
New York in the Revolution
Phisterer's New York in the War of the Rebellion
Report of the Adjutant-General of the State of New York [listing NY's Civil War units]

Also available on CD-ROM is the Military Index for Vietnam and Korea.

NYS Vital Records Index

The NYS Vital Records Index encompasses births, marriages and deaths that occurred in New York State as early as 1880 and as recent as 1954 for marriages and deaths and 1929 for births.

The index provides the name, date and place of birth, marriage or death recorded. It does not contain the actual birth, marriage or death certificates. Those requiring actual copies of these certificates need to apply to the original issuing and/or recording agencies, such as the town, city or state.

New York State requires that the index be used in the library. Users must provide valid identification, and no reproduction (printing or photocopying) of the information is permitted.

Passenger Lists

Original passenger lists and immigration records are kept in government offices, but the Department has several published indexes, including:

Famine Immigrants
Filby's Immigration and Passenger List Index
Germans to America
Italians to America
Wuerttemberg Emigration Index

Western New York Genealogical Society Collection

The WNYGS maintains an expanding reference library of books, microfilms, periodicals, and card catalogs as a repository of genealogical information pertaining to the area and its early settlers.

Primary interest is in the eight counties of Western New York: Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Genesee, Niagara, Orleans, and wyoming. However, there is much information on the remainder of New York State and New England, as well as most of the other states, many foreign countries, and many families.

The WNYGS schedules a volunteer 3-4 afternoons per week to assist with in-person genealogical research in the Special Collections Department.

Among the WNYGS holdings are the following:

• ATLASES, GAZETTEERS, GUIDES & INDEXES
• DIRECTORIES & HISTORIES
• BIBLE RECORDS
• MARRIAGE RECORDS
• CHURCH RECORDS
• CEMETERY RECORDS
• MICROFILMS OF CENSUSES, CHURCH RECORDS, CEMETERIES, etc.
• ANCESTOR CHARTS & GROUP SHEETS OF MEMBERS
• FAMILY HISTORIES & GENEALOGIES
• FOREIGN: Britain, Ireland, Germany, etc., including Germans to America
• MILITARY RECORDS
• PERIODICALS
• "HOW TO" BOOKS