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Resources (Latest Update: 4 Mar 12)

The Historian's office has been fortunate this year in having the services of several volunteers who assist in organizing, cataloging and digitizing some of the many records in the office. Over the next few years digitized records or indexes of such records will be posted on this page. These records will be useful to family history researchers if only in identifying that a local family was in the Town of Schodack at a particular point in time.

Those available on line include:

1. Record of Trial Jurors^{*1 - alternate page, below} in the Town of Schodack in either 1930 or 1931. The original file was not dated but had the signatures of the Town Clerk and other officials from which a date range of 1930 or 1931 was determined. The file was found in an unrelated old record book in the Historian's office.

Records such as this file are no longer kept at the Town level and no background information about the original file is available. This file may represent those residents who were chosen from all adult, male residents and are thus, eligible to serve if needed for a specific trial. The fact that individual names appear makes the file a useful source of information that is not available elsewhere.

The trial jurors file only shows minimal information but gives a snapshot of selected Town residents in 1930-31. These names can be used in conjunction with other information a family researcher may already have and gives proof of residency in the Town of Schodack in 1930 or 1931. The file is listed in alphabetical order by last name and first name of trial juror. The file can also be searched using a "find" command on your browser.

2. Index to Genealogy Resources

The Historian's office is fortunate to have about 350 genealogy folders organized by surname. An online index to these records is now available. These records were donated to The Historical Society of Esquatak but are stored in the Town of Schodack Historian's office since the historical society has no permanent location for storage of records. The computer index ^{*1 - alternate page, below} was compiled by the Historian with assistance from volunteers as mentioned in the beginning of this section and most recently updated as of 4 March 12.

These records are provided for those researchers who may want to visit the Historian's office to examine the folders. The Historian cannot do research for individuals based on the contents of these folders but will make the folders available to researchers for use in the office. Questions should be referred to the Schodack Town Historian.

There are three sources of the genealogy records. The first source is a donation by the family of the late Mildred Kell, a professional genealogist who had many ancestors from the Schodack area. A second source of the records is research conducted by the Historian in response to user requests. The bulk of the records were donated by the family of the late Lauretta P. Harris, a long-time Schodack resident. We are very pleased to have such an extensive and valuable collection of local family information representing years of work by Mrs. Harris.

Many of the family records consist of notes taken by Mrs. Kell or Mrs. Harris and are considered secondary source records. Even so, the contents of the folders are useful in locating other sources. In many cases, there are descendant charts in the folders that are useful for ideas about family ancestors and getting back another generation in research. There are a few copies of primary records such as marriage certificates and Bible records. In most cases the notes are not organized and reflect many separate research efforts and correspondence by the Mrs. Kell and Mrs. Harris. Several of the folders contain published genealogies about a family. Again, the main use of these secondary sources is to find possible links or connections for further research and verification.

An online index containing only the surnames would not be useful without additional details about the contents of each folder. The additional information provided includes a date range, number of pages, other surnames closely associated with the indexed surname, alternate ways to spell the indexed surname and additional notes on the folder contents.

• Date range - a designation by century as to the range of information contained in the folder. For example, if there is a date of birth given as 1849, the century range of "1800" would be listed in the index.
   
• Pages - an approximate count of the number of pages in the folder, usually listed by number up to 50 pages. Folders containing more than 50 pages are listed as "extensive". In a few cases there are multiple folders for the same surname. The number of pages for these folders is listed as "very extensive".
   
• Other surnames in file - other names closely related to the surname through marriage are listed here. There is additional information present about the related surname that can be used for cross reference.
   
• Alternate ways to spell the surname and notes on folder contents - in some cases the spelling of a particular surname has changed over time, sometimes quite dramatically. The listings of these alternate spellings give the researcher other avenues to check for additional information. The notes section lists items of particular interest contained in the folder. These items may include Bible records, published genealogies, descendant charts, church records or cemetery records.
   

^*1 This document is supplied as an Excel (.xls) file. If you don't have Excel, but run any recent version of MS Windows, you can download a viewer from Microsoft; for Linux, try Open Office (open source) or similar; for MacOS, newoffice (donation requested) may be useful.

If your interest is largely casual browsing, this Trial Juors page (an ordinary HTML webpage) may serve you well. Similarly, the Index to Geneaology Resources is available as an .htm file (updated as of 4 Mar 12).

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