The devastating New York State Capitol fire of 1911 incinerated much of New York\u2019s colonial and early statehood documentary heritage. Twelve thousand pages of New York\u2019s Dutch Colonial records, dating from 1638 to 1670, somehow escaped the blaze, but most were charred by fire.
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\nIn 2000, with support from a Save America\u2019s Treasures grant, the New York State Archives contracted with the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia to reinforce the charred edges with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. Thanks to the efforts of these dedicated preservation professionals, these records\u2014some of the oldest surviving European records created on the American continent\u2014were saved.
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\nThe archives\u2019 colonial Dutch records include the Flushing Remonstrance, one of the earliest expressions of the right to religious freedom in America; descriptions of meetings between Dutch officials and Mahican Indians; and detailed accounts of how the New Netherland colony was governed. With the documents stabilized, translators and researchers can continue their work to shed light on the lives and times of New York\u2019s earliest European inhabitants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The devastating New York State Capitol fire of 1911 incinerated much of New York\u2019s colonial and early statehood documentary heritage. Twelve thousand pages of New York\u2019s Dutch Colonial records, dating from 1638 to 1670, somehow escaped the blaze, but most were charred by fire. In 2000, with support from a Save America\u2019s Treasures grant, the … Continue reading “New York State Archives”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"parent":18,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-135","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/hhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}