Death Records of Rensselaer County, New York, 1847-1851

Rensselaer County consists of the following towns (each are followed by the years that records are available in this database): Brunswick (1847, 1849), Grafton (1849), Hoosick (1847–49), Lansingburgh (1848, 1849, 1851), Nassau (1848), Petersburgh (1847–49), Pitistown (1847, 1849, 1850), Poestenkill (1848), Schaghticoke (1847, 1849), Schodak (1849–50), Stephentown (1849).

From the preface:

"These records were discovered and copied around 1915 by Frank Warner Thomas, a prominent Troy lawyer and historian, and were lent to the writer [Milton Thomas] in 1921. The records as found were on sheets of paper and carelessly kept on a duty shelf in the cellar of the Rensselaer County Court House at Troy. The records were kept in accordance with the 1847 laws of New York which required that the records be kept by the clerks of the various school districts, and turned over by them to the town clerks, who in turn were to send them to the secretary of state. What was left of them would then be turned over to the Legislature. This law was soon ignored, but not repealed until 1909. The only other county known to possess any records kept under this law is Suffolk, although they may exist elsewhere.

"An effort was made in the early part of 1922 to find the originals, but among that mass of old papers [in the Court House] it was impossible to locate them. This is greatly to be regretted, for Frank Thomas's copy is unfortunately very poorly typewritten; it was probably run off in great haste, and
there are many queer spellings which may or may not be typographical errors. Most of these spellings have been retained, but when it was quite evident that Mr. Thomas had struck the wrong key, the writer did not hesitate to make the necessary correction.

"As to the records themselves, they are a valuable contribution to the genealogical literature of this section as they cover a period for which there are no regularly recorded vital statistics, and for which the genealogist has to depend upon church records and gravestone inscriptions almost entirely. It will be noticed that no distinction is made in the records between married and single women."

The original text is part of the R. Stanton Avery Collections, call number MSS NY 120 11.

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