The County Clerk Ancient Document Search allows you to explore digital images of 167,000 pages of legal documents dating from 1721 to the 1840s.
The Dutchess County Clerk presents this application as a service to the public. All reasonable and expected quality assurance efforts are made to ensure that the information contained in this electronic search system is accurate. There is no warranty or guarantee concerning the accuracy, reliability and content of this site or of any other sites to which we link. The user is advised to search on all possible spelling variations of proper names, both given and surname, in order to maximize search results. The Dutchess County Clerk is not liable and shall be held harmless for any technological or systems related errors contained herein or for any damages in connection with the use of the information. No guaranty, expressed or implied, is warranted.
Notice: Many documents available through this application are submitted through third parties or have legal/historical significance and may not fully comply with accessibility standards.
If you need a copy in an alternative accessible format, please contact the County Clerk at countyclerkada@dutchessny.gov.
If you choose not to accept the conditions stated above, please exit this webpage.
Please read the disclaimer above before using the Dutchess County Clerk Document Search.
You can search our documents using any one or a combination of the items listed here.
Name/Party
Enter the name of an individual for which you are searching or the party identifier (a party identifier is the role a person played in a documented case – for example, a justice of the peace).
Record Type
Enter the type of record for which you are searching. These include:
Type of Offense
Enter the variety of crime. Examples include:
Location
Enter the municipality in which you are interested. Whenever possible we include where an incident occurred.
Year or Date
Enter the target year, full or partial date (month/day/year format) to search specific periods of time. (The dates reflected in our system are when the document was created and not necessarily when an event happened).
Continue to the Ancient Document Search
If you encounter any technical issues, please contact internet support. If you have questions about the actual data, please contact the County Historian.
Generous support from the New York State Archives Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund supported the digital imaging portion of this project.
