New York, Yates County, Swann Vital Records Collection, 1723-2009

What is in This Collection?

The collection consists of an index & images for the Swann Vital Records Collection from the Yates County History Center in Penn Yan, New York, comprising birth, marriage, and death information for the first white settlers of what is now Yates County, their descendants, and those connected with Yates County and surrounding areas. The predominant source is newspaper obituaries and marriage announcements, and the earliest source is family bibles, family registers, marriage certificates, and clergyman marriage registers. The collection is named for Frank L. Swann (1894-1987), who was the Yates County Historian from 1956 to 1980.

The Swann Collection cotains birth, marriage, and death information for the first white settlers of what is now Yates County, New York, their descendants, and those connected with Yates County and surrounding areas. The earliest settlers were part of a religious migration from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania under the leadership of the charismatic Quaker evangelist Jemima Wilkinson (1782-1819). Their first settlement, named Hopeton (1788), was on the west shore of Seneca Lake in the Finger Lake area of western New York near what is now the village of Dresden.

The collection is named after its compiler Frank L. Swann (1894–1987) who began a 40-year newspaper career at the age of 18, eventually becoming general manager and treasurer of the Chronicle-Express, one of the Finger Lake area’s major newspapers. With a history degree from Cornell University and a penchant for genealogy, he served as the Yates County Historian from 1956 until 1980, Town of Milo Historian, and during the 1970’s president of New York’s fourth-oldest existing historical society: Yates County Genealogical & Historical Society, now Yates County History Center.

As a newspaper executive, Swann enjoyed convenient access to an archive of papers from Yates County and surrounding areas, the earliest dating back to 1818. In 1958 it was said of him: "Mr. Swann has among many other things to collect data, gone back through all of the back copies of the county paper and card filed the births, deaths, and marriages of vital statistics of Yates County families from an early day." From newspapers he compiled tens of thousands of original, copies, typed, and handwritten transcriptions of obituaries and marriage announcements; and to a much lesser extent, birth announcements. While the majority of his compilation comes from newspapers, he gleaned information from many other sources, including from family bible records, a few with dates extending back to the 1600s; family registers; cemetery records and inscriptions; physicians' birth records; typed BMD compilations, some identifying Civil War veterans; clergyman’s marriage registers; marriage and death certificates; memorials and other types of printed announcements; and early assisted living center admission records.

Swann placed most of his collection on 4 x 6 inch cards arranged in alphabetical order. A complete record fit on the front side of cards for about 80% of his Card File. The card’s backside was used when additional space was required, and sometimes to record the newspaper source, abbreviated, in the form YCW for Yates County Wig and YCC for Yates County Chronicle, followed by year of publication and issue. For indexing purposes, front/back cards were treated as a single image by making the index for the front exactly the same as the index for the back so search results would include both pieces of the record. This creates no problem for the user other than to understand that when examining computer search results for this collection some records are in two pieces.

Not all of the Swann Collection is on cards however. Large and fragile documents were archived. “Reference cards” specifying record type(s); record description complete with all surnames pertaining to the image; inclusive dates; and archive location were later placed in the Card File to make patrons browsing the Card File aware of the archived documents and how to retrieve them. Hundreds of additional images from clergyman’s marriage registers, typed compilations were archived without reference cards because of the large number of names they contain, using a printed inventory instead. Since reference cards are unnecessary for computer searching and image retrieval, they were not indexed, but they do provide helpful browsing markers.

Many of the Swann’s records are primary sources, as they predate statewide registration of vital records. Although New York made several partially successful attempts to enact registration of vital records, and finally in 1880 passed legislation making it law, even then it was not generally complied with until 1890 for deaths, 1908 for marriages, and 1915 for births.

• Vital records card file (85,968)
• Bible records (111)
• Births, marriages, deaths with no card reference (119 indexed)
• Large format vital records (439)
• Vital collection records folders (604)

Although the Swann Collection is relatively small, contained in its images is a treasure trove of genealogical and family history information, much of it primary because of the early dates. Fortunate are the descendants, both present and future generations yet unborn, of those early Yates settlers whose records have been lovingly preserved to help them learn from whence they came.

Swann used local vernacular such as SS, no 9, or County Home when recording places in Yates County and some surrounding areas. These have been translated into proper place names for the index, for example: Penn Yan, Yates County, New York for SS (Soldiers and Sailors Hospital); Town of Seneca, Ontario County, New York for no 9 (popular historic Seneca Presbyterian Church); and Town of Jerusalem, Yates County, New York for County Home. Extensive place lists compiled to aid indexing are available on the Yates County History Center website YatesPast.org under Genealogy & Historic Research, New York, Yates County Swann Vital Records Collection, 1723-2009. These lists are designed to be searched on a computer (off-line) using the Adobe Reader Find option found in its Edit dropdown menu.

To Browse This Collection

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The following information may be found in these records: