Society Of The First Families Of New York

Working With the Society Of The First Families Of New York

If you are doing genealogical research on colonial-era New York families, you will eventually hit the wall that is the First Families collection. It is not one tidy thing. It is a tangle of published volumes, manuscript collections, unpublished family files, and a society that existed primarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Trying to navigate it without a plan will waste your time and give you false confidence in incomplete sources. The organization behind the name emerged from genealogical enthusiasm in the 1890s and 1900s, a period when wealthy New Yorkers were actively commissioning family histories and compiling lineage societies. The resulting output includes published genealogical sketches, membership rolls, and manuscript records documenting families who held land, office, or social prominence in New York before the Revolution and well into the 1800s. The term "First Families" in this context means something more specific than casual use implies: it refers to families whose genealogy can be traced to colonial-era settlement, land grants, or early civic leadership in New York Province. The core published reference is Joseph Gardner Bartlett's "The First Families of New York," originally published in 1851 with later additions and reprints. That volume covers a wide range of Dutch, English, and French Huguenot families. But relying on Bartlett alone is a mistake. It was compiled before modern genealogical standards existed, and it contains errors that have been repeated through decades of secondary sources.

Other important printed materials include the manuscripts and published sketches associated with the society's activities. These appear in various library catalogs, sometimes listed under slightly different names depending on which institution holds them. The New-York Historical Society has materials. The New York Public Library has materials. State and county historical societies across New York often hold copies or related correspondence.

The Practical Process

Start by identifying the specific family you are researching. The society's records are organized genealogically, not alphabetically by modern naming conventions. A family listed as "Van Cortlandt" will appear in one section. A family that migrated and changed spelling over generations, like "Schuyler" variants, requires you to know the original spelling used in colonial records. If you do not know the colonial spelling, you will miss entries entirely. Once you have the family name established, check Bartlett first. It is public domain and available through multiple digital archives. The Internet Archive and HathiTrust both carry digitized copies. Read it thoroughly, but treat every fact as preliminary. Cross-reference dates, places, and relationships against primary sources. Marriage records in New York colonial and state records are relatively well preserved compared to many other states. Church records from Dutch Reformed congregations in particular are extensive. After Bartlett, search the manuscript collections. This is where most researchers stop, and it is also where they find the most useful information. The society's unpublished files contain correspondence, pedigree charts submitted by family members, and research notes that were never printed. These materials are scattered across repositories. You need to know where to look rather than searching generically online.

Working With the Society Of The First Families Of New York Collection

Here is a specific problem I ran into recently. I was tracking a family connection through the Van Rensselaer circle, and the published records showed a marriage date that did not align with any civil or church record I could find. The published society volume listed the union as occurring in 1742. The Dutch Reformed church record for the congregation in question showed the marriage banns posted in 1743. One year off is not trivial in genealogical work because it affects everything downstream: children's birth dates, inheritance timelines, land transfers. The workaround was to go directly to the manuscript file for that family at the New-York Historical Society. The unpublished research notes there included a letter from a descendant in the 1890s explaining that the original family Bible record the publisher had used was misread. The date was 1743, not 1742. The error had propagated through every reprint. This kind of correction only exists in the manuscript layer, not in any printed version. If you stop at the books, you carry the error forward. The lesson is straightforward: always check the manuscript materials when the published record seems wrong. And check it even when the record seems right, because errors get buried in ways you will not notice without digging.

Common Pitfalls

The biggest mistake people make is assuming that being listed in the First Families collection proves anything about a lineage. Inclusion required membership dues and the submission of some form of genealogical proof. The quality of that proof varied enormously. Some submissions were thorough. Many were not. Several were based on family tradition with no documentary backing. A second pitfall is treating the society's records as a single unified archive. They are not. Different portions ended up in different institutions at different times. Some materials were sold. Some were donated. Some were lost. There is no single finding aid that covers everything. You need to search by repository, by collection name, and by family surname separately. A third issue is the gap between what the collection covers and what it does not. The society focused on prominent families. If your ancestors were not landed, not in positions of civic authority, and not connected to those who were, they simply do not appear in these records. This is a limitation of the source, not a reflection of your family's importance. It means you need parallel research paths using tax lists, land deeds, court records, and church registers that are not dependent on social prominence.

There is also the problem of name variation. Dutch names in particular shift dramatically across records. "Jannetje" becomes "Jennifer" or "Jennie." "Klaas" becomes "Nicholas." "Trijntje" becomes "Trinity" or "Triny." The society's published volumes sometimes standardize these spellings, which makes it harder to trace the original forms in colonial documents. Keep a list of known variants for every name you research and use it when searching archives.

Where the Records Live

The New-York Historical Society holds the most substantial portion of manuscript materials related to the society. Their catalog is searchable online, but the finding aids are not always complete. You may need to visit in person or request a researcher to look through uncataloged boxes. The New York Public Library has printed volumes and some manuscript fragments. The Massachusetts Historical Society also holds related materials because several New York families intermarried with prominent Massachusetts lineages, and cross-collection research is often necessary. County clerk offices and state archives hold the underlying primary documents that the society used. Land deeds, probate records, and Secretary of State land patent records are particularly useful. The New York State Archives in Albany has digitized many of these records, though the collection is incomplete and the quality of digitization varies. Some series are well indexed. Many are not. If you are working on a specific family, I recommend starting with a physical visit to the New-York Historical Society's library. The staff is knowledgeable about these collections, and the uncataloged materials are not accessible through any online search. Plan for at least half a day. The relevant collections are not all in one room.

Using the Resources Effectively

Bring photocopies or printouts of any published family sketches you are consulting. Annotate them with the discrepancies you find in primary sources. This creates a personal research trail that is more useful than the original publications. The society's volumes are static. Your annotations are not. Keep a separate spreadsheet for each family that tracks: published claims, primary source evidence for each claim, conflicting evidence, and unresolved questions. Most online genealogy trees hide contradictions. Your own notes should surface them immediately. When you encounter a claim from the First Families collection that conflicts with a church record or a deed, that conflict is your research opportunity, not a problem to ignore. Digital resources help with background research but do not replace the manuscript collections. The Digitized Collection of the New-York Historical Society is useful for keyword searching. But the most valuable materials in their First Families holdings are often not digitized. The uncataloged family files, the handwritten correspondence, the research notes passed between society members in the early twentieth century — these exist in physical form only.

The publication history of these records is itself complicated. Some volumes went through multiple editions. Some entries were added in supplement volumes that were never clearly marked as supplements. If you are citing a fact from the First Families collection, you need to specify which edition and which volume. A citation that simply says "First Families of New York" is not credible in professional genealogical work. The edition matters because corrections and additions appeared in different printings, and later editions sometimes reintroduced errors that earlier editions had avoided.

When This Approach Fails

The First Families collection is not useful for researching families that do not appear in it. This sounds obvious but it gets overlooked. Many researchers assume that if their family was in New York in the 1700s, they must be representable in these records. They are not. The collection is biased toward a narrow slice of the population: landed, connected, and socially ambitious families who actively participated in the genealogical project. When the First Families approach fails, you need to shift to broader research methods. Colonial tax records, militia rolls, land auction records, and court indenture files contain information about families that never made it into the society's publications. These sources are less glamorous but often more reliable for the people who are easily lost in genealogical research. The manuscript collections at the New-York Historical Society and related repositories are your best resource for serious work on colonial New York families. The published volumes are a starting point, not a destination. Treat them as annotated hypotheses rather than established facts, and the research will move forward faster than if you assume the printed records are authoritative.