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Ulster County Collection

Call Number

MS 645

Date

1666-1893, inclusive

Creator

Extent

1.25 Linear feet (9 boxes)

Language of Materials

The documents in the collection are in English.

Abstract

A collection of 185 items relating to the history of Ulster County, New York. Materials mostly involve land conveyance and boundary issues, but there are also a number of legal papers, financial items and military documents.

Historical Note

Ulster County, in southeastern New York State, is bordered by the Hudson River to the east and the Catskill Mountains to the northwest. Its early inhabitants were Algonquian-speaking Indians, such as the Delaware.

Missing Title

1614 Early adventurers came into the area to trade with the Indians for corn and pelts.
1615 Fur-trading post established on the future site of Kingston.
1652 Handful of settlers from Holland moved down from near Albany.
1653 Land purchased from the Esopus, a tribe of the Delaware Nation, for farming. Built village called Esopus, later Wiltwyck (Dutch for "wild woods"). After skirmishes with Indians, Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of the Dutch colony, brought soldiers up and built a stockade.
1669 Wiltwyck, now part of the English colony, was renamed Kingston.
1677 French Huguenots, under the leadership of Louis Dubois, founded settlement of New Paltz on 36,000 acres of land purchased from the Indians and patented to them by Governor Edmund Andros.
1683 Ulster, one of the original New York counties, was chartered to "contain the towns of Kingston, Hurley, and Marbletown, Foxhall and New Paltz, and all the villages, neighborhoods, and Christian inhabitations on the west side of the Hudson River, from the Murderers Creek, near the Highlands, to the Sawyers' Creek." Named for the traditional Irish province of Ulster, then under the control of James, Duke of York and Albany (later King James II).
1777 Kingston, the county seat, was the first capital of New York State. The state's first legislature, senate and supreme court convened in Kingston and George Clinton was inaugurated there as New York's first governor. In late 1777, British troops entered and burned Kingston, destroying much of the town.
1805 The community survived and Kingston incorporated as a village.
1828 Delaware and Hudson Canal completed. Kingston was the eastern terminus.

Source of Information: French, J.H. The Historical and Statistical Gazetteer of New York State. Syracuse, N.Y.: R.P. Smith, 1860.

Arrangement

See Series Descriptions for arrangement of each. The container list is at the item level for Series I, II and IV.

The collection is organized into four series:

Missing Title

  1. Series I. Tomlinson Collection Land Papers (1697-1751)
  2. Series II. Ulster County (1670-1893, undated)
  3. Series III. Militia (1787-1809)
  4. Series IV. Ulster County Oversize (1710-1778)

Scope and Content Note

This collection is a compilation of a number of miscellaneous manuscript collections that relate to the early history of Ulster County, New York. One portion comes from the Tomlinson Collection, formerly owned by the Mercantile Library Association. Almost exclusively made up of land conveyances, this segment comprises a relatively small portion of the collection. The remaining material, from a variety of sources, includes land transactions but also legal documents, financial papers, military items and some correspondence. Certain Ulster County surnames frequently appear, such as Schuyler, Alexander, Provoost, Beekman, Van Cortlandt, De Peyster, Harrison and Colden.

Access Restrictions

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

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 Ulster County Collection, The New-York Historical Society.

Location of Materials

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Provenance

Purchases: 1950 (Tomlinson Collection), and July 1923.

Donations: November 1923, December 1923, May 1931, June 1936, February 1939, May 1949, and others.

Related Material at The New-York Historical Society

The New-York Historical Society has a significant selection of material related to the early history of Ulster County. Within the Manuscript Division, for example, is another collection made up primarily of 18th century land transactions and church papers - The Paltsits Ulster County Collection (Call Phrase: Paltsits Ulster County) - collected by Dr. Victor Hugo Paltsits. There are also individual manuscript items such as the following:

Missing Title

  1. Account Book, 1736-1822- Call Phrase: BV VanGaasbeck
  2. Land Surveys, 1767-[176-?]- Call Phrase: BV Gale, Samuel
  3. Diary/Account Book, 1749-1780- Call Phrase: BV DeWitt
  4. Patent, 1719/20, March 17, Ulster County (N.Y.)- Call Phrase: Y1720

The Library's General Collections contain a number of related volumes of which the following are examples:

Missing Title

  1. Clearwater, Alphonso T., ed., The History of Ulster County, New York. Kingston, NY: W.J. Van Deusen, 1907. (Call Number: F127.U4 C6)
  2. Fried, Marc B., The Early History of Kingston and Ulster County, N.Y. Marbletown, NY: Ulster County Historical Society [1975]. (Call Number: F129.K5 F82)
  3. Sylvester, Nathaniel Bartlett, History of Ulster County, New York: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1880 (Philadelphia: Press of J.B. Lippincott & Co.). (Call Number: F127.U4 S95)
  4. Ulster County Historical Society, Kingston, N.Y., Collections of the Ulster Historical Society, Volume I. Kingston, Hommel & Lounsbery, printers [etc.] 1860-62. (Call Number: F127.U4 U4)
  5. Van Buren, Augustus H., A History of Ulster County Under the Dominion of the Dutch. Kingston, NY: [s.n.], 1923.

The Print Room of the Library contains a number of related maps such as the following:

Missing Title

  1. Cockburn, Will. A Map of the Division Line Between the Countys of Albany and Ulster, from the Mouth of the Sawyers Creek, 1765. (Call Number: M29.1.10)

The Library also has significant manuscript and general collections relating to the various families mentioned in this collection such as Colden, De Peyster, Schuyler, Alexander, Beckman, Van Cortlandt and others.

Collection processed by

Jan Hilley

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:49:58 -0400.
Language: Description is in English.

Edition of this Guide

This version was derived from Ulster.xml

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024