Record Atlas
5 eras · 1664–2026 · 39 places

Western and central New York — the Genesee Country and the Holland Purchase

Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Ithaca. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1664–1783 Province of New York — claim over Haudenosaunee lands no registers survive

Haudenosaunee lands lay within the Province of New York's claim. The Treaty of Paris was signed on 3 September 1783.
1783–1788 State of New York — Haudenosaunee lands, Massachusetts pre-emption FamilySearch

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1784 assured the Haudenosaunee that their lands stayed theirs unless they made new cessions. By the Treaty of Hartford of December 1786 Massachusetts held the right to buy Haudenosaunee land in the west, while New York kept sovereignty.
1788–1797 State of New York — Phelps and Gorham, Robert Morris, the Holland Land Company FamilySearch · National Archives Catalog (NARA) · Chronicling America

Massachusetts sold its pre-emption rights to Phelps and Gorham in April 1788, and the First Treaty of Buffalo Creek (8 July 1788) sold about 2,250,000 acres east of the Genesee River. The rights west of the river reverted to Massachusetts in March 1791, passed to Robert Morris, and were sold in 1792-93 in part to the Holland Land Company, a Dutch syndicate. The Preemption Line was resurveyed in 1792 about four miles west of the first survey, and New York accepted the corrected line on 24 March 1795.
1797–1881 State of New York — Holland Purchase FamilySearch · National Archives Catalog (NARA) · Chronicling America

The Treaty of Big Tree (September 1797) gave Morris title to the remaining Haudenosaunee lands west of the Genesee and created ten reservations. The Holland Land Company opened its Batavia office in 1802 and it operated until 1846; the company's main archive covers 1789 to 1869, and Cornell holds its records for Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua and Wyoming counties.
1881–2026 State of New York FamilySearch · National Archives Catalog (NARA) · Chronicling America

Birth, marriage and death registration outside New York City began in 1880-81; records for Albany, Buffalo and Yonkers before 1 January 1914 come from the local registrars, not the state.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1664–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

39 places on this ground

1856 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 1796 more.

All record regions · The map