Request for missing records from the New York State marriage index

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing on behalf of the non-profit organization Reclaim The Records. In September 2017, our organization made a Freedom of Information request to your agency, asking for the New York State marriage index for the years 1881-2016. For reference, your office assigned that FOIL request the ID number 17-09-123-RAO.

As you undoubtedly know from our ongoing litigation with your agency, that request for the marriage index was partially fulfilled and partially denied: we were provided digital images of the index records only through the mid-1960's, and we currently have a pending Article 78 case in the Supreme Court of New York (Albany county) fighting for the release of the later records.

We are now writing to inform you of some previously-unknown problems with the portion of the records that your agency did agree to provide to us:

1) Digital scans of the first sixty microfiche sheets of the 1923 New York State marriage index were not included.

2) Digital scans of the first sixty microfiche sheets of the 1935 New York State marriage index were not included.

3) There were no "Grooms Index" records at all for the year 1944 -- just a Brides Index. Were all the NYS DOH Grooms Index microfiche sheets for 1944 destroyed? Or were they accidentally not scanned? Is there a backup database or other version or other format available anywhere? What about the microfiche copies at the various New York public libraries, or the Manhattan branch of the National Archives (NARA) -- could we copy those instead, if the official "vault copy" NYS DOH version is missing? And in any case, why were these missing records not mentioned in any of your previous responses to us?

4) The cheap USB hard drive that held all the files you sent us unfortunately died a tragically premature death, and began clicking and whirring but no longer being readable by our computer. Luckily, we had already copied over most of the images files (covering 1881-1952), but not the later ones. Please send us a new hard drive with the files from 1953 onwards. We will be happy to pay for the costs of the new hard drive, and also pay for shipping; Amazon.com estimates the cost of a 1 TB USB hard drive at about $44, but you might be able to even fit these few remaining records on a USB thumb drive which would be more like $20. You can also send all the files over to us by Dropbox or Google Drive or FTP or other means of electronic transfer, if you prefer.

Please let us know a timeline for when we can expect all of these missing records to be provided by your agency. A few weeks to copy (or re-copy) and send over the images would be reasonable, but anything longer than that would not be.

Looking forward to hearing your response shortly.

- Brooke Schreier Ganz
Founder and President of Reclaim The Records

To whom it may concern:

This is a follow-up to our correspondence from earlier today. We misstated problem #3 -- it is the 1944 Brides Index whose images are missing entirely, not the 1944 Grooms Index. Sorry for the confusion. But either way, half of the state's marriage index records for 1944 are still missing.

- Brooke Schreier Ganz
Founder and President of Reclaim The Records

Dear Ms. Hewig,

I've ordered a new Toshiba 1 TB hard drive (USB) and it should arrive at your office on Tuesday, December 18th, shipped directly from Amazon. It's Amazon.com order number 113-7168939-4299446. Please let me know when it's ready with the missing files, and I will be happy to pay for trackable shipping (UPS, FedEx, etc.) for the return trip to me in California. Thanks.

- Brooke Schreier Ganz

Hi Ms. Hewig,

Any update? Did you receive the hard drive? If so, when can we expect it to be returned with the files?

- Brooke

Dear Ms. Hewig,

Please mail the hard drive to:

Brooke Schreier Ganz
905 Ventura Way
Mill Valley, CA 94941

(The other address in Massachusetts is actually the mailing address for MuckRock, the non-profit organization that runs the MuckRock.com web portal through which we make most of our Freedom of Information requests to various agencies.)

Thank you!

- Brooke