Introduction

The New Paltz Historic Documents Project is a collaboration between four institutions with collections of historical documents: Historic Huguenot Street, the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection at Elting Memorial Library, the Reformed Church of New Paltz, and the Town of New Paltz. The project consists of conserving (as needed), digitizing, and making available online early documents from New Paltz and surrounding communities, ranging in date from the mid-1600s to 1830 with some mid and later 19th-century documents included.

The documents are made available online through the New York Heritage website and are supported by the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council. The project was funded by a series of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities between June 2018 and April 2025. The project is currently funded by the Robert D.L. Gardiner Foundation, the Hasbrouck Family Association, Inc., and supporters of the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection, Elting Memorial Library. 

New Paltz is located in Ulster County, New York, part of the historically and culturally rich mid-Hudson River Valley. Containing countless overlapping references to people, places, events, and time periods in French, Dutch, and English, these four collections chronicle the development of a significant rural American community as it evolved over time and demonstrate the power of local history to illuminate and deepen understanding of broad historical trends. According to renowned historian and Yale Professor Emeritus Jon Butler, the New Paltz Historic Documents Project led by Historic Huguenot Street “illustrates the fascinating ways in which a small, astonishingly complex Hudson River town perhaps unexpectedly exemplified major features of America's story, with distinctive and captivating local features,” namely “social life, economy, race, ethnic relations, and religion.”

Image (header): Jean (Jacob) Hasbrouck House, ca. 1721. Vintage photograph. Historic Huguenot Street Archives.