New York State Comptroller's Office Registers of Quit Rents, Payments, Commutations, Sales, Redemptions, and Conveyances

Arranged by patent number (assigned by the State Comptroller's Office).

Laws of 1786, 9th Session, Chapter 23, as later amended, required continued payment of quit rents reserved in British colonial land grants (patents), including arrearages; permitted commutation of quit rents by payment of arrearages and an additional fee; and authorized sale of lands on which quit rents remained unpaid, in order to recover monies owed.

These volumes were created by the comptroller's office to record information related to quit rents on patents granted by the colony, including payments of arrears, quit rent sales, redemptions, and conveyances.

Information is grouped by patent. Each patent has a separate heading that gives register number; docket number; name of patentees; county; total number of acres granted; date granted; quit rent rate per hundred acres per annum; when payment was last made; and a description of the location of the property.

Beneath the heading for each patent is the name of tract and then lot number; sub-division; number of acres; when last payment was made; reference (meaning uncertain); by whom paid; description of part paid; arrears only, arrears and commutation on part, or arrears and commutation on whole lots; amount paid; quit rent due; charges; total; description of the part sold; acres; to whom sold; date of redemption; by whom redeemed; amount paid for redemption; and notes on redemption, sales, and conveyances.

Volumes three and four contain patents omitted from the other volumes. Some patents are duplicated, and additional information is provided for some patents.

Information in volume 5 is duplicated in volumes one and two in a slightly different format and may have been used to create those volumes. This information consists of entry number; docket number; name of patentee; acres in patent; county; date of patent; quit rent rate per annum; lot number; amount owed; date paid; another reference number (significance unknown); name of person making payment; amount paid; and notes, usually in reference to location or acreage of patent. No information on sales or redemptions is included in volume five.

The volumes contain occasional entries of payments dating back to the early eighteenth century. The 'register' and 'docket' numbers refer to volumes that were probably destroyed in the Capitol fire of 1911.

B1610 Maps of Undivided Tracts and of Tracts Sold By the Comptroller for Unpaid Taxes

B1612 Certificates of Commutation of Quit Rents

Two small separately bound indexes found in Volumes 1 and 3 index the registers by name of patent or patentee, and refer to patent number and then the docket number.

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