Scope and Contents Note

The Society Meeting Minutes series includes the ten bound volumes of minutes recorded at the regular and special meetings of N-YHS members from its founding meeting on November 20, 1804, to the last of these meetings on November 16, 1937. Although there is a degree of consistency in the content of the meeting entries over the years, there are also many differences. Some of these differences are likely clerical in nature, such as the tendencies or thoroughness of the various recording secretaries. Some differences relate to the changing scope of the matters brought for consideration and vote to the Society meetings; by the early twentieth century, most business matters were handled within the Executive Committee (see Series II). After the constitutional amendments of 1917, only a few matters other than officer elections are documented in the minutes. Accordingly, the following scope notes relate principally to the meeting minutes from 1804 to 1917.

Routine content includes lists of individuals nominated and accepted for membership; obituaries/memorials for recently-deceased members and nationally-known figures; annual elections of officers; meeting attendees; and appointments of temporary committees to consider various specific matters.

Donations of items are recorded inconsistently. For the period from the 1820s to 1841, there are frequent detailed lists of accessions. There are references to donations before and after that period as well but, especially after 1841, other books are noted as holding this information (see the New-York Historical Society collection accession registers record group (NYHS-RG 15)). The minutes record many initiatives aimed at expanding the collection of manuscripts, artifacts, and artwork. These include successful matters, such as the acquisition of art from the New York Gallery of Fine Arts in 1857, and unfruitful ones, such as the offer from Mathew Brady of his Civil War photographs in 1866.

Operational matters, including finances, leasing space in the early-mid 1800s, acquiring land and constructing buildings in the mid-1800s and in the 1900s, setting open hours for the rooms, and proposing constitutional and by-law amendments are recorded in the minutes. Financial matters from N-YHS’s earliest years are not always recorded in any particular detail, but the amount of this information expands in later years to account for various funds, investments held, and other matters. N-YHS’s financial struggles of the 1820s and 1830s, and their eventual resolution, are well-documented in the minutes.

Reports from committees are sometimes written into the minutes in full, as is some important correspondence. These reports include those of the various buildings committees created over time. References can also be found to the ultimately unsuccessful initiative of the 1860s-1870s to locate N-YHS within Central Park (see New-York Historical Society original buildings planning & construction records (NYHS-RG 3) for much more on this topic).

The minutes also record to some extent the educational and social activities of N-YHS. These include noting those invited to read papers to the members and the subject of those papers; decisions to publish certain material; and summaries of anniversary celebrations and other special events, sometimes noting the toasts at the event.

Scope and Contents Note

The Executive Committee Meeting Minutes series includes the twenty bound volumes of minutes recorded at the meetings of the committee from April 1843 to the last of its meetings in 1937. The series also includes the 1938 minutes of the committee’s successor governing body, the Board of Trustees; the 1938 minutes are bound in the same volume as the 1936-1937 committee minutes.

Matters routinely considered by the Executive Committee and recorded in the minutes include the recommendation for election of individuals nominated for membership; consideration of publishing initiatives; vetting speakers and papers to be presented at Society meetings; review of finances and banking arrangements, including the performance of mortgages held for investment; approval of library hours and other operational matters; assessment of the condition of the collections, including the Abbott Egyptian collection, which is discussed extensively in 1916; compilation of member lists; consideration of acquisitions by purchase or by donation; approval of the payments of bills (which are listed in the minutes until sometime in the 1920s); maintenance of the buildings; permissions to photograph objects; and proposals of changes to the N-YHS Constitution and By-laws. In addition to its broad scope, the Executive Committee also worked closely with the Fine Arts Committee and the buildings committees so references to their activities are found in these minutes also. In short, the full range of management matters was conducted by the committee and is reflected in the minutes.

Scope and Contents Note

The Other Committee Minutes series includes the following three volumes:

The first volume holds minutes recorded by the Standing Committee and lists of early donations to N-YHS. The Standing Committee existed from 1805 until 1829 when the requirement for it was removed from the N-YHS Constitution and By-Laws. The volume does not include records from this entire period. Only four meetings of the Standing Committee are recorded; one of these (1807) was adjourned for lack of a quorum and the other three (1806, 1809, 1810) include only a small number of committee resolutions, one of which concerns the possible purchase of items from John Pintard. The bulk of the entries in the volume are lists of donations of books and other objects (1806 to 1818, with gaps, and 1822); these entries often, though not always, also indicate the donor.

The second volume holds minutes of the Mineralogical Committee, dating from 1818-1819. Although the committee was formed in October 1816 and existed until perhaps circa 1920 (the Society meeting minutes are silent on when the committee was discharged), this slender volume holds the brief minutes for only two meetings: December 28, 1818, and March 6, 1819. The minutes also include a letter from the committee’s secretary indicating his unavailability for a March 26, 1819 meeting.

The third volume holds minutes of the Committee on Fine Arts, dating from its formation in March 1856 to March 1880. Although the committee existed until May 1895, there are no entries after March 1880. The minutes refer to the committee’s support for collecting photographs, consideration of the Jarvis collection, the Audubon watercolors, the Bryan collection, the possibility of acquiring space for N-YHS in Central Park, and Mathew Brady’s offer of photographs to N-YHS, among other matters.

Scope and Contents Note

The Official Papers series, which is the original name of the files, primarily includes material that directly relates to the Society membership and Executive Committee meetings and minute books (see Series I and II). Most of the documents are preparatory material for the meetings, preliminary notes and drafts of meeting minutes, or supporting or source materials concerning matters presented at the meetings. Much of the material in this series is likely also found recorded in the minute books or in print form, but that may not be true in all instances and these documents are typically the draft or manuscript versions which can have a research value separate from the final versions.

For each year’s files from the 1840s to the 1910s, the overall content is fairly consistent. The files for these years primarily include documentation of proposed new members; drafts or manuscripts of the Librarian and Executive Committee’s annual reports; drafts of statements and resolutions, including memorial remarks for recently deceased members; and documentation of the annual nomination and election of officers. The membership documentation is especially extensive and includes the original correspondence, paper slips, business cards, or standardized forms nominating candidates as members; the extract from the minutes recording the nominations, which were forwarded to the Executive Committee for its consideration; and the communication from the committee recommending acceptance of the nominees.

Also commonly found in the files of the 1840s to 1910s, though less consistently than the above materials, are remarks made by newly-elected presidents, reports of various committees formed on an ad hoc basis for particular purposes, and some financial and donation information. Some legal documents are in the series, including the agreement by which N-YHS acquired the collection of the New York Gallery of Fine Arts. Documentation related to the funding and construction of buildings for N-YHS is found in the years 1840s-1850s, and again in the 1880s-early 1900s. References to the publications program and its funding and to various special events are found here also. The container list below includes notes at the folder level to highlight at least some of the noteworthy items identified during processing.

The series includes a set of files dating from 1899-1905 that were maintained by Sydney H. Carney, Jr., N-YHS's Recording Secretary for much of this period. Carney was also a member of the Central Park West Building Committee during this period and was that committee’s secretary in some years. The most substantive portions of Carney's files relate to the building project, especially in regard to controversy over the architect's unanticipated need to change the building design. These documents include correspondence from architects York & Sawyer and others; draft resolutions; drafts of Carney's outgoing correspondence to the architects, to N-YHS presidents Eugene and Samuel Hoffman, and to others; notes taken about telephone calls; draft committee minutes; a subscription book; and other documents related to the project. Carney's files also include correspondence related to his Recording Secretary responsibilities, including requests from Librarian Robert H. Kelby for signatures on meeting extracts, member certificates, and Publication Fund shares and share transfers; requests for resolutions to be drafted; notices from officers and committee members of meetings they would be unable to attend; and other such routine business matters.

Subsequent to the 1910s, for the files of the 1920s and 1930s, the scope of the documentation narrows, with little material related to the monthly Executive Committee minutes. Much of the routine matter for these years includes the manuscript Annual Reports (Librarian, Executive Committee, and Field Exploration Committee) and lists of approved new members and of deaths (“necrology”). The bulk of the documents for these years relate to the triennial officer elections, the by-law changes of 1917 and 1937, and the special membership meeting called in 1936 to approve the Executive Committee’s decision to initiate construction of the Central Park West building expansion. Proxy voting was introduced with the 1917 elections and much of the bulk of the material for the 1920s and 1930s includes the proxy certificates and the recordkeeping concerning them. Nonetheless, the contentious elections of 1917 and 1920, driven by charges of mismanagement by Mrs. Van Rensselaer, are well-documented here with correspondence, circulars, meeting transcripts, and competing ballots.

For consistency with the Executive Committee minutes series, the Official Papers series includes the year 1938, the first year that N-YHS was governed by a Board of Trustees, newly-constituted under the by-law changes of 1937.

The earliest files in this series, from prior to the 1840s, are much more uneven in content and are of a different character than the later files. The bulk of the documents for these first three decades of N-YHS’s history are invoices, receipts, and account statements, such as those related to purchases of books, moving the library to and setting up the rooms at the New York Institution and other places, creating the mineralogy cabinet, printing circulars and publishing advertisements, and other expenses. Files in the late 1820s are especially rich with regard to N-YHS’s efforts to resolve its debts. This material concerns the claims of John Pintard and John Francis for purchases they made for N-YHS, and the releases obtained from various creditors. Other than financial matters, the early files contain some of N-YHS’s early circulars to the public, meeting agendas and extracts, and librarian and committee reports.