Travels on the Web -- Resources for Genealogists -- Destination Long Island, New York, USA

This is an 1888 map of Long Island, New York, USA from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. The full title of the map is "Colton's new map of long island. published by g.w. & c.b. colton & co. 182 william st. new york. 1888. entered ... 1873 by g.w. & c.b. colton & co. ... washington. (inset) brooklyn, new york, jersey city, hoboken etc.'" An original copy of this map is selling online for over $5,000. See OldMapsOnline.org for additional maps of Long Island.

This is my first official Web Travel article and today's trip is to Long Island, New York, USA. I am traveling there as at the suggestion of my wife who wants to do some research for her family in Long Island. I am sure that the format of these articles will evolve over time. But I thought that the travelogue format would be interesting. If you would like to put a place on my itinerary, please let me know by comments or Google+ or whatever. It doesn't cost me much to travel by Web, so pick your destination.

First we need to establish some basic resources for research. Here is a basic list of places to look for information about Long Island. Remember that Long Island is four jurisdictions: Queens, Brooklyn, Suffolk County and Nassau County.

• Wikipedia: Long Island
• FamilySearch Library Catalog for Long Island. Search for New York, Nassau, Suffolk and the two Burroughs, Queens and Brooklyn. 
• FamilySearch.org Books; There are 9.245 books that mention Long Island. 
• LongIslandGenealogy.com
• FamilySearch Research Wiki: Go to the New York page and then to the individual counties. 
• Genealogy Federation of Long Island
• Computer Genealogy Society of Long Island
• Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island
• GenealogyWise Long Island Genealogy

That's enough basic stuff for now. Long Island presents one of the classic problems in genealogical research; it has four jurisdictions. When someone says they are from Long Island, they might mean they are from any one of the four, although it is likely if someone is from the Queens or Brooklyn, they would not claim to be from Long Island. So you may have to search all four jurisdictions to find your records.

I did decide that I might have to be more specific in my travels around the Web. Google Books shows over 132,000 books for the search terms, "Long Island and genealogy."