Record of Wills lithographed from transcriptions of originals in the Surrogate's Court, New York City
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Abstract
Lithographs of transcriptions of original wills on file in the Surrogate's Court, New York City, 1680–1823, produced by the New York Printing Company in 1870–1871 as part of an effort to preserve the City's early records through publication.
Historical note
On February 2, 1869 the Register of the City of New York informed the Board of Supervisors of the woeful state of some of the records in his care—among them maps and unwieldy libers ("liber" being Latin for "book")—which were housed in substandard facilities that made their preservation and access challenging. On May 12, 1869, a law passed enabling the Board of Supervisors to raise $100,000 to construct a fireproof roof on the Hall of Records, and to refit the building "to provide for the preservation of the records in a manner more secure than heretofore, and to facilitate the convenient examination thereof." Going further, on May 24, 1870, the Board of Assistant Aldermen resolved "that the Clerk of the Common Council be . . . authorized and directed to employ a suitable person to prepare for the press, with appropriate introductions and notes, the ancient records of the City of New Amsterdam, and those of the City of New York, prior to eighteen hundred and fifty." The Assistant Aldermen further resolved on May 26 that "the New York Printing Company be employed to preserve the records in the Register's Office . . . and to duplicate maps in said office, as requested in the Register's communication to this Board, dated 2d of February, 1869." In addition to a single volume of maps compiled from originals in the Register's Office, in 1870–1871 the New York Printing Company produced a unique set of the "Proceedings of the Common Council of the City of New York," and a set of lithographed copies of transcriptions of the first 56 libers of wills on file in the Surrogate's Court, spanning 1665–1823. The exposure of the Tweed Ring—to which the New York Printing Company, as printers to the Corporation of the City of New York, had innumerable ties—put a premature end to this early effort of "preservation by publication."
For a fuller description of the project, see A. J. Wall, "The Printing of the Records of the City of New York in the Days of William M. Tweed by the 'Ring'," in the New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, vol. 7, no. 3 (October 1923).
Arrangement
The collection is organized by liber number, with two or more libers per box. Box 1 includes a folder of typed and manuscript collations of the various paginations, with notes on pages missing, as well as articles and photocopied sections of books describing the libers.
Scope and Contents
The wills in this collection span 1680–1823. Before consulting them researchers should start with Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, 1665–1801, published as seventeen volumes (nos. 25–41) of Collections of the New-York Historical Society (1892–1909), available in print and through various online sources. These abstracts were indexed by Arthur C. M. Kelly in Index, Names of Principals: Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York (1981). See also "Index to Lithographed Copies of Wills, 1801–1823, Libers 43–57 (incomplete), in The New-York Historical Society, the Originals of Which are Filed in the Office of the Surrogate of New York County, Hall of Records, New York City, and Lithographed in 1870–1871 by the New York Printing Company" (1934). Gordon L. Remington's New York State Probate Records: A Genealogist's Guide to Testate and Intestate Records, 2nd edition (2011), provides invaluable clarification of this knotty topic.
To preserve the original, deteriorating will libers on file at the Surrogate's Court, in the nineteenth century they were copied into new volumes, resulting in two sets: the original libers (now in the New York State Archives), and the nineteenth-century "second set" (maintained by the Surrogate's Court). The "second set" includes both the original and new pagination. A comparison of the handwriting in those sets (both are digitized and available through Ancestry.com and other sources) with the present collection of lithographed wills confirms that the latter were not produced directly from the original libers or the "second set." Rather, the originals were transcribed by hand, and then lithographs made from the transcriptions by the New-York Printing Company in 1870–1871.
Subjects
Access Restrictions
Open to qualified researchers. This collection is stored offsite and advance notice is required for use. Please contact manuscripts@nyhistory.org prior to your research visit to coordinate access. Keep in mind that it will take between two (2) and five (5) business days for collections to arrive, and you should plan your research accordingly.
Use Restrictions
Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff. Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation
This collection should be cited as "Record of Wills lithographed from transcriptions of originals in the Surrogate's Court, New York City, MS 3180, New-York Historical Society."
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Accession information is lacking for this collection. Prior to its arrival at the New-York Historical Society, it was owned by Dr. Samuel S. Purple (1822–1900), founder of the library of the New York Academy of Medicine and a noted genealogist. These will lithographs are not listed in the Catalogue of the Genealogical Library of the Late Samuel S. Purple, M.D. . . . to be Sold at Auction . . . Feb. 16th to 19th, 1909 (Boston: C. F. Libbie & Co.), so perhaps they came to New-York Historical at an earlier or later date. Possibly they were consulted to create the seventeen-volume Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, 1665–1801, published as volumes 25–41 of Collections of the New-York Historical Society in 1892–1909. In any case, they were in the Society's possession by 1923, when A. J. Wall described them in an article in the New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin of October that year.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Archivist Joseph Ditta processed this collection in January 2022.