Abstract: The collection consists of more than 11,000 estate inventories of individuals who died in New York County between 1786 and 1859. The collection was created by the Surrogate's Court, which was created by statute in 1787 and is responsible for the disposition of estate assets for each county in New York State. The collection consists primarily of concise descriptions and valuations of estate assets and debts, in the form of lists. The records, all of which are handwritten, were created by...

Abstract: Before the creation of Greater New York on January 1, 1898, the counties bordering New York County (which is coterminous with New York City)—Kings, Queens, Richmond, and Westchester Counties—were comprised of municipalities (villages, towns, cities), some of which date back to the early days of Dutch and English colonization of Lenapehoking (Lënapehòkink in Unami), the ancestral homeland of the Lenape. This collection includes records created and/or maintained by these municipalities before...