Research

The New York State Archives holds records relating to thousands of past inmates of New York State prisons. These records take the form of admission and discharge registers, summary cards, and inmate case files.  Most of the records are not indexed by inmate name; they are arranged by inmate identification number, which corresponds roughly to the date the inmate was admitted to prison.

From 1921-1965, New York State law required the Motion Picture Division (and its predecessor, the Motion Picture Commission) to review every motion picture proposed for public exhibition in New York State and to issue a license for exhibition unless the film contained material that was "obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious, or of such character that its exhibition would tend to corrupt morals or to incite to crime."

The Archives has registers, compiled by New York’s town (and a few city) clerks, containing information on Civil War military service (series 13774).

The Archives has census records of inmates in almshouses and poorhouses for the period 1826-1921, the bulk of which date from 1875-1921 (series A1978).  Census forms provide information on individual inmates' personal, family, and economic history.

The New York office of Fairchild Aerial Surveys (a commercial firm) produced low-altitude, oblique aerial views of a variety sites in New York State only.  The Archives holds images of these views dating ONLY from 1947-1957 (series B1598).

The Archives has brief abstracts of New Yorkers' WWI military service in the Army, Navy, and Marines (series B0808).  Abstracts for Army nurses and Navy yeomen (female) and nurses are also included.

The Archives holds War of 1812 Abstracts of Payrolls for New York State Militia (series B0810).  We also hold claim applications and certificates for service in the War of 1812 (series A0020, and A3352).  The Archives does NOT have original muster rolls.

Patents are lands/privileges granted to one or more persons by the British crown or the state of New York.  Archives series A0447 contains "military" patents that were granted, based on a proclamation of King George III, to officers or soldiers residing in the colony (period 1764-1775).

Many (not all) private deeds from the 17th-18th centuries are recorded in series A0453.  There are grantor (series A4688) and grantee (series A4689) indexes available. Deeds and indexes are on microfilm in the research room (not available online or for ILL).

The Archives has aerial photographs of New York State created by the Department of Transportation (DOT) from the 1930s to 2000. The images are known as CSCIC aerial photographs because prior coming to the Archives, they were transferred from DOT to the state Office for Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination (CSCIC).