For serious forebear hunters and genealogists, there is nothing as beautiful as a pile of old records, real honest to goodness, written while the people are standing in front of them records.
OK, some are compiled later by the clerks from scraps of paper, but their sworn office and the importance of record-keeping, in particular by the Dutch in old New York who were the most fastidious, gives you records you can trust. Along with Voght and Kethley, Samuel Purple has done Americans (and many Canadians too) a huge, never to be able to be repaid, favor by compiling these records in one volume for our occasional reference, or if you are as crazy about it as I am, a magnificent history that reads like a novel. Samuel Purple explains a little bit about the history in the beginning and then dives right in, translating phrases below the original, but thankfully, leaving the original language and contractions intact. This makes a huge difference to researchers who are trying to sift through information and occasionally deal with clerical mistakes from the original century. This work is further organized by dates making it extremely useful.
What do we find so compelling about these old lists?
The rich and famous got married too, and we find them there with no great fanfare. Some couples did not comply with the law and were denied marriage licenses. We find many English names appearing long before the power struggle evident in the book, from 1665 to 1673, when England seized control and renamed the colony New York for a time, until the Dutch regained control briefly before ceding it forever to the English and to the moniker by which every country in the world would know this city. If you have done your homework beforehand, you might just find the names of five generations of your ancestors in here. There are gaps due to the British occupation of New York during the Revolution (Did they burn them? Did some clerk take them home for safe keeping and forget about them?) but this is fascinating too. The records are still written in Dutch (Nederlands) up until the last entry in 1810 and it was said that many residents in the area spoke the language at home until the late 1800s. It was the first language of our President, Martin Van Buren, whose family was not " just off the boat."
Certainly not for everyone, but everyone, whether they will ever know it or not, owes Mr. Purple a huge debt, as these marriages (read alliances) explain the politics of the individuals and reclaim forgotten names of our foremothers. I will be tracking mine down for weeks to come now that I have read the book. ( )