Dutchess County Ancient Documents Collection Resources

Curriculum Guide

A Full, Just, and True Account: Lesson Plans from the Dutchess County Ancient Documents Collection (.pdf)

This 2024 publication of the Dutchess County Clerk’s Office and the Department of History features images and transcripts of select Ancient Documents and Naturalization records with accompanying worksheets that tie into curriculum requirements for 4th-12th Grade in New York State. Each document and worksheet explores a different key curriculum theme.

Transcribed Ancient Documents

The following sections will take visitors to typed transcripts of select Ancient Documents prepared by Dutchess County Historian William P. Tatum III and Department of History Staff. To find the scan of the original Ancient Document, search by the document number only in the Ancient Documents Search Portal

• Ancient Document 2544 (.pdf): Declaration by Nathaniel Berry of Poughkeepsie complaining that Joseph Boyce and John Hamblin of Dover have failed to deliver one ton of refined iron from their furnace in Dover in 1751 (.pdf): This document is a crucial piece of evidence demonstrating that advanced ironwork occurred in eastern Dutchess before the Revolutionary War.
• Ancient Document 6482 (.pdf): Indictment for perjury against Rachel Snyder of Charlotte Precinct (modern Towns of Washington, Stanford, Clinton, Pleasant Valley, and Hyde Park) for refusing to repeat the evidence she had given in a prior deposition regarding her father’s attempt to murder.
• Ancient Document 9257 (.pdf): Examination of Mary Jackson, a self-emancipated enslaved woman who escaped from Rhode Island lived in Amenia in 1775
• Ancient Document 1656 (.pdf): Inquisition into the death of Sylvanus Garlek, found deceased on the side of the road in Rhinebeck in 1743
• Ancient Document 11948 (.pdf): Grand Jury Indictment of James Pritchard for keeping a disorderly tavern in Poughkeepsie by setting up a billiard table in violation of his tavern license, May 1787
• Ancient Document 15067 (.pdf): Recognizance for Roger Sutherland licensing him to operate a tavern in the Town of Washington in 1790, with a list of the disorderly behaviors that will not be tolerated in the tavern.