New York State Court of Chancery Decrees and Papers Before 1800

Alphabetic by last name of complainant, then numeric by file number; enrolled decrees are filed at the beginning of each alphabetical section, followed by other filed documents. Larger documents are filed in cabinets, and there are cross references to those documents in the boxes containing the smaller documents.

Most records in this series are on parchment. A law of 1801 allowed the use of paper in place of parchment in court proceedings and changed the method by which decrees were enrolled. In the mid-nineteenth century the Court of Appeals compiled the present series from pre-1800 parchment and paper documents that the Court of Chancery had not incorporated into its filing system.

The series contains information on the particulars of cases, the results of court investigations, the content of testimony, and the determinations of the court. The records consists of decrees, bills of complaint, answers, testimonies, reports, and other documents filed in cases heard by the Chancellor. Informational content varies from case to case depending on the documents filed. Filing units usually consist of one document or one type of document (e.g., testimonies of number of witnesses) and cannot be considered complete case files. Also included in this series are a very few post-1800 records.

Microform is available at the New York State Archives through interlibrary loan.

J0090Series J0090, Orders in Chancery, and

J0059Series J0059, Chancery Minutes, contain additional information on cases in this series.

Series J0066, Index to Enrolled Decrees Before 1800, indexes decrees in this series. Series J1065, Defendant index to decrees and papers before 1800, also indexes this series.

An alphabetical index by last names of complainant and defendant was compiled by the Historical Documents Collection, Queens College.

The Court of Appeals placed these records on deposit at the Historical Documents Collection, Queens College, from 1973-1982.

A select group of documents was removed from the series for preservation because of their unique historical value.

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