New York State Secretary of State Index to Council of Appointment Minutes

This volume is arranged by county, with additional sections for statewide officers.

This volume lists appointments of civil and military officers of the State of New York. It was prepared as an index to the first volume of the minutes of the Council of Appointment, which was destroyed in the Capitol fire of 1911. It provides the page number in the destroyed volume where the full citation was located, the name of the appointee, office and date. Therefore, this surviving index volume actually acts as a record of appointments made by the council between 1777 and 1786.

The obverse side of the volume lists civil officers of the State of New York (attorney general, secretary of state, judges, commissioners, etc.), giving names of appointees and dates of appointment; and civil officers of the various counties and cities (mayors, judges, surrogates, clerks, sheriffs, coroners, inspectors, special commissioners, justices of the peace, etc.), giving dates of appointment and names of appointees (except for justices of the peace and assistant justices of the county courts). Also listed are commissioners to hold courts (oyer and terminer, common pleas, special sessions of the peace). There are also references to charges against local and state government officials, considered by the Council of Appointment (the nature of the charges and the resolution are not stated).

The reverse side of the volume lists field and staff officers of the New York Continental Line, the various county-level regiments of the New York State Militia, and the Levies (militia officers and men drafted for service inside or outside of the state). Names of officers are grouped under the Line or the particular county where they served. Each entry gives the name of the officer, his military unit, the date of appointment, sometimes the name of the officer he replaced, and the page number.

NOTE: The name index included in this finding aid pertains to military officers only. Names of civil officers were not encoded.

Microfilm is available at the New York State Archives.

Appointments of commissioned military officers for some years included in this series are abstracted and indexed in Hugh Hastings, comp., Military Minutes of the Council of Appointment of the State of New York, 1783-1821. 4 vols. (Albany: 1901-1904).

The index to series A1846 contains 2654 entries. Each entry includes the individual's name, appointment date, military unit and in some cases, location of appointment. Each record also provides a pointer to the location within the records series.

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of the material.