Early Settlers of New York State, 1760-1942

This data set contains page images from the following two books:

1. Early Settlers of New York State — Their Ancestors and Descendants, Volume I
2. Early Settlers of New York State — Their Ancestors and Descendants, Volume II

These books are comprised of family history articles that originally appeared in the periodical Early Settlers of New York State — Their Ancestors and Descendants. The periodical's original title, Early Settlers of Western New York, changed after its scope was broadened. Edited by New York genealogist Janet Foley, its purpose was to collect, publish, and preserve church records, tombstone inscriptions, and family records — first from western New York, then from all of New York State. Referencing over 97,000 people who lived between 1760 and 1942, this collection provides little-known but first-rate source material that is essential to any researcher whose family research involves early New York State.

What you can learn about each listed individual varies, depending on the original article. However, in this collection you will find obituaries, Bible records, cemetery records, marriage records, church records, death records, and family genealogies. These records may provide you with information such as the dates and locations of important family events, as well as the names of the participants, witnesses, or other family members. Considering the historic gaps in New York State source records, this compilation is a very important reference.

These volumes were provided to Genealogy.com by the Genealogical Publishing Company of Baltimore, Maryland.

More About this Data Set

Before using this data set, you should be aware of the following:

The articles included on this data set were originally compiled in nine published volumes. Genealogical Publishing Company combined these nine volumes into two books.

In "Early Settlers of New York" some abbreviations are used to denote relationships, types of records, etc. They are as follows:

b born
B Baptized
bu buried
d dismissed
D died
W.C. Western Country, any land west of the residence at that time
dau daughter
F father
g great
h husband
m married
M mother
L letter
w wife
wid widow

As you look through this data set's index, you may occasionally find two entries that are exactly the same, except for the way in which the given name or surname is spelled. This is usually because the original spelling of the name was unclear, so Genealogy.com generated two separate entries for the index. You may also see that some of the names contain question marks, as in "Williamson, ???". These question marks indicate that a name was unknown or difficult to transcribe from the original.

Please note that some pages in the original books were printed sideways. To make it easier for you to read them on your computer monitor, we rotated these pages to the upright position.