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.
The history of the French and Indian War is best known in Pennsylvania and northern New York theaters. The attacks on Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) and on Quebec and Montreal by British regulars and provincial troops are frequently described in histories of the colonial period. The thinly-settled mountainous area of southeastern New York also suffered attacks by Indians allied with the French. The serious impact of those raids and the provincial militia’s unsuccessful attempts to resist them is documented in records of the New York Governor and Council. The story of this southern front helps round out the story of New York’s participation in this epochal conflict.