Research: Topics: Legal & Correction Records: Records of the Governor's Office
Records of the Governor's Office
Governors' Records Held Elsewhere
BACKGROUND
For two centuries, outgoing governors took some records with them when they left office. As a result, many records were lost and some survive in repositories other than the State Archives.
This situation existed in part because
- Until 1978, New York lacked a formal, systematic State Archives program
- Later revisions to the1858 law which required governors to create and preserve records documenting their key actions and decisions explicitly permitted disposition of other gubernatorial records at the governor's discretion
- The governors' records law has never been updated to reflect changes in the scope and practice of government business or to conform with records laws passed since 1950 that establish a systematic process for agency records disposition and for archival review and retention of agency records that have enduring value.
As a result, valuable collections of governors' records and related papers concerning their personal lives and political careers are available in a number of historical records repositories and libraries.
Below is a list briefly summating the content of some significant collections, noting the holding repository, and providing links to repository websites and/or on-line descriptions of the records.
- This list is based primarily on information reported in the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN), a national bibliographic database operated by the Research Libraries Group.
- Often, public records and personal materials are intermingled in these collections, and the volume and extent of gubernatorial records is not always clear from the available descriptive information.
- For more information, researchers should contact the repositories directly.
