Search the Documents

Search and Browse
You may search and browse the New Paltz Historic Documents Project on the New York Heritage website here https://nyheritage.org/collections/new-paltz-historic-documents.

Finding Aids
For access to finding aids or more information to support your research, click on these links regarding partner collections: 
Historic Huguenot Street Archives
New Paltz Town Records Collection
Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection, Elting Library 

Tips for Searching and Browsing on New York Heritage

Watch a brief video tutorial or read our quick tips below. 

Searching
To search the New Paltz Historic Documents project by keyword, go to the landing page and type the search term in the box "Search the Collection" and click "Go." A results page will appear.

Entering Library of Congress Subject Headings and standardized Personal Names into the search field on the landing page may lead to better results. For alphabetical lists of these, click here.

Browsing
From the landing page, click on “Explore the Collection” to browse documents. The results page will appear with a list of documents in alphabetical order by Title. To sort results by Date or Description, click the drop-down menu in the “Sort by” field at the top of the page.

"Facets" for browsing are listed on the left-hand side of the results page. Facets are search filters that help narrow results. These include:

     Subject.LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Heading)
     Personal Name
     Source (refers to the family/personal papers or institutional records)
     Physical format (such as financial documents, military records, maps, etc.)
     Language (eng = English, dut = Dutch, fre = French)

Click on “Show More” under each Facet to see a list of the most frequently appearing items. Note that in the New York Heritage site each Facet is listed according to the number of times it appears in the documents, rather than alphabetically. To see alphabetical lists of the Facets, click here.

Translations and Transcriptions
Translations and transcriptions are available for selected documents. In multiple-page documents, these may be viewed in the Transcript field for each page, below the image of the page.

For more tips about navigating through the documents, watch our brief video tutorial linked above.