Wren Kin

I wasn’t having as much success as I’d hoped in interviewing relatives about my great-grandparents.

The Railroad Retirement Board will not release information on living individuals, but if your deceased ancestor worked for the railroad from 1937 on, they will provide you with his or her employment records for a non-refundable search fee.

My great uncle knew plenty about my great-grandfather Ed’s railroad career, but he couldn’t remember where Ed was born and he didn’t have a copy of his death certificate, which meant I was going to have to pay for a copy from New York State.

Even more disappointing, he knew nothing about Ed’s first wife (my great-grandmother). I had her picture and her first name, but nothing else. No one in our family could remember anything about her, either, and she seemed doomed to remain hidden behind a genealogical brick wall.

But then my great uncle mentioned something that took my mind off my lost great-grandmother: he told me how Ed had survived two head-on train collisions in 1905.

It seemed to me a head-on collision would’ve been front-page news, and if a newspaper had written about it, perhaps I could get a copy of the article.

I started researching train wrecks and before long I found I’d Googled my way into the Railroad Retirement Board’s site, which soon proved to be a genealogical gold mine.

The Railroad Retirement Board will not release information on living individuals, but if your deceased ancestor worked for the railroad from 1937 on, they will provide you with his or her employment records for a non-refundable search fee of $27.*

I followed the instructions at the site and sent in my request for information. Within a few days I received a letter telling me the search had been started. (They also wanted to remind me that search fees are non-refundable.)

Twenty-three days later an over-sized envelope came in the mail and I knew I’d hit pay dirt. The envelope included photocopies of:

• Ed’s baptismal certificate, which he used to prove his date of birth
• Ed’s wedding certificate to his second wife, and
• Ed’s death certificate, issued the year he died

Those three documents alone more than made up for the $27. But there was more, including photocopies of forms Ed had filled out containing valuable genealogical information, like:

• the year and the city in which he married his first wife (my great grandmother)
• my great grandmother’s maiden name
• my great grandmother’s death date and place

The paperwork included Ed’s railroad resume, listing the positions he held and the dates he held them over a span of 30 years. There were even life insurance papers Ed’s second wife had filled out, listing her birth date, her first husband’s name, the day and place they were married, the day and place he died, and her parents’ names (including her mother’s maiden name).

Details on my great uncle were in there, too, but as promised, the Retirement Board carefully censored all information on living individuals.

My one disappointment was there was nothing about the two head-on collisions in 1905 that Ed had survived, because the Railroad Retirement Board can only provide records back to 1937. I’m not complaining, however! Thanks to the Railroad Retirement Board, I learned more about my great-grandparents in one afternoon than I did after months of research.

*The search fee cost $27 at the time of this writing.