Exhibits: Hudson Valley History as Seen Through British Colonial Documents: Counterfeiting in the Hudson Valley, 1745

The 1911 Capitol fire destroyed most of the state's Revolutionary War-era records and almost a quarter of its British colonial documents.  The documents that survived are charred and are so vulnerable to damage that researchers are not allowed to use the originals.  
 
A generous $20,000 gift from AT&T made it possible for us to conserve and digitize a selection of those badly damaged British colonial documents.  They are now available to students and scholars eager to learn more about life in the Hudson Valley in the 1700s.  Here we highlight just a few of the topics represented in these records.

Counterfeiting of paper money and other documents of monetary value was prevalent in the eighteenth century. During the 1740s the Oblong Patent in Dutchess County, a strip of land along the Connecticut border, was a refuge for New England counterfeiters because of its remote location and disputed legal status. Dutchess residents likewise produced and passed counterfeit money. Documents of the New York Governor and Council contain much information about Daniel Hunt and other suspected Dutchess County counterfeiters. They provide striking evidence of an underground economy and difficulties of law enforcement in the 18th century.