DOCUMENTING LOCAL HISTORY
Organizing and Preserving Documents

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This Branch Links to These Areas of Work in Local History

Topics Covered in this Branch

Board of Water Supply Annual Reports by the Department of Environmental Protection, 1907-1927
The BWS's annual diaries of activities in the watershed with many supporting photographs.
Objective: to access a contemporaneous, original source history of construction in the watershed.

Delaware County Booklist recommended by the Delaware County Historical Assn. for publications of local historical interest.

Hints on Preservation of Documents by Paul Schlotthauer
Hints on the preservation of papers, newspapers, and letters, and the elimination of musty odors
Objective: to digitize documents and properly preserve historical papers, newspapers, and letters

Bundling: Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America by Henry Reed Stiles,
A delightful history of the tradition of bundling, tracing its antecedents in the old world and its ramifications in the new. It reads like a cross between Knickerbocker's History of New Yorkand Franklin's Poor Richards Almanack. "I find by all historians, whether ancient or modern, whom I consulted in searching for this work, the fact well recorded, and established beyond all controversy, that the Yankee nation are a set of talking, guessing, swapping and bundling sons of women."Published by Knickerbocker Publishing Company, Albany, NY, 1871 and scanned courtesy of the Project Gutenberg.
Objective: to appreciate the social mores and humor of early America.

History of Schoharie County by William E. Roscoe
History of Schoharie County, New York, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers. 1713–1882. By William E. Roscoe. Published by D. Mason & Co., Syracuse, N.Y. You can double click on the chapter number to download the desired chapter(s).
Note: the original scan did not include a chapter 12. Chapter 11 ended on page 165, and page 166 started chapter 13.
Objective: to access a digitized searchable PDF of Roscoe's History of Schoharie County, double click on the desired chapter.

History of Schoharie County and Border Wars of New York by Jeptha R. Simms
History of Schoharie County, and Border Wars of New York; Containing also a Sketch of the Causes Which Led to the American Revolution; and Interesting Memoranda of the Mohawk Valley; Together with Much Other Historical and Miscellaneous Matter Never Before Published. Illustrated with more than thirty engravings. By Jeptha R. Simms. Albany; Munsell & Tanner, Printers. 1845. You can double click on the chapter number to download the desired chapter(s).
Objective: to access a digitized searchable PDF of Simms History of Schoharie County and Border Wars of New York

Military Records of Schoharie County Veterans in Four Wars by George H. Warner
Published by Weed, Parsons and Company, Printers, Albany, NY 1891. This is a wonderful book that not only lists the names of veterans from these four wars, but also includes a paragraph on each man telling about his family, enlistment, the battles he fought, and details of injuries/cause of death. This digest covers the War of Revolution (pp. 3–71); The War of 1812 (pp. 72–108); The War with Mexico (pp. 109–118); and the War of the Rebellion (pp. 119–428).
Objective: to access detailed information about the Schoharie participants in the early wars of our nation.

Reference Sites
http://www.threerivershms.com/ This is a fantastic site with a wonderful collection of out-of-print historic books in PDF format plus all sorts of other information of the historic Three Rivers of New York: the Hudson, Mohawk, and Schoharie. There is a site search engine, so that this resource can be equally used for casual reading on areas of interest or for specific research. The webmaster puts materials online as quickly as she can, so basically what she has is already uploaded for you to use. There are also links to county-specific research areas, and the site is constantly updated with new materials. As with any site on the Internet, you should cross check with other resources to verify information and there may be typos (I have found very few), and some of the older books have many errors on each page due to archaic words and spellings. They request that you use what you like for personal use, but do not use the material for distribution or profit. This site is copyright, and materials there may not be used for distribution, sale, or profit.

http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.htmlAn equally great site is "Old Fulton New York Post Cards." This is a misleading title for the page: remember it as "fultonhistory.com" and you'll be able to search (using correct or phonetic spelling) through over 15,377,000 pages of old New York State historical newspapers. I searched for the name of an area wife of moderate fame in the 1940s and received 19 hits from the Schenectady Gazette, Stamford's Mirror Recorder, the Amsterdam's Daily Democrat and Recorder. As with the Three Rivers site, Fulton History is a labor of love and may be used for personal use, but not for distribution, sale, or profit.

Possible Forthcoming Topics
Use of Books as Large Documents (as opposed to use of books as an artifact — e.g., an early Bible used as an historical object rather than focusing on its possible genealogical information.
Optical Character Recognition
Digitizing Letters, Books, and Papers.