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When Did Slavery End in New York?

June 7, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Judicial Notice, New York Legal History

This article was written by Craig A. Landy, a partner at NYC firm Peckar & Abramson, PC. Mr. Landy talks more extensively about this topic in Issue 12 of The Historical Society of the New York Courts’ Judicial Notice, a journal of articles of historical substance and scholarship that uniquely focuses on New York legal history. This latest issue of Judicial Notice is ready to be shipped out and is only available to Society Members. Don’t miss out and Join the Society!

Photo: The Fifteenth Amendment. Celebrated May 19, 1870.
Pub. by Thomas Kelly, New York, c. 1871, showing the grand celebratory parade in Baltimore. A similar parade in New York City on April 8, 1870 drew over 1,500 spectators and over 7,000 participants. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-01767

When did slavery end in New York State? That’s not an easy question to answer. In 1799, New York gradually freed future generations who would otherwise have been born into slavery, but left enslaved thousands born before 1799. It was not until March 31, 1817 that the New York legislature ended two centuries of slavery within its borders, setting July 4, 1827 as the date of final emancipation and making New York the first state to pass a law for the total abolition of legal slavery. When Emancipation Day finally arrived, the number of enslaved men and women freed was roughly 4,600 or 11% of the black population living in New York and the black community and its supporters held joyous celebrations and parades throughout the state.

Slavery existed in New York State from colonial times through the creation of the modern state. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and other prominent New Yorkers owned slaves at one time, but the more reform-minded of these formed organizations to end slavery in New York, such as the New York Manumission Society. New York’s free African-American community also led the anti-slavery movement through activist ministers and tireless black abolitionists.

Judicial Intervention: The Judges who Paved the Road to Seneca Falls in 1848

May 24, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsWomen & the Law, Uncategorized, Blog, Judicial Notice, New York Legal History

This article was written by Hon. Richard A. Dollinger. Judge Dollinger is a member of the New York Court of Claims and an acting Supreme Court Justice in Monroe County. Judge Dollinger delves deeper into New York State judges and the role they played in the women’s suffrage movement in Issue 12 of Judicial Notice, the Historical Society’s journal which focuses on New York’s legal history. This issue is ready to be mailed to your doorstep and is only available to Society Members. Don’t miss out on this remarkable article and many more; become a member by Joining the Society.

Photo: Victoria Claﬂin Woodhull reading an argument in favor of women’s suﬀrage to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, 1871. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-2023

When upstate New York women gathered at Seneca Falls in July 1848, a national movement for women’s rights commenced. But, three months before, the all-male New York State Legislature passed the Married Women’s Property Rights Act, which forever changed the rights of women to own and manage their own property. A small group of men — past and future judges — spearheaded the passage of this law for more than a decade. During the Seneca Falls Convention, a figure no less than Elizabeth Cady Stanton praised the then recently-enacted statute as a first step on the road to women’s equality.

Judges, both past and future and several who sought to protect their daughter’s rights to inherit property, ushered in a new era of equal rights in New York State. The article “Judicial Intervention: The Judges who Paved the Road to Seneca Falls in 1848″ in Issue 12 of Judicial Notice tells the story of that dramatic change in New York’s perpetual search for equality for all and the role of lawyer-judges in fostering it.

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One of the major themes of Judicial Notice Issue 12 is Women’s Rights and Women Pioneers in New York State. This theme is timely as the Society, and the State, celebrates 100 years of women’s suffrage in New York this year (1917-2017). While Judge Dollinger provides background on the women’s suffrage movement from the perspective of judges in the 1800s, three other Judicial Notice authors recount the lives of pioneering women in the State of New York. These authors, Michelle Henry, Hon. Erin Peradotto, and Michael B. Powers, focus on the first woman admitted to the New York State Bar, the first woman to run for President of the United States, and the first woman District Attorney in the State, respectively.

However, this isn’t the only theme explored in Issue 12. To read Judge Dollinger’s entire article as well as the many others, you must become a Member.

“Justice and the New York Courts”: Reflecting on Two Workshops Held in Rochester, NY

May 10, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsBard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, Education, New York Legal History, Uncategorized, Blog1 Comment

This article was written by Rachel Cavell, a practicing attorney with an office in Kingston, New York. Ms. Cavell is also a faculty associate with the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, the Language and Thinking Program, and the Bard Prison Initiative. She received her degree in English Literature from Harvard University.

The workshops were led by Ms. Cavell; William Dixon, IWT Associate and Director, Bard College Language and Thinking program; and Teresa Vilardi, IWT Associate. They were held at Rochester Central School District in December 2016 and at Bard College in February 2017.

Photo: Educators participate in professional development workshops sponsored by the Historical Society of the NY Courts and Bard College Institute of Writing and Thinking

For several years, The Historical Society of the New York Courts has provided generous funding to Bard College for the preparation and implementation of courses geared towards teaching high school students about the New York courts and the Federal judiciary. Following a successful collaboration with the Bard High School Early Colleges in New York City, the Historical Society turned its attention to the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, an organization that offers professional development to high school and college teachers seeking to enrich and enliven learning through writing-rich exercises. In an effort to achieve a diverse and disparate group of students and teachers, we focused our training on school districts in the Rochester, lower and mid-Hudson areas, holding two successful workshops entitled “Justice and the New York Courts” this past December (2016) and February (2017).

Educators participate in professional development workshops in Rochester, NY, sponsored by the Society and Bard College Institute of Writing and Thinking

Thanks to the collaboration with the Historical Society, my colleagues at the Institute, together with high school teachers from Harlem to Newburgh to Rochester, had the privilege of spending two Fridays considering how and in what way the Framers of our Constitution first conceived of the independence of the judiciary. It was our goal to make this question as real to students today as it would have been to the Framers of our Constitution. Readings included sections from Hamilton’s Federalist Papers (#78), the famous 1852 Lemmon Slave Case from New York, and journalistic pieces, among others.

As it happened, by the time of the first workshop, we found ourselves recovering from an extremely contentious Presidential election and, by February, were embroiled in a genuine Constitutional crisis, involving what can only be described as a stand-off between the Executive and the Judicial branches of our Federal government (the Injunction against the President’s February 2017 Executive Order on Immigration had been upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit just the day before). The question of judicial independence was now of pressing and immediate national concern.

Dutchess County’s Ancient Documents Collection: Crime & Society in the Eighteenth-Century Hudson Valley

April 26, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Dutchess County Ancient Documents Collection, Early Legal History, Historical Research, New York Legal History, Uncategorized

This article was written by Dutchess County Historian William P. Tatum III, Ph.D. Dr. Tatum received his BA in History from the College of William & Mary in Virginia, and his MA and Ph.D. in History from Brown University. He has served as the Dutchess County Historian since 2012. His duties from the gamut from researching and promoting county history through exhibits, lectures, and other programs, to archival records management. Dr. Tatum has led the Ancient Documents Project since 2013 and regularly speaks about both the records management issues involved therein as well as the human stories that are found within this collection. Samples of his on-going work can be found at the Office of the Dutchess County Historian’s landing page at www.dutchessny.gov/history.

Photo: Dutchess County Ancient Document 1015: Indemnity Bond for Cornelius Jansen, 1763

On May 18, 1763, Colonel Peter Tenbrocek and Johannes Veller traveled to the Dutchess County Courthouse in Poughkeepsie to swear out an indemnity bond for Cornelius Jansen. Together the men pledged £200 New York Currency to the town of Rhinebeck, to be paid by them or their heirs, a sum that dwarfed the annual income of the average farmer during this period. While the extenuating circumstances that brought these leading citizens of Rhinebeck to the county seat remain unclear, their bond straightforwardly sets out the conditions of their obligation. Cornelius Jansen was “a Negro man” who had been manumitted in 1756. An act of the colonial assembly passed in 1730 required “That all Negroes or Mulatto Slaves manumitted or set at Liberty shall bring two sufficient Surities [sic] for Indemnifying all Cities Towns Mannors [sic] precincts parishes or places within this Colony from being a Charge” in order to guarantee their continued liberty. Tenbrocek and Veller insured that Jansen would retain his gift of freedom and live peaceably in Rhinebeck (Anc Doc 1015).

Ancient Document 1015 pg 2 — Dutchess County Ancient Document 1015: Indemnity Bold for Cornelius Jansen, 1763

Cornelius Jansen’s story is one of many held within Dutchess County’s Ancient Documents Collection. Long considered the cornerstone of the county’s archival holdings, this body of material consists of records from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century county courts, which convened on the same plot of land in Poughkeepsie since approximately 1721. The courthouse that now stands at the juncture of Market and Main Streets is the fifth to occupy the same site. In addition to hosting the trials and legal proceedings detailed in the Ancient Documents Collection, the predecessor buildings also played host to New York’s convention to ratify the United States Constitution in the summer of 1788, which laid the groundwork for the Bill of Rights. Together, the courthouse and the Ancient Documents Collection stand as testaments to a vital and enduring thread of Dutchess County history.

The Continuing and Permanent Record of the Courts – Part 2

March 29, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Court Records, Early Legal History, New York Legal History1 Comment

Two weeks ago, we posted the first half of this post by Geof Huth, in which he discussed the history of court records in New York State and his role in inventorying the many early court documents held by the New York County Clerk in the Surrogate’s Courthouse. In this conclusion, he describes the documents found in the courthouse, the monumental move to the New York State Archives, and the importance of court records in understanding our history.

Photo: Supreme Court of Judicature Writ of Habeas Corpus, 1797

Then we worked. We took many hundreds of volumes and reviewed them one by one, bringing back together sets of volumes that had been separated likely for decades. We pulled many hundreds of Woodruff file drawers from their berths, vacuumed their contents of a century’s collection of dust, boxed them in order, and labeled the boxes. We sometimes spent a long time trying to determine exactly what certain records were and to bring order to boxes filled with a miscellany of sometimes fractured documents.

Court of Chancery Affidavits in the Divorce Case Eliza B. Burr and Aaron Burr (1836) — Court of Chancery Affidavits in the Divorce Case of Eliza B. Burr and Aaron Burr, 1836

As we sorted through Woodruff file drawers, inventorying documents and recreating sets of volumes that had been divided many years before, we found amazing items: A twenty-five-foot roll of attorneys consisting of dozens of pieces of parchment stitched together. Literally hundreds of documents of Aaron Burr working as an attorney in civil practice—along with case papers relating to him as a litigant, and even the extensive paperwork relating to his divorce from his second wife, Eliza Jumel. Records documenting the seizure of Loyalists’ real property after the Revolution. Pleadings to the Supreme Court of Judicature in Alexander Hamilton’s own hand, and a large detailed accounting of all the debts owed to and of Nicholas Cruger, one of the two wealthy men of St. Croix who paid Hamilton’s expenses to attend King’s College (now Columbia University). Among the most interesting items were the many parchment writs with holes chewed through them by mice trying to eat the wheat paste sandwiched between the parchment itself and its paper seal.

The Continuing and Permanent Record of the Courts – Part 1

March 15, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Court Records, Early Legal History, New York Legal History1 Comment

This article was written by Geof Huth, Chief Records Officer and Chief Law Librarian of the New York State Unified Court System. Before joining the court system in 2015, Huth worked for almost 25 years at the New York State Archives, where he oversaw the development and provision of training and publications for state agencies and local governments, the revision of guidelines for the Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund grants program, and the creation of retention schedules and appraisals. Huth speaks frequently about archives and records management, particularly the management of digital records, across the state and the country.

Photo: Supreme Court of Judicature and Court of Chancery Rolls of Attorneys (1754-1847)

The New York State Unified Court System consists of thousands of courts, large and small, all across the state. When most people think of the courts, they think of the traffic fines they have had to pay, the divorce they were recently granted, or the way a lurid crime story in their area of the state played out in the news. All of those cases are part of the functioning of the courts, and all are documented in their records. Eventually, the courts destroy some of these records when no longer needed. But some are kept forever.

The records of the courts of New York State extend back at least as far as 1674, and possibly farther still. For New York City alone, thousands of colonial records of the early courts still exist, and today our courts continue to keep part of the unwritten history of the city. History, we realize, doesn’t merely exist. History must be written with these records of the courts, and their operations and the stories within the cases themselves help us write that history. We always need the record to recreate and understand the past.

For the past sixteen months, a team of people from the Unified Court System’s Office of Records Management, with support and assistance from The Historical Society of the New York Courts, has been inventorying one of the most historically significant stores of early court records in the country. These records were held by the New York County Clerk’s Division of Old Records in the Surrogate’s Courthouse for just over a century. Most of these are civil cases, primarily arguments between parties about money owed and damages due that arose during the regular course of living their lives.

My Experience as the Inaugural Winner of the Garfinkel Essay Scholarship

March 7, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Education, Garfinkel Essay Scholarship2 Comments

This blog entry was written by Elijah Fagan-Solis, the inaugural winner of the David A. Garfinkel Essay Scholarship when it first launched in 2008. He is currently an AMPLIFY-NY Coordinator at YOUTH POWER!

Photo: Historical Society of the NY Courts Founder Hon. Judith S. Kaye and Elijah Fagan-Solis at the Court of Appeals’ Law Day in 2008

Mother Teresa is quoted as saying “peace begins with a smile.” A young, anxious version of me was fortunate enough to experience this famous quote come to life the first time I stepped foot into the New York State Court of Appeals. I had no idea what to expect. It surely was a mistake that I was even there in the first place. Did no one else see the value in the announcement of this ‘Garfinkel Essay Contest’? Did no one else submit their pieces?

To be honest, I almost did not do it myself. I was a student at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy back in the spring of 2008, setting myself up to graduate with the 60 credits I needed to enter the New York State Police Academy. I was in my last semester, and my Corrections Professor Kathryn Sullivan approached me about the opportunity. Did she confuse me with another student? Why did she think I was capable of providing a submission? After much discussion, and coming to the understanding that I wouldn’t need to submit an additional paper for class, I obliged. In retrospect, I am incredibly grateful for her seeing so much more potential in me than I ever saw in myself.

Now it was time to write. This wasn’t just another paper for a class; there was a lot at stake: being published, being honored at Law Day, winning a cash prize, and meeting state leaders. More doubts started to set in during the course of research and writing. This is one of the hardest pieces I have ever had to write! What if I let Professor Sullivan down? What if I am taking this in the completely wrong direction? What did I get myself into? I continued to think these thoughts (and more) until I had to submit my essay. Even after I did, I was afraid that I perhaps missed the deadline by a few minutes. I don’t even believe there was a time I thought I could actually win.

The Pioneering Women Judges of the Third Judicial District

March 1, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsWomen History Month, Uncategorized, Blog, Amici Podcast, New York Legal History, Women & the Law

This blog entry was written by John Caher, the Unified Court System’s senior advisor for strategic and technical communications, and a member of the Gender Fairness Committee of the Third Judicial District. Under the leadership of its chair, Judge Rachel Kretser, the Committee in late 2016 and early 2017 produced a documentary on the pioneering women judges of the Third Judicial District, which includes seven counties between Albany and Kingston. Nine judges — all of them a “first” in one way or another — were interviewed on camera by a talented student from the College of St. Rose, Ethan Travis. The documentary will debut at a CLE on March 31 in Albany, entitled Balancing the Scales of Justice: The Impact of Judicial Diversity, which includes, among others, Court of Appeals Judge Leslie Stein; Presiding Justice Karen Peters of the Appellate Division, Third Department; Justice Elizabeth Garry of the Appellate Division, Third Department; and Judge Kretser, who recently retired as Albany City Criminal Court Judge. Although, by necessity, the documentary will include only “sound bites” from the nine trailblazers, the entire interviews have been converted into “Amici” Podcasts, which feature an introduction by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, and will be posted each Monday and Friday throughout March, Women’s History Month, at http://www.nycourts.gov/admin/amici/index.shtml and in the iTunes podcast library.

Photo: Hon. Karen K. Peters, Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, 3rd Dept.

When we set out to interview the pioneering women judges in the Third Judicial District, I feared the interviews would quickly become redundant, with similar questions and similar answers. Rather, the nine women, from a couple of different generations, offered their own perspective on their unique journeys, weaving together a colorful tapestry of the struggle for gender fairness in the region.

The women judges first had to confront gender-bias in their careers. Judge Beverly Tobin, the first woman elected to Family Court in Albany County, discusses the days when she had to be smuggled up the back stairs of an all-men’s social club. Judge Rachel Kretser, the first woman criminal court judge in the Third Judicial District, describes how she fought for and obtained passage of a bill outlawing such gender discrimination.

Such bias was made more pronounced by casual sexism. Presiding Justice Karen Peters of the Appellate Division describes a humorously infuriating battle she had with a judge who refused to call her “Ms.,” and former Albany County Surrogate Kate Doyle tells of a fellow judge who told her to ditch her robes and go home and make babies. Former Court of Appeals Judge Victoria Graffeo revisits the frustration she felt when an adversary persisted in referring to her as his “little friend” in front of the jury. Northern District U.S. Judge Mae D’Agostino movingly recalls how pioneers, including former Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and Presiding Justice Peters, gave women hope.

Matthew J. Jasen: American Judge in Europe

February 15, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Court of Appeals Judges, New York Legal History

This post was written by John J. Halloran, Jr., a Trustee Emeritus of the Historical Society of the New York Courts and a Law Clerk to Judge Jasen in 1984 and 1985. Mr. Halloran extends his appreciation to Prof. Vincent Bonventre (Senior Law Clerk to Judge Jasen from 1983-1985), and Prof. John Q. Barrett (Historical Society Trustee and Board member at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York) for their insightful comments upon this post.

Michael B. Powers, Law Clerk to Judge Jasen (1982-1984) and Trustee Emeritus of the Society, interviewed Judge Jasen in 2005. He, and the law firm of Phillips Lytle LLP, have graciously given the Society permission to feature this video on the Oral History section of our website. This interview includes vivid photographs of Judge Jasen’s experience in Germany. View this oral history here.

Introduction

In 2015, our Historical Society celebrated the centennial of the birth of Matthew J. Jasen, who served as a Judge of the Court of Appeals from 1968 through 1985. At that time, we noted Judge Jasen’s service as a United States Judge in post-war Germany. At the invitation of the Historical Society, it is my privilege to expand upon the historical record of Judge Jasen’s experience in Europe in the 1940s, which exposed him to the atrocities of what came to be understood as the Holocaust — the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. For Judge Jasen, this was a searing experience that was the foundation of his jurisprudence and steadfast commitment to the rule of law.

War-Time Service in Europe

Matthew J. Jasen was admitted to the New York Bar in 1940 and, after engaging in private practice in Buffalo, NY, enlisted in the U.S. Army in January 1943. Subsequent to basic training and officer candidate school (OCS), he received his commission as a Second Lieutenant (Artillery) on September 30, 1943. He was selected for the military government civil affairs training program (G-5), which was part of the U.S. government’s planning for the allied occupation of Germany, should that event occur. During full day sessions, he intensively studied German language, culture, history, and financial institutions for six months at Harvard University’s School of Civil Affairs. It was the equivalent of two years of college. He continued his studies in German culture in Manchester and Shrivenham in the United Kingdom.

Upon the completion of his training, Judge Jasen served for three years with the Seventh Army in Europe and participated in three major campaigns with a Spearhead Detachment as a Military Government Officer. After the town of Saint-Lô in France was liberated by allied troops in 1944, and it was believed to be relatively safe for military government officers to embark upon their duties, Judge Jasen began his service as a civil affairs officer in towns in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. In that capacity, he worked in cooperation with local officials to ensure the delivery of basic municipal services, including water, telephone, and electricity.

Thereafter, Judge Jasen and his detachment entered Germany, which was subject to military control. While on a reconnaissance mission to set up a government in Augsburg, Germany, his detachment helped liberate an abandoned prisoner of war camp, and grateful ex-prisoners celebrated their freedom by tossing Judge Jasen in the air — an image that was captured by a British photographer and later published. Judge Jasen, in characteristically modest style, later told Judge Eugene Pigott: “That was about as close to getting injured during the war as I ever was — I thought they were going to drop me.”

Judge Jasen on the shoulders of liberated prisoners of war near Augsburg, Germany.

Kaye on Kaye: Luisa Kaye Talks About her Mother, Judith S. Kaye, in Latest Amici Podcast

December 7, 2016October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Amici Podcast, Court of Appeals Judges, New York Legal History, Public Events

This blog entry was written by John Caher, the Unified Court System’s senior advisor for strategic and technical communications. It discusses his recent interview with Luisa Kaye, the daughter of our late Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye. Like both of her parents, Luisa is a commercial litigator in Manhattan and partner at Wrobel Markham Schatz Kaye & Fox. On Dec. 12, Ms. Kaye will introduce the inaugural event of a new series by The Historical Society of the New York Courts, Judith S. Kaye Program: Conversations on Women and the Law. This series, sponsored by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — where Chief Judge Kaye finished her career — will examine her legacy from the perspective of her clerks. The interview was converted into an “Amici” Podcast, one of a series produced by the court system and maintained at http://www.nycourts.gov/admin/amici/index.shtml.

I remember quite clearly many years ago when famed portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz photographed Chief Judge Kaye for Vanity Fair magazine. Judge Kaye told me that Annie basically drove her nuts, asking her to do this and that, and incessantly taking pictures, changing settings, and monopolizing more time than the Chief Judge had to spare. By the end of the session, Judge Kaye told me, she was willing to do just about anything if Annie would just go away and let her get back to work. It was then that Leibovitz got the picture — an uncharacteristically provocative photo — that would appear in Vanity Fair. In my recent interview with Luisa Kaye, I reminded her of that photo, which is on the invitation for the Dec. 12 event:

John Caher:
I got a kick out of the invitation because on the invitation is a briefly infamous and later famous photo of your mother by Annie Leibovitz, one of the greatest portrait photographers ever, in my opinion. In this photo, your mom is sitting at the bench wearing her trademark red shoes and her robe, and showing a bit of leg…

Luisa Kaye:
Yes. Actually, it’s a lot of leg (laughs)!

John Caher:
If I recall correctly, she was at first mortified when the picture appeared in Vanity Fair and then, if I remember what she told me correctly, she came to love it because of something you said. Can you tell us that story?