John Martino was born on 27 October 1936 in Brooklyn, New York; he died on 30 November 2015 in Huntington, New York. For more than twenty-two years (1993-2015), he was actively engaged in the field of genealogy. Martino spearheaded an expansive volunteer initiative to assist genealogists and researchers tracing individuals through some of the most populous cities and counties in the United States. As project coordinator, he played a key role in obtaining permission to use these records, fundraising, volunteer recruiting, distribution of copies of records to volunteers, and verification.
He was instrumental in recruiting nearly a thousand volunteers from around the world to work on special projects that involved organizing and deciphering handwritten records, transcribing, creating finding aids, and indexing more than sixteen million records relating to immigration, naturalization, and vital record events. Some of the records that he helped make publicly accessible comprised cemetery, church, court, immigration, military, naturalization, and vital records. They included about 1,600,000 draft registration records from World War II for New York City, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico and 5,317,300 records from the death index (1891-1948) of New York City’s Municipal Archive. Projects that he set in motion continue today.
Martino lectured on many family history topics at public libraries, colleges, and genealogical and historical societies. He especially liked to share the numerous examples of notable Americans that were discovered during his indexing and organizational projects. He was a founding member of the Italian Genealogical Group (IGG), established in 1993, and held many positions with IGG over the years.