New York Genealogy

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New York Genealogy Research Guide

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New York Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

New York was one of the original thirteen colonies and became the eleventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on July 26, 1788. It grew out of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, settled in the 1610s and 1620s, which England seized in 1664 and renamed for the Duke of York. Its four centuries of dense record-keeping make it one of the most rewarding — and most jurisdiction-dependent — states in which to trace a family.

• Capital: Albany. The seat of government moved from New York City to Albany in 1797.
• Statehood: July 26, 1788, the eleventh state, formed from the British Province of New York.
• Counties: 62. The first twelve were created in 1683; the last, Bronx County, in 1914.
• Land type: New York is a state-land state, not a federal (public-domain) state. Original title passed from Dutch and British colonial authorities and then from the State of New York by patent, so there are no federal General Land Office records for New York — early grants are documented at the state level and later transfers at the county level.
• Nickname and motto: the Empire State; the state motto is Excelsior ("Ever Upward").
• Where records live: most genealogical records — deeds, probate, most vital records, and naturalizations — are kept at the county or town level, and New York City keeps its vital records entirely separately from the rest of the state.

Libraries and Archives

New York's richest collections cluster in Albany, which holds state-government records, and in New York City, which holds municipal and immigrant records; county courthouses, public libraries, and local historical societies hold material for their own areas. The principal New York repositories include:

• New York State Archives (Albany) — state-government records: vital-record indexes, land patents and grants, military service records and abstracts, colonial and early state court records, tax assessment rolls, and institutional records.
• New York State Library (Albany) — local histories, published genealogies, newspapers, city directories, censuses, and manuscripts.
• New York City Municipal Archives (Department of Records and Information Services) — the city's birth, marriage, and death records, the 1890 police census, almshouse and court records, and city directories.
• New York Genealogical & Biographical Society (NYG&B) — the statewide society, founded in 1869; publisher of The Record and The New York Researcher, with an extensive members' eLibrary.
• New York Public Library, Milstein Division of United States History, Local History & Genealogy — one of the largest genealogical collections in the country, including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Dorot Jewish Division.
• National Archives at New York City — federal court, naturalization, census, passenger-arrival, and military records for New York.
• Holland Society of New York and the New Netherland Institute — early Dutch colonial records and New Netherland research.
• Center for Jewish History (including the Leo Baeck Institute) — the leading repository for Jewish family and community history.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive New York microfilm and digital collections, and county courthouses (County Clerk and Surrogate's Court), county historians, and local historical societies hold records for their own areas.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized New York records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($).

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of New York vital, land, probate, court, and church records.
• Ancestry ($) — extensive New York vital, census, naturalization, military, and tax collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — New York vital records, censuses, and immigration collections.
• Findmypast ($) — a growing set of New York county marriage and other collections.
• New York State Historic Newspapers — free; digitized newspapers from every county.
• Old Fulton Postcards (Fulton History) — free; a very large archive of digitized New York and other newspaper pages.
• New York State Archives Digital Collections — free; digitized record series drawn from the State Archives.
• Historical Vital Records of NYC — free; the New York City Municipal Archives' digitized birth, marriage, and death records.
• German Genealogy Group and Italian Genealogical Group — free indexes to New York City vital records covering all ethnicities.
• Reclaim The Records — free; New York State birth, marriage, and death indexes obtained through public-records requests.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized New York histories, published record abstracts, and law books.
• Chronicling America — free; the Library of Congress newspaper archive.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.

Law and Government

New York's laws and legislative records help explain the jurisdictions and record-keeping practices that produced genealogical records, and many foundational texts have been digitized and are free to read.

• The Colonial Laws of New York from the Year 1664 to the Revolution (five volumes) — the Duke's Laws, colonial charters, and the acts of the colonial legislatures from 1691 to 1775; free on the Internet Archive and on HathiTrust.
• Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Brodhead and O'Callaghan, fifteen volumes) — Dutch, English, and French records of the colony; free on the Internet Archive.
• The Documentary History of the State of New York (O'Callaghan, four volumes) — census fragments, church and town records, and other early sources; free on the Internet Archive.
• The annual Laws of New York (session laws) and the revised statutes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.
• The Historical Society of the New York Courts presents the history of the state's courts by era, useful for learning which court created which records.
• The New York State Archives holds the state's legislative records, and the Journals of the Provincial Congress and early Assembly and Senate journals are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Statewide civil registration began in June 1880 for deaths and 1881 for births and marriages, supervised by state and local boards of health. Compliance was poor until about 1913, so many earlier events were never recorded; an 1847 school-district registration law produced very few surviving records. New York State does not hold New York City's vital records — the city is a separate jurisdiction, described below.

Statewide (outside New York City). Records are held by the New York State Department of Health and by local town, village, and city registrars; genealogical copies are available under time limits (75 years for births, 50 years for deaths and marriages), with earlier access for direct-line descendants. Three cities that ran their own earlier systems — Albany, Buffalo, and Yonkers — were not included in the state files until 1914 for births and deaths, or 1908 for marriages. Use these online indexes to find a certificate number, then order the record:

• New York State Birth Index, 1881–1942 ($), also on MyHeritage ($), and free through Reclaim The Records and the Internet Archive.
• New York State Death Index, 1880–1956 — free on FamilySearch; also on Ancestry ($) and free through Reclaim The Records.
• The State Health Department's Genealogical Research Death Index (1957 onward) is a free searchable index up to the current legal limit.
• Marriage indexes for 1881–1964 are browsable free at the Internet Archive; many counties also kept marriage-license files at the county clerk, and 1847–1848 and 1908–1936 licenses are indexed free on FamilySearch.

New York City. The five boroughs correspond to five counties: Manhattan (New York County), Brooklyn (Kings), the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island (Richmond). Manhattan began registration by the 1860s and Brooklyn in 1866; before the boroughs consolidated on January 1, 1898, "New York City" meant mainly Manhattan, and Bronx marriage licenses were issued in Manhattan until Bronx County was created in 1914. The New York City Municipal Archives is digitizing its birth, marriage, and death records, roughly 1855 to 1949 and ongoing, on its free Historical Vital Records site; the free German Genealogy Group and Italian Genealogical Group indexes are the standard finding aids.

• Births: Index to Birth Certificates, 1866–1909 ($) and Birth Index, 1910–1965 ($).
• Marriages: Extracted Marriage Index, 1866–1937 ($), also on MyHeritage ($); marriage records for 1829–1938 are a free index on FamilySearch.
• Deaths: Extracted Death Index, 1862–1948 ($); the free German and Italian group index is generally more complete.

More recent records — births after 1909 and deaths after about 1949 from the city Health Department, and marriages after 1949 from the City Clerk — are obtained from the current city agencies.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped New York's jurisdictions and records:

• 1609 — Henry Hudson explores the river later named for him.
• 1614 — Dutch traders build Fort Nassau near present-day Albany.
• 1624–1626 — The Dutch establish New Netherland: Fort Orange (Albany) in 1624 and New Amsterdam on Manhattan in 1625–1626.
• 1664 — England seizes the colony and renames it New York, the Province of New York, for the Duke of York; a brief Dutch reconquest in 1673–1674 is reversed the next year.
• 1683 — The first twelve counties are created.
• 1710 — Some 2,000 to 3,000 German Palatine refugees arrive and settle the Hudson and, later, the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys.
• 1775–1783 — The Revolutionary War, in which New York is a major theater (the Saratoga campaign of 1777); the first state constitution is adopted in 1777.
• 1785–1790 — New York City serves as the capital of the United States, and Washington is inaugurated at Federal Hall in 1789.
• July 26, 1788 — New York ratifies the U.S. Constitution as the eleventh state.
• 1797 — The state capital moves to Albany.
• 1799 and 1827 — A gradual-emancipation law of 1799 leads to the final abolition of slavery in New York on July 4, 1827.
• 1825 — The Erie Canal opens, driving settlement across upstate New York and migration to the West.
• 1855 — Castle Garden opens as the state immigrant depot at the tip of Manhattan.
• 1880–1881 — Statewide civil registration of deaths, then births and marriages, begins.
• 1892 — Ellis Island opens as the federal immigration station.
• 1898 — The five boroughs consolidate into Greater New York City.
• 1911 — A fire at the State Capitol in Albany destroys or damages many colonial and Revolutionary-era records.
• 1914 — Bronx County is created from part of New York County.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses were taken every ten years from 1790 through 1950, and New York appears in all of them, though the 1890 federal census was almost entirely destroyed. They are free on FamilySearch and on the National Archives 1950 census site, and are also searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

State censuses are a distinctive New York strength. Taken in 1825, 1835, 1845, 1855, 1865, 1875, 1892, 1905, 1915, and 1925, they fall between the federal years, so together with the federal census they can place a family about every five years. The state copies of the earlier schedules burned in the 1911 State Library fire, so surviving pre-1915 returns are usually held by the County Clerk or county historian; two copies were made of the 1915 and 1925 censuses, one kept in the county and one sent to the State Archives. What each census records varies by year:

• 1825, 1835, and 1845: name only the head of each household, with statistical counts of the other residents; many of these early schedules have been lost.
• 1855: the first to name every person, giving each one's age, birthplace (the county, if born in New York), and years of residence in the town, which helps approximate arrival dates.
• 1865: names everyone and adds detailed military-service questions, making it especially valuable for Civil War research.
• 1875: names every person and is browsable on FamilySearch.
• 1892: a valuable substitute for the destroyed 1890 federal census, though it omits relationships and survives for only about 40 counties; indexed on FamilySearch.
• 1905: adds each person's relationship to the head of household; indexed on FamilySearch for all but a handful of counties.
• 1915: the earliest state census with records for every county; a searchable index is on FamilySearch, with images on Ancestry ($).
• 1925: the last state census, adding each person's date and place of naturalization; a searchable index is on FamilySearch, with images on Ancestry ($).

Colonial enumerations and substitutes. Dutch and English colonial censuses and name lists survive in print, for example in the Documentary History of the State of New York, and the 1890 New York City Police Census substitutes for the lost 1890 federal census in Manhattan and the West Bronx. Where censuses are missing, city directories (New York City directories survive from 1786) and tax lists are the best substitutes for placing a family in a given year.

Church Records

Because civil registration is late, church records are the most important substitute for vital records before about 1880. The earliest congregations were Dutch Reformed, French Protestant (Huguenot), and Lutheran; the Presbyterian church was the largest denomination by 1775 and the Methodist church by the mid-1800s, and the Roman Catholic church has been largest since the late 1800s, driven by Irish, Italian, and eastern-European immigration. Dutch Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican and Episcopal, and Quaker records are especially useful as vital-record substitutes.

• Dutch Reformed Church Records in Selected States, 1639–1989 ($) — the most efficient online route to New York Dutch Reformed baptisms, marriages, and memberships.
• Episcopal Diocese of New York Church Records, 1767–1970 ($); companion Ancestry collections cover the Central New York and Rochester dioceses.
• The Vosburgh Collection — transcriptions of about 100 volumes of upstate Protestant church records — is available through the NYG&B, and thousands of digitized congregational registers can be found through the FamilySearch Catalog by county and town.

Catholic parish records are held by the parish or diocesan archives, for example the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Court Records

New York's courts changed repeatedly, and their records reach well beyond lawsuits into estates, guardianships, naturalizations, and name changes. The main courts a researcher encounters are:

• Surrogate's Court, in each county since 1787 — wills, administrations, and guardianships.
• Supreme Court, since 1691 — a statewide trial court sitting in each county; the County Clerk is its clerk and often holds its naturalization and civil case files.
• County Courts, since 1847 — the main county trial courts, which took over the work of the earlier Courts of Common Pleas.
• Historic courts — the Court of Common Pleas (colonial to 1847), the Court of Chancery (equity, abolished 1847), and the Court of Probates (1778–1823) — whose surviving records are at the State Archives, the county clerks, or on FamilySearch.

Colonial court records and early nineteenth-century civil cases are described among the New York State Archives holdings, and modern case information is available through the New York State Unified Court System.

Ethnic/Minority Records

New York has been diverse since its founding, and knowing where a group settled points to the records most likely to document a family.

• Indigenous peoples. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) — Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, later joined by the Tuscarora — occupied central and western New York, while Algonquian peoples (Munsee and Lenape, Mahican, and the Montaukett and others on Long Island) lived in the Hudson Valley, the lower state, and Long Island. Indian treaties and deeds are held at the New York State Archives, and the New York Public Library holds Native American archival collections.
• Dutch. The founding population of New Netherland settled the Hudson Valley, Manhattan, Long Island, and the Albany area. The Holland Society of New York and the New Netherland Institute specialize in these families, and the NYG&B hosts transcribed colonial-immigration and Dutch church records.
• German Palatines. The refugees of 1710 settled first along the Hudson (the East and West Camps) and then in the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys. The FamilySearch Palatine Records guide and Henry Z. Jones's published The Palatine Families of New York identify many of these families.
• Huguenots. French Protestants founded New Paltz and New Rochelle; the Huguenot Society of America documents their descendants.
• Irish. Present from the colonial era, Irish immigration surged with the Great Famine of the 1840s and 1850s and concentrated in New York City; Catholic parish and cemetery records are key sources.
• Italians and eastern-European Jews. The great wave of about 1880 to 1924 settled heavily in New York City. The Center for Jewish History and JewishGen are the leading resources for Jewish research.
• African Americans. People of African descent have lived in New York since the Dutch period, first largely enslaved (slavery was abolished statewide in 1827) and later greatly increased by the Great Migration. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, together with sources such as the Freedman's Bank records and African-American newspapers like the New York Amsterdam News, are central resources.

The Library of Congress New York local history and genealogy guide gathers additional ethnic and community resources.

Immigration and Naturalization

The Port of New York was the nation's chief gateway. Passenger manifests survive from 1820; Castle Garden served as the state immigrant depot from 1855 to 1890, and Ellis Island as the federal station from 1892 into the 1950s. An 1897 fire destroyed many earlier arrival records, but most can be reconstructed from ship manifests.

• New York Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, including Castle Garden and Ellis Island, 1820–1957 ($); the 1820–1891 and Ellis Island 1892–1957 manifests are also free on FamilySearch.
• Free indexes and images are available through the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation (1892–1957) and CastleGarden.org (1820–1913).
• Border crossings from Canada, with records from 1895, are indexed on Ancestry and free on FamilySearch.

Naturalization. Before 1906 any court of record — federal, state, county, or local — could naturalize, so records are scattered; after 1906 the process was federalized. Key finding aids are New York State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794–1943 ($) and the Index to Petitions for Naturalization filed in New York City, 1792–1989 ($). FamilySearch offers free county naturalization records (1791–1980) and the Southern District petition index (1824–1941), and the National Archives at Philadelphia holds the federal naturalizations. Alien depositions of intent (1825–1913), filed so immigrants could own land, are at the New York State Archives.

Land Records

As a state-land state, New York granted land itself rather than through the federal government, so there are no General Land Office records. Original title flowed from Dutch and British colonial authorities and then, after independence, from the People of the State of New York by patent; later transfers between individuals are recorded as deeds. County-clerk recording of deeds became mandatory only in 1830, so many earlier deeds are unrecorded.

Where the records are kept.

• County level: deeds and mortgages are recorded by the County Clerk (in New York City, the City Register, together with the Richmond County Clerk).
• New York State Archives (Albany): the State Archives holds colonial patents, the "Endorsed Land Papers" (applications for land grants, 1642–1803), Letters Patent (grants of New York land, 1664–2016), military-bounty patents, and survey field books.
• Office of General Services: the OGS Bureau of Land Management holds survey maps and the minutes of the Commissioners of the Land Office.

The large speculative purchases. Much of western and northern New York was opened through enormous land purchases, and knowing which tract an ancestor's land fell in tells you where the settlement records survive.

• Phelps and Gorham Purchase (1788): Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham bought Massachusetts's pre-emptive right to roughly six million acres in the Genesee country and extinguished Native American title to about 2,250,000 acres east of the Genesee River. The land office and chief town were at Canandaigua, and the purchase's papers are held at Syracuse University Libraries.
• Holland Land Company (1789–1858; papers to 1869): a syndicate of Dutch investors bought about 3.3 million acres west of the Genesee River — the Holland Purchase — from Robert Morris in 1792–1793. It was surveyed by Joseph Ellicott and run from Batavia; the original manuscripts are in the Amsterdam municipal archives, microfilm is at SUNY Fredonia, and the Holland Land Office Museum in Batavia interprets the records.
• Pulteney Estate (1792): British investors led by Sir William Pulteney bought about 1.2 million acres east of the Genesee from Robert Morris; because aliens could not then hold New York land, the agent Charles Williamson held title. The tract covers present-day Ontario, Steuben, and Yates counties and parts of neighboring counties, and the estate ledgers are at the Rochester Public Library.
• Macomb's Purchase (1791): Alexander Macomb, with William Constable and Daniel McCormick, bought 3,670,715 acres — nearly one-eighth of the state — in far northern New York, now Lewis, Jefferson, St. Lawrence, and Franklin counties and parts of Herkimer and Oswego.
• Central New York Military Tract: about two million acres of Revolutionary War bounty land in the Finger Lakes region, laid out in 1782 in twenty-eight townships with classical names (Homer, Cicero, Marcellus, Pompey, Cato) of 100 lots each. It covers present-day Cayuga, Cortland, Onondaga, and Seneca counties and parts of others; because many veterans sold their rights, the soldier who drew a lot is often not the eventual settler (see The Balloting Book, 1825).
• Additional named tracts include the Morris Reserve, east of the Holland Purchase, and the Boston Ten Townships in Tioga and Broome counties, purchased in 1786.

Online, New York Land Records, 1630–1975 — grants, patents, deeds, and mortgages for all counties except Franklin, Nassau, and Queens (Oneida is filed under Herkimer) — is free on FamilySearch, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed deeds and patents searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, witnesses, and neighbors.

Military Records

New York took part in every American conflict, though the 1911 Capitol fire destroyed many colonial and Revolutionary muster rolls; published substitutes survive.

• Colonial and Revolutionary War: federal service records and rolls are on FamilySearch, Fold3, and Ancestry; James A. Roberts's New York in the Revolution as Colony and State and volume 15 of the Documents Relative to the Colonial History reprint much of the lost material.
• War of 1812: War of 1812 Payroll Abstracts for New York State Militia, 1812–1815 ($).
• Civil War: New York Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts, 1861–1900 ($), with free Union service records on FamilySearch; the New York State Military Museum hosts regimental histories and rosters, and the 1865 state census records Civil War service.
• Spanish-American War and World War I: the State Archives holds muster-roll and service-record abstracts; Abstracts of World War I Military Service, 1917–1919 ($) are on Ancestry, and veterans' discharge records have been filed with county clerks since 1909.

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, and guardianships of minors — is among the richest sources for family relationships. The key dividing line is 1787.

• Before 1787: colonial wills were handled centrally, and most were filed in New York City; from 1778 to 1787 the state Court of Probates had jurisdiction. These early records are largely at the New York State Archives, and the standard finding aid is the published Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York (seventeen volumes, 1665–1801), free on FamilySearch and the Internet Archive.
• Since 1787: a Surrogate's Court in each county proves wills, grants administrations, and appoints guardians; the estate file — petition, will or administration, bond, and inventory — usually names the heirs.

Online, New York Probate Records, 1629–1971 is free on FamilySearch and browsable by county (metropolitan New York City is not included), and New York Wills and Probate Records, 1659–1999 ($) on Ancestry is name-searchable across most counties. FamilySearch Full-Text Search also makes many unindexed wills and estate files searchable by every name they contain.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family in a specific town and year and are valuable substitutes where censuses or deeds are missing; several consecutive years can reveal when a young man came of age, moved, or died and left heirs.

• New York Tax Assessment Rolls of Real and Personal Estates, 1799–1804 ($) — based on the Federal Direct Tax of 1798, listing males over 21 by county, town, and year.
• U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862–1918 ($) — Civil War–era and later federal income, license, and luxury taxes; the 1862–1874 New York assessment lists are also free on FamilySearch.
• The New York State Archives holds colonial tax lists of the 1770s and 1780s and later tax assessment rolls, and the FamilySearch Library holds early-1700s tax lists for Dutchess County, New York City, and other areas. County treasurers and town clerks hold later assessment rolls.