About Archives & Special Collections
|
New York City and Brooklyn Directories
The Brooklyn Historical Society’s collection of city directories includes copies of both New York City and Brooklyn directories, available to researchers on microfilm and/or microfiche, with a very small portion of the collection available in print. The New York City directories include information pertaining to the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, spanning the years 1786-1934, and are largely available only on microfilm (76 reels). The collection does include physical copies of New York City directories for the years 1915-1917 and 1925.
Brooklyn city directories are available on 28 microfilm reels for the period 1847-1913, or on microfiche for the period 1822-1861. The collection also includes one physical copy of a Brooklyn city directory covering the years 1933-1934, as well as four Brooklyn classified telephone directories spanning the years 1932-1938. Finally, the collection also includes separate directories for the city of Williamsburgh prior to its annexation as a part of the City of Brooklyn, which are available on microfiche and cover the years 1847-1854.
The collection of directories serves as a valuable resource of information pertaining to residential, municipal, and commercial life in both New York City and Brooklyn during from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Directories are quite extensive and regularly include features such as registers of public departments and institutions, street and avenue directories, purchaser’s guides, general directories (including occupations and businesses of local residents), and advertising indexes, while also occasionally featuring illustrated city plans, maps of transit lines, and information pertaining to public parks, ward boundaries, freight depots, locations of piers, cabs and taxicabs, and borough histories.
There is no appointment necessary to view this collection.
Records of the Central Congregational Society and Church (now Cadman Memorial Church), 1845-1945. 5 record cartons, 3 over-size.
ArMs 1989.003
The Central Congregational Society and Church was founded in 1858. In 1939 it was re-named in memory of Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman (1864-1936), the church’s highly respected pastor and the leading Congregational clergyman in the US, as well as the first US radio preacher. In the 1950’s the church merged with the Clinton Avenue Congregational Church at the latter’s location, and afterward came to be known as “Cadman Memorial Congregational Church.”
This collection includes papers, correspondence, account books, deeds, bills, and publications from the Central Congregational Society of Brooklyn and its affiliates. Also included are member lists and baptism records that may be of particular interest to genealogists.
View Full Finding Aid
Crown Heights Oral History – Bridging Eastern Parkway, 1993-1994. Sound recordings: 40 cassettes (90 minutes each)
ArMs 1994.006
In 1993-1994, the Brooklyn Historical Society collected interviews with residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. Thirty-three interviews were conducted by Craig Wilder, Jill Vexler, and Aviva Segall. The subtitle, Bridging Eastern Parkway, refers to racial tensions expressed during the 1991 Crown Heights riots. Narrators are of African American, Caribbean, Jewish, Polish, and Russian descent and include members of the Lubavitch community.
Transcripts of 24 interviews from this collection may be read in the library. Recordings are not currently available to researchers; we anticipate that recordings will be available for researchers to listen to in the library in the Spring of 2010.
Bedell and Conklin Family Collection, 1839-1917. 1 record carton (1 cubic foot).
ArMs 2005.021
Ebenezer Conklin was an employee or associate of the Peter Cooper glue factory and millworks, as well as a landlord and property owner. He and his wife Sarah Aletta Clowes had five children, two of whom are represented in this collection. Nathaniel Augustus, their third child, served in the Civil War. Sarah, the eldest, married George Bedell, the son of William Bedell, chief proprietor of a straw and feed company. William Bedell may also have been Ebenezer Conklin’s business partner for a time.
The Bedell and Conklin Family Collection contains financial records, family correspondence, and a small collection of ephemera. The financial records of Ebenezer Conklin make up the greatest part of the collection and pertain to all aspects of Conklin’s financial life. The financial records of his descendants and relatives generally concern only building repairs and tax records pertaining to various properties. The collection also includes two account books of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Bushwick spanning the years 1876-1884, correspondence reflecting Nathaniel Augustus’ experience in the Civil War, letters from Nathaniel Augustus to his father, and ephemera such as business cards and promotional materials. See the full finding aid for descriptions of additional items.
Access Points:
Personal Names
Bedell Family
Conklin Family
Conklin, Ebenezer
Conklin, Nathaniel Augustus
Bedell, Elbert
Bedell, George
Bedell, Sarah
Topics
Church records and registers-Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
Land titles-Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
Real property-Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
Retail trade-Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865
Geographic Terms
Bushwick (New York, N.Y.)
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)-Social life and customs
Camp Russell A. Alger (Va.)
Williamsburg (New York, N.Y.)
View Full Finding Aid
Independence Community Bank Oral History, 2006-2007. Sound recordings: 18 wav files
2008.032
Independence Community Bank was founded in 1850 as The South Brooklyn Savings Institution and in 2006, it was bought out by a larger bank (Sovereign Bancorp, itself owned by Banco Santander). The Brooklyn Historical Society, with the support of the Independence Community Foundation (now Brooklyn Community Foundation), conducted 16 extended interviews with past and present employees of Independence Community Bank to document the end of the Bank’s 155 years based in Brooklyn.
Recordings of these interviews may be listened to in the library. An index of these interviews may be read in the library.
Frank J. Bramhall, Compiler: Brooklyn, N.Y. Civil War History Collection. 1 manuscript box (0 .5 linear feet).
AccNo 1977.006
Following the end of the United States Civil War, the War Fund Committee of the City of Brooklyn and County of Kings began to document the numerous aspects of local participation during the U.S. Civil War. To this end, it undertook to publish a comprehensive account of these efforts, to be entitled Kings County in the War. The Committee selected Frank J. Bramhall, Superintendent of the Naval Division of the Bureau of Military Record, and an author and historian of the Civil War, to compile the work.
The bulk of this collection consists of information on various Kings County Civil War military units and servicemen. The military unit records include completed questionnaires, numerous official military reports, muster rolls, as well as many hand-written histories of specific units. Information on individual servicemen is contained in completed questionnaires, many handwritten accounts of their war-time experiences, and family correspondence. Numerous clippings contain information on individuals or units from Kings County and provide supplementary accounts of local participation in the war. Records of Kings County’s non-military involvement in the war consist of materials of various local commissions, aid societies and events. The collection also includes various Civil War clippings collected by Bramhall and copies of printed questionnaires and forms created to execute this project.
Access Points:
- Bramhall, Frank James, 1846-1907
- Thompson, Richard
- Smith, Ada W.
- Brooklyn and Long Island Fair in Aid of the United States Sanitary Commission (1864)
View Full Finding Aid
Parks Department, City and Borough of Brooklyn (1856-1945). 32.5 linear inches.
AccNo 1977.325
This collection contains materials relating to the administrative functions of the Parks Department of the City and Borough of Brooklyn. The nature of the items includes correspondence, finance reports, legal documents, minutes and proceedings, maps and drawings, and miscellaneous items such as clippings and brochures.
View Full Finding Aid
Brooklyn, N.Y, U.S. Civil War Relief Associations Collection including “Women’s Sanitary Fair,” 1846-1964 (bulk 1858-1871). 10 boxes(5 manuscript boxes, 2 artifact boxes, and 3 oversized boxes), 2.5 linear feet plus oversized and artifact boxes (appx. 4.5 feet total).
AccNo. 1973.191, 1974.123, 1977.099, 1977.329, 1981.005.
This collection contains materials from Brooklyn organizations that functioned during the United States Civil War (1861-1865) in providing resources and relief to Union Army soldiers and their families, thereby rendering assistance to the federal government in the successful prosecution of the war. Materials primarily consist of ledgers, financial vouchers, minute books, printed material, subscription books, reports, clippings, pamphlets, poetry, speeches, and some correspondence.
Organizations represented include the War Fund Committee (WFC) of Brooklyn and two of its specific committees, the “Home Trust of the Volunteers” and the “Lincoln Monument Fund,” as well as the Women’s Relief Association (WRA) of Brooklyn, a local auxiliary of the United States Sanitary Commission. The greater part of the collection consists of records from the Brooklyn & Long Island Sanitary Fair (a fund-raising event sponsored by the WFC and WRA), but items also pertain to other relief organizations and events, such as sanitary fairs held in other cities, the Brooklyn & Long Island Christian Commission and the American Freedmen’s Friend Society.
View Full Finding Aid
Cranston Family Papers, 1846-1923. 4 boxes (3 legal manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box), 1.75 cubic feet.
ArMs 1994.013
The Cranston Family collection comprises 1.75 cubic feet of letters, clippings, books, certificates, and ephemera from three generations of the Cranston and Morehouse families of Brooklyn, N.Y. The majority of the collection relates to the lives of Alfred Cranston and his wife Elizabeth H. Petford Cranston. The collection also contains letters, books, and ephemera relating to the Cranstons’ daughter Ella Cranston, to the Morehouse family (from which a daughter, Emma Louise, married the Cranston’s son, Alfred Petford Cranston), and to their relatives, the Oliver and Bellows families.
Alfred Cranston was a volunteer firefighter and fought in the Civil War with the 14th Regiment on the New York State Militia, known popularly as “the Fighting Fourteenth”, and later superintendent of the Postal Telegraph Building in Manhattan, home of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company. Elizabeth H. Petford Cranston was active in the Society of the Wives and Daughters of the 14th Regiment War Veterans, serving as the Society’s president from 1893 to 1915. She also took part in numerous church and charity activities.
Access Points:
- Fire fighters - Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Regimental histories
- St. Cloud (Fla.)-History
- United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Veterans
- Grand Army of the Republic
- Postal Telegraph-Cable Company
- United States. Army. New York Infantry Regiment, 84th (1861-1864)
View Full Finding Aid
Civil War Collection, 1804-1865 (bulk dates 1860-1865). 2 boxes (1 cubic foot).
ArMs 1977.200
Edwin P. Hopkins was born in Zanesville, Muskingum County, OH in 1841 or 1842. He enlisted in the 1st Ohio Volunteer Light Artillery Regiment, Battery H on October 27, 1861. He was captured on November 27, 1863 during the Mine Run Campaign and imprisoned in Richmond, VA. In March 1864 he was transferred to Andersonville and appointed Steward in charge of the 1st division of the camp hospital, which was divided into four divisions. He was released in November 1864 and as of May 1865 was living in Toledo, Ohio. Andersonville Prison, officially named Camp Sumpter and located in Andersonville, GA, was active from February 1864 until the end of the Civil War in April 1865 and was one of the largest Confederate prisoner of war camps.
Edwin Hopkins collected the Andersonville materials while a prisoner at Andersonville. The records are original documents that were consolidated into reports by the surgeon in charge of each division and then submitted to the Chief Surgeon. Afterwards the originals were sent back to the Steward to be discarded. Hopkins, however, did not discard them and instead secreted them away and took them with him when he left Andersonville in November 1864.
The Civil War Collection comprises one cubic foot of materials that contain primary records from the hospital of the Confederate prisoner camp in Andersonville, GA, including roll books, letter books and statistics on admissions and deaths within the hospital. There is also a series of printed material, broadsides, circulars and forms, covering a wide variety of Civil War related topics including politics, suffrage, war forms, National Guard orders, religious organizations, relief organizations, Freedman’s groups, and temperance.
Access Points:
- Dodge, Stephen A.
- Hopkins, Edwin P.
- Confederate States of America-Army-Regiment, North Carolina Troops, 36th-Company C
- United States-Army-Regiment Infantry, New York Volunteers, 87th (1861-1862)
- New York (State)-National Guard-Regiment, 13th
- Suffolk Sabbath School Association
- National Freedmen’s Relief Association (U.S.)
- American Freedmen’s Friend Society
- The Brooklyn Daily Union
- Confederate States of America-Army-Prisons
- Hospitals-Military
- Prisons-Military-Georgia
- Hospital patients
- United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Prisoners and prisons
- United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Campaigns
- United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Hospitals
- Fair Oaks, Va. Battle of, 1862
- Patriotism-United States
- Elections-New York (State)
- United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Collectibles
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)-History-Military
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)-Charities
View Full Finding Aid
|
Recently Added Collections
|
