Transcribing Records of Enslaved New Yorkers

New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently announced an ambitious project at the Department of Records and Information Services to make accessible historical records documenting thousands of formerly enslaved New Yorkers. The records in the Municipal Archives date from 1660 through 1827 when New York State abolished the practice of slavery.

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Slave and School Records in Kings County, 1799-1819. Old Town Records, Gravesend, NYC Municipal Archives.

The records are part of the Old Town Records collection. This series includes records created by the towns and villages in Kings, Queens, Richmond, and Westchester Counties prior to consolidation in 1898. Recently processed and partially digitized during a project funded by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission, the records provide unique documentation of communities now part of the Greater City of New York. Over the course of the processing project, For the Record published several articles tracking progress and highlighting aspects of this collection. Processing the Old Town Records Collection, Oyster Boards in the Old Town Records and The Genealogical Possibilities of Manumissions in the Old Town Records are a few of the articles.

This week, For the Record interviewed Arafua Reed for information about the transcription project and how interested persons can volunteer to participate. Arafua is a City Service Corps volunteer with AmeriCorps and NYC Service, currently serving as DORIS’ DEIA Coordinator.

For The Record: Arafua, what are the records that are being transcribed?

Arafua Reed: It’s going to be a phased project. The focus of phase one is birth certificates and manumission documents, along with some court minutes from the Old Town Records collection. During the second phase we will transcribe information recorded in other collections such as the Records of New Amsterdam and the Common Council.  

FTR:  Can you tell us about the provenance of these records?

AR:  Most of these documents resulted from the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery enacted by New York State in 1799. The law stated that children born to enslaved women after July 4, 1799, would be legally declared “free.” Since these children were still considered property with material value, this came with a loophole that their freedom would become valid only after a certain amount of time had elapsed—25 years of age for women, and 28 years for men—meanwhile these children were still required to work. Therefore, enslavers were required to record the children’s births on legal documents.

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Certificate of Birth for Harry, a male child born on October 25, 1804, reported by John Vanderbilt on September 5 1805. Records of the Town of Flatbush, Old Town Records collection, NYC Municipal Archives..

Enslaved people born prior to July 4, 1799, were re-categorized as indentured servants; this language (using “servant” instead of “slave”) appears throughout the manumission documents. Typically, the document includes the enslavers statement reporting the birth, and a corresponding certification of its accuracy by the town clerk. In rare instances, there is text in a will document freeing an enslaved person.

FTR:  Do you know about how many individuals will be identified by the transcription project?

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Birth records, ledger, 1826, Town of Flatlands, Old Town Records collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

AR: There are about 1,300 birth and manumission records in the books slated for transcription during this phase.

FTR:  Please describe the transcription process.

AR: The Municipal Archives is using an online service called From The Page for the transcription project. Once logged-in, volunteers will click on a book and select a page. Or, they can click “Start Transcribing” (just above the list of volumes) and will be taken to a random page that hasn’t been worked on yet. The format of volunteer submissions are split into two sections: there’s a text area field, where the entire page will be transcribed in full. Just below this text box is a spreadsheet, where volunteers will insert the information about children born to enslaved mothers.

We’re asking that volunteers type what they see and to keep in mind the transcription tips that sit in the middle of every page. It’s an easy process to get into; reading some of the handwriting is probably the most difficult part of it.

FTR:  Are transcribers provided any assistance with reading the hand-written records?

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Birth records, 1810-1811, transcribed in ledger, Town of Flatlands, Old Town Records collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

AR: That’s my current responsibility. There’s a convenient Notes and Questions box under each transcription page, so if volunteers need help with some of the words, or if they want a review of something very specific on one of their pages, or even if they find something interesting, they can send that message there. These notes are public, so if volunteers want to engage with someone else’s comments, they can.

FTR:  How will you make sure that the transcribers do not make mistakes?

AR: That is another part of my responsibility. I don’t expect anyone to complete these pages to perfection and, when I see mistakes, I can easily correct them. I’m currently reviewing the submissions page by page, but there are ways for volunteers to note specific pages that they need help with. After a submission is all typed out, volunteers can check a box by the Preview and Save buttons that says, “Needs Review.” This lets me know that a transcriber would like someone to look over the work before it’s considered complete. These notes are very helpful for me to track progress. In some cases, I might need to adjust the transcription conventions to include things that people struggle with often.

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Certificate of Birth for Henry Lynes, a male child, born on November 5, 1804, reported by Simeon Buck, November 26, 1804. Records of the Town of Flatbush, Old Town Records collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

FTR:  How will the transcribed information be made available?

The Archives will publish the birth records as a database in Collection Guides. In addition, the Archives has curated a sub-collection for birth records of enslaved people and a webpage on archives.nyc devoted to holdings featuring Records of Slavery and Emancipation.

FTR:  It looks like a significant impediment to using manumission records to trace ancestry is the lack of surnames. In the example below, we know that “Tom” was born on March 28, 1806, to “Bet,” but we do not know their surnames. Do you have any advice about how to overcome this impediment?

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Certificate of Birth for Tom a male child born on March 28, 1806 to Bet, reported by George Lott on September 27, 1806. Records of the Town of Flatlands, Old Town Records collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

AR: We suggest that researchers try using vital record collections of the communities where enslaved persons resided. Given that we know the date of birth and a first name, and if the formerly enslaved person remained in the community, it might be possible to find additional demographic information in vital records. The Municipal Archives collection of vital records includes records of birth, death and marriage in many of the Old Town communities.

FTR:  What should a person do if interested in participating in the project?

AR:  To start working, a volunteer can visit the Records of Slavery page that lives on the website.

The Genealogical Possibilities of Manumissions in the Old Town Records

The Department of Records and Information Services is currently digitizing New York colonial and early statehood administrative and legal records dating from 1645 through the early 1800s under a grant generously funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The records pertain to Dutch and English colonial settlements in New York City, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley.

Families have a sense of themselves. Who they are, where they came from, how they came to be the group they are now. It’s a sense of identity. Many African Americans today are exploring their genealogy but can only go so far because of the legacy of slavery in America and a past obscured by the lack of records. However, there are records in the Municipal Archives that might help fill this knowledge gap. One collection is the Old Town Records, which includes documentation of manumissions and slave births in New York City. While the information may not be new, access to it over the years has been limited. This is changing thanks to a new digitization project. With a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the Municipal Archives has been processing the collection. It is comprised of records created in the villages and towns that were eventually consolidated into the Greater City of New York in 1898. They date back to the 1600s and consist of deeds, minutes from town boards and meetings, court records, tax records, license books, enumerations of enslaved people, school-district records, city charters, and information on the building of sewers, streets and other infrastructure.

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Manumission of Benjamin Matt by Jacob Hicks, March 4, 1817. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

“Manumission” is a legal term that is similar to “emancipation” but slightly different in the way it was performed. Manumission refers to the legal release of enslaved people when slavery is still sanctioned by law, as opposed to emancipation, which follows abolition and releases all people formerly enslaved. Most slave manumissions were conferred by slaveholders who released their slaves either by a living deed of gift or last will and testament. For the Record  examined the subject in The Slow End of Slavery in New York Reflected in Brooklyn’s Old Town Records. Additionally, several collections in the Municipal Archives contain records documenting enslaved people, notably the Common Council Papers. A sampling of NYC Slavery Records can be viewed online in “From the Vaults.”

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Manumission of Nancy by Jeremiah Remsen, June 30, 1820. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

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Manumission of Betsey by Gerreta Polhemus, August 29, 1820. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

More than 11,000 pages from the 189 Old Town Ledgers have been digitized to date. The digitization is 20% complete and the final count will be exponentially higher at the project’s end. This process can seem slow at times, requiring care for the material that’s being worked on. Sometimes there are opportunities to review the books being worked on and sometimes the entries stick out. This was the case with many manumissions as they were digitized for the collection. Individual names of former slaves along with their former owners are in plain ink on the pages—their lives dramatically changed so many years ago. Most manumissions are only a few simple lines of text, yet their ramifications are so powerful.

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Manumission of Sylvia by John Van Nostrand, April 10, 1799. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

I’m not African American but I am a New Yorker. I’ve lived in Brooklyn for over twenty years and am familiar with the city’s history. I was aware of the city’s past connections to slavery but I had never seen written evidence of it until I began digitizing the records of places I walk through so often—Bushwick, Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay and other locations. People of all heritages live in these places now, but at the time the manumissions were written these were small farm towns and slavery was common. It is easy for that past to never come to mind; it’s a stretch of imagination to envision the humble towns they were when walking in the urban centers they have become. But that past is very real and the people in the Old Town Records Collection walked many of the same streets we walk today. It is possible their distant relatives may also tread those same streets and not know the connection to their past.

I recently saw similar records of emancipation change how a person thought about herself. After I had been digitizing this material during the day I put on Finding Your Roots, a popular TV show about genealogy on PBS. [https://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/] The program has aired over eight seasons and has previously consulted the Municipal Archives to research its guests’ histories.

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Manumission of Phillis by Joseph Fox July 11, 1812, and Dianna Orange by Nicholas Beorum, April 12, 1813. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

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Manumission of Cornelia Brown by Andrew Mercein, April 13, 1813. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

This was an episode that featured the musician/actress Queen Latifah and as the story of her heritage unfolded she found some of her ancestors had been manumitted from slavery. The documents presented on the show were from another state and another archive but their value was the same as the lines of text I had digitized during the day. It was freedom; it was another life; it was a new beginning for that person and their family. Those events occurred so long ago and as Queen Latifah read out the words for the camera she had no idea this had ever happened. [https://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/watch/extras/queen-latifah-meets-the-woman-that-freed-her-ancestors]. As she talked about what she read she noted that it changed the way she thought about herself, her own personal struggles and how she thought of her family. She was eager to share that information with the people she holds dear. Her whole family would see their history differently. They would see themselves differently. A family that didn’t previously know their past, a family that didn’t know with whom or when their freedom came would now have an entire history opened up by a few lines of writing found in a book in an archive. As the TV show played I reflected on the digitization I perform and knew the same impact is possible through the Old Town Records Collection. The way entire families see and know themselves could shift in an instant from the few words the Municipal Archives makes electronically accessible.

Many things shape family identity but few are as profound and long lasting as information. Personal past. Collective past. They can shape who you are, who you think you are and who you can be. Who an entire family can be. The wider availability of the Old Town Records Collection has the potential to do that for so many families who research their genealogy. We can look forward to more Americans finding themselves.

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Manumission of Margarett by Anna Vanderbilt, September 4, 1820. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

The slow end of slavery in New York reflected in Brooklyn’s Old Town records

New York is a commercial city, created by the Dutch as a trading hub and expanded over centuries to become a financial and commercial center. It was governed by the rules of capitalism more than enlightenment thought or statements about freedom and equality. Nowhere is this more evident than in New York’s actions regarding enslaved people. Several collections in the Municipal Archives contain records documenting enslaved people, most notably the Common Council Papers and the Old Town Records. A sampling can be viewed here https://www.archives.nyc/slavery-records

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Town of Flatlands Slaves: Birth Register, Manumissions; Records of Personal Mortgages, 1799-1838, volume 4054, Index to manumissions. Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

New York City’s population of enslaved people was second only to Charleston, South Carolina. As the Northern state with the largest number of enslaved people, New York was the second-to-last to eliminate slavery—New Jersey was the last.

Chapter fourteen of the publication A Century of Population Growth from the first census to the 12th (1790-1900), issued by the United States Census Bureau, details the population of enslaved people. Titled Statistics of Slaves, it notes that the first census for the United States conducted in 1790 enumerated the 3,929,214 people in the country. The report cites 697,624 enslaved people residing in twelve states as well as Kentucky and the Southwest Territory. Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine are omitted from the analysis because slavery had either been eliminated or was not a practice in those locales.

New York State counted 21,193 enslaved people in the 1790 population as well as 4,600 free Black people. The number of enslaved people diminishes in succeeding decades due to State legislation “gradually” emancipating people until in 1840 when there were four people enumerated as slaves. In 1790, there were 7,795 enslaver households with an average number of 2.7 people in bondage in those households. That’s the average, but some founding fathers such as Robert Livingston and John Jay held more people in bondage.

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Town of Gravesend, Slave and School Records, 1799-1819, volume 3017. Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

In an article titled “Gateway to Freedom” historian Eric Foner estimates that two-thirds of the 3,100 Black residents of Manhattan were enslaved. “Twenty percent of the city’s households, including merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and sea captains, owned at least one slave. In the immediate rural hinterland, including today’s Brooklyn, the proportion of slaves to the overall population stood at four in ten—the same as Virginia.”

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Town of Flatbush, Board of Health: Manumitted and Abandoned Slaves, 1805-1814. Kings County Old Town Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Foner defined Brooklyn as it is today—the entirety of Kings County. But in the late 1800s, Brooklyn was one of many towns in the county which also included Flatbush, Flatlands, and Gravesend among others, all of which had their own governments and thus, their own government records. The records from those towns in the Municipal Archives are collectively called “The Old Town Records.” Consisting largely of property assessments, meeting minutes and oyster bed permits, there are a handful of records that document enslaved people. All of these records have been digitized from microfilm and can be found on the DORIS website.

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Town of Flatlands Slaves: Birth Register, Manumissions; Records of Personal Mortgages, 1799-1838, volume 4054. Kings County Old Town Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The Flatlands registry is organized in alphabetical order and each page has entries for the names of owners of slaves, the name, sex of the child and the time when born and a column for Abandoning service received. After the A-Z index there are entries attesting to the birth of children as required by law. Entries date from 1800 to 1821.

The Flatlands records include the Record of Personal Mortgages, Slaves Register, and Records of Personal Mortgages which lists children born to enslaved women. These records were created to comply with various laws passed by New York State between 1785 and 1817. Legislative bodies rarely act quickly and in the case of manumission the State Legislature took baby steps to eliminate slavery unlike counterparts in the other Northern States.

The New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and Protecting Such as Them as Have Been or May be Liberated was formed in 1785 in New York City and consisted of Quakers and prominent men such as John Jay, Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton’s proposal that members must manumit their slaves was rejected by the full group. Nevertheless, the organization lobbied members of the Legislature to pass laws abolishing slavery, only to settle for the gradual emancipation.  According to Foner, resistance to abolition “was strongest among slaveholding Dutch farmers in Brooklyn and elsewhere.”

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Town of Flatlands Slaves: Birth Register, Manumissions; Records of Personal Mortgages, 1799-1838, volume 4054, page 16. Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

The first of the manumission laws was enacted in 1799 when the white, male body passed the “Gradual Emancipation Law” that required any child born to enslaved women after July 4, 1799 to be freed. But, not so fast. Those children were required to continue serving the “owner” of his or her mother until reaching age 25 for women and 28 for men. A tricky provision of the law allowed the enslaver to make the child a charge to the local government by filing a manumission notice within one year of the child’s birth. The government would then pay up to $3.50 per month for someone to care for the child, frequently the same enslaver until age 21. The timeframe for payment and the amount of the payment were later reduced and then eliminated in 1804.

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Town of Flatbush ledger, Births and Manumissions of Slaves, 1799-1814, volume 107.  Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Eighteen years later, in 1817, the Legislature enacted the second of the gradual manumission laws, decreeing that enslaved people born before 1799 would be freed on July 4,1827 and that children born to enslaved mothers between 1817 and 1827 would be free after reaching age 21. The tricky math meant a child born in 1827 conceivably could have been enslaved until 1848, although the census records show that was not a common-place occurrence. By 1830 there were 75 remaining enslaved people in New York State and by 1840, there were four. But the State and the City’s economies were linked to the southern states with large populations of enslaved people. Foner wrote, “The economy of Brooklyn, which by mid-century had grown to become the nation’s third largest city, was also closely tied to slavery. Warehouses along its waterfront were filled with the products of slave labor—cotton, tobacco, and especially from Louisiana and Cuba. In the 1850s sugar refining was Brooklyn’s largest industry.”

Indexing the Dutch Records of Kings County

Nena Huizinga, a 4th year student at the Reinwardt Academie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has spent the last four months at the Municipal Archives indexing Dutch colonial-era Kings County town ledgers.

Manhattan’s Dutch heritage has been long-recognized and the records of New Amsterdam have been transcribed, indexed and published. Less well-known is the Dutch origin of the towns and villages in Kings, Queens, Richmond and Westchester Counties. The Municipal Archives collection includes records of many of these communities dating to the Dutch colonial era and we have begun preserving and making them available.

This past summer, Harmen Snel and Hans Visser of the Stadsarchief, Amsterdam, visited the Municipal Archives. They examined the Kings County Dutch ledgers and took notes for an index that will greatly enhance the records value to historians.

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Nena Huizinga, a 4th year student at the Reinwardt Academie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has spent the last four months at the Municipal Archives indexing Dutch colonial-era Kings County town ledgers. Photograph by Matthew Minor.

Kenneth Cobb recently spoke with Ms. Huizinga about her project:

KRC: Tell me about your background and how you found out about the Municipal Archives.

NH: I had originally intended to major in Cultural Heritage at the Academie. In the third year we must choose a minor, and I chose Archival Studies which was partly taught at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) and the Reinwardt Academie. I now plan to graduate this summer with a dual degree. My work at the Municipal Archives is to fulfill my internship requirement. I had been studying about Dutch settlements and influence around the world—in Australia, Canada and the U.S. and through Mr. Snel I learned about the indexing project at the Archives.

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Town of Bushwick records entry from 1663. NYC Municipal Archives.

KRC: I understand that there are two parts to your assignment—indexing the Kings County Town ledgers, and mapping a plan for future collaboration between the various institutions in New York and the Netherlands that house Dutch colonial records. Let’s start with the first part of your work here. Tell me more about your assignment and what has been the biggest challenge?

NH: I am creating an index to nine ledgers in the Archives’ collection—three from the Town of Flatbush; two each from the town of Flatlands and New Utrecht; and one from Bushwick. They date from 1646 to 1849. The biggest challenge for me is reading the old Dutch language.

KRC: Is it true that the “old” Dutch language written in these ledgers is very different from modern Dutch and difficult to read?

NH: Yes, it is very difficult to read! Even the letters are different. This past summer, before coming to the States, I took a special course to learn how to read the old Dutch. I felt like a 5-year old learning to read again!

KRC: Are there entries or passages in the ledgers that stand out?

NH: For me, the references to Native-Americans are the most interesting. There are many mentions of Native-Americans in the books, but they are usually referred to as ‘savages’ or something negative like that, but every once in a while they would write out their names and I found that very moving.

KRC: What were the interactions between Native-Americans and the colonists about?

NH: Mostly about property—usually a dispute of some kind.

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Names of the Native Americans are among others given in the Flatlands book page 19: “In dato juny anno sesthien hondert sesendaertich is ten overstaen van directeur en raden van Nieuw Nederlant vercocht en getransporteert door de indianen met namen: Tenkirau, Ketamun, Arrikan, Awachkouw, Warinckekinck, Wappittawaekenis, Ghettin.” Roughly translated: “In June sixteen hundredth and thirty-six in attendance of the director and councils of New Netherland sold and transported by the Indians with the following names: Tenkirau, Ketamun, Arrikan, Awachkouw, Warinckekinck, Wappittawaekenis, Ghettin.”

KRC: How do you go about indexing the ledgers?

NH: First, I read the text to determine what sort of document it is, such as deed, or will, or petition. Then I write down the names, interesting topics and geographical places, such as Middelwout (Midwout), Schoenmakersbrug (Shoemakers bridge) and Vlackebos (Flatbush). I try to add as much as possible, but in some cases the writing is hard to read or the pages are much too faded to make any sense of it. The index will be in alphabetical order and followed by the page numbers, using the surnames first, like so: van Ekelen, Johannes, 235.

KRC: And the second part of your assignment – the collaboration plan?

NH: Yes, I am also working on a report about all the Dutch colonial records that are located in various libraries and archives in this area. Here in New York City, I have visited the New-York Historical Society and Collegiate Church which both have Dutch records. And I traveled to Albany, where they have the records of New Netherlands. I also visited Historic Hudson Valley in Tarrytown, Westchester County.

My goal is to identify areas of interest and overlap between the repositories and conduct research on how to fund and set up a collaborative network like two in Europe: Netwerk Oorlogsbronnen and Europeana. I want to draw attention to the benefits that cooperation can bring. Who is it important to? What are the advantages and disadvantages of cooperation? And I will also discuss the importance of multiple perspectives and how that can be enhanced when working together with not only repositories that have Dutch colonial records, but, for example, to try and involve people from the Native American and the African American communities to show their perspectives in the records.

KRC: What part of the Netherlands are you from?

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Records of slave births in the town of Bushwick, 1814. NYC Municipal Archives.

NH: I am from a small town in Friesland, a region in the north, by the North Sea—there are only 2,000 people in the town. It is a farming area where they grow potatoes, onions and sugar beets. I moved to Haarlem for school, where I’ve lived the past three years.

KRC: We have a “Harlem” here too. What are your accommodations in NYC?

NH: I am staying in a kind of student apartment on West 46th Street, in Hell’s Kitchen. As it turns out, most of the other students in the house are also Dutch.

KRC: Had you ever visited NYC before?

NH: No. This is my first time here. I only knew New York from television and movies.

KRC: How has the reality differed from what you imagined?

NH: Well, it is less glamorous than I thought. I was a bit shocked by all the homeless people. And the streets, especially in my neighborhood, are not so clean. But all the people and the architecture of the buildings is great. And I love the museums—I’ve been to the Morgan Library, Museum of Modern Art, the Met, the Museum of the American Indian, and the Museum of Natural History.

KRC: Have you seen much evidence of our Dutch heritage in the City?

NH: Not in Manhattan, but out in Brooklyn where I recently walked around, I saw it everywhere in the street and place names. I also visited Greenwood Cemetery to look for the Dutch families I found in the ledgers, and yes, there they were!

Ms. Huizinga’s index project has included Dutch-language portion of the following Town ledgers:

-         Flatbush 1007, 1679-1819

-         Flatbush liber A 1000, 1670-1708

-         Flatlands 4000, 1674-1831

-         Flatlands Bergen, 1677-1849

-         Bushwick deeds, 1660-1825

-         New Utrecht 2001, liber A, 1659-1831

-         New Utrecht Deeds, 1646-1653

-         Flatbush 1001 Liber AA, 1676-1682

-         Flatbush No.1, 1652-1708

Look for digital copies of the ledgers to be added to the on-line gallery soon and we hope to continue the indexing project after Ms. Huizinga returns home to the Netherlands.