Anyone who has done extensive Philadelphia research has likely learned that ancestors easily and often crossed the river into New Jersey. Fortunately, since the New Jersey State Archives (and State Library) are located in Trenton — just across the Delaware from the Philly metro area — they are easily accessible. And, compared to Pennsylvania, incredibly user friendly.
Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania has no unified court system. Effectively, this means that each county contrives its own way of doing things. For instance, some records are organized using the Russell indexing system, some are not. Some counties have placed their records in the care of the state archives, some have not. Consequently, while our state archives itself is a well-run repository, the holdings when compared county-to-county can be quite inconsistent.
Not so at the New Jersey State Archives. There are statewide marriage, birth and death, and even will indexes. Clearly this varies somewhat by the counties’ dates of creation, however, the ability to track a family via one bookshelf or drawer of microfilm is foreign to anyone whose research has never expanded beyond Pennsylvania’s borders. Of course there are many other resources at NJSA, not the least of which is their 8,000 rolls of newspaper microfilm, and all are equally well organized and incredibly easy to find and utilize.
Don’t misunderstand – the best repository in the world is of no value to the researcher who doesn’t know the historical context of his subject matter, or who is working from erroneous or poorly organized facts. But a good researcher in a good repository such as the NJSA can accomplish an amazing amount of work in one or two days.
If you have New Jersey ancestors and would like a quote for on-site research at the NJSA, please email us at:
PennsylvaniaResearch@gmail.com