Volume XX & XXI: Delaware Papers, 1664–1678 & 1679-1682
This collection of official documents pertaining to the administration of the Delaware region begins with the seizure of New Netherland from the Dutch in 1664. It is the second of two published translations that comprise volumes 18 to 21–a continuous series of manuscripts from the beginning of the Dutch period through the period of English rule–of the New York Colonial Manuscripts. These documents reveal a gradual transition from Dutch to English rule, with many Dutch legal institutions surving well beyond 1664. The papers from the Dutch period can be found here.
Delaware Papers (English Period) contains a collection of papers pertaining to the regulation of affairs on the Delaware under the English. The records in this series document English colonial New York’s judicial and administrative interaction with the Delaware region while that region was in possession of the Duke of York. Records include correspondence, reports, petitions, accounts, survey-returns, and copies of local court proceedings sent to the English central government at Fort James in New York City. More than two-thirds of these records relate to court cases on appeal or suits outside the responsibility of local courts in the Delaware region. The series also includes copies of outgoing letters, orders, warrants, instructions, commissions, and patent records retained by Provincial Secretary Matthias Nicholls. While the bulk of the original records are in English, certain documents are translations of documents in the Dutch language.
This publication contains the twentieth and twenty-first volumes of the Dutch Colonial Manuscripts at the New York State Archives. In the 19th century, E. B. O’Callaghan reorganized the original 49 record books of New Netherland into this series based on document type and time period. These documents were translated by Charles Gehring and published in 1977 as Delaware Papers (English Period) in the New York Historical: Manuscripts: Dutch series.
