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A Return to the Great Hall at Cooper Union: Abraham Lincoln, Harold Holzer, and the Power to Transform “a New Birth of Freedom”

August 14, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Public Events, Uncategorized

This article was written by our friends at the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. For more information, go to www.nysarchivestrust.org.

Celebrating 2017 Empire State Archives & History Award Honoree

Harold Holzer

Hosted by Tony Award-nominated actor Stephen Lang

Wednesday, September 6th at 7:00 PM

“Only at the Great Hall of Cooper Union can audiences so easily inhale Lincoln’s presence too — there to imagine not the dying but the living man, not the bearded icon of myth but the clean-shaven, fresh-voiced political original who conquered all New York here on the way to the White House and immortality.” —Harold Holzer

Photo of Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Union, February 27, 1860. From NYS Archives Series A3045-78.

On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln addressed a New York audience at The Cooper Union, delivering what is often considered to be the most important speech of his 1860 presidential campaign. Historians credit this speech with Lincoln securing the Republican Party nomination and his victory in the 1860 election.

“Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgement and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it.” —Abraham Lincoln, February 27, 1860.

It is only fitting that nationally prominent Lincoln Scholar Harold Holzer, 2017 Empire State Archives & History Award honoree, takes the stage in the Great Hall with actor and friend Stephen Lang to explore Mr. Holzer’s decorated career as one of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era. With over 50 published books and countless articles and awards — including the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize — this evening of conversation and friendship promises to be informative and engaging.

A Tale of Two Foundings: New York’s First Constitution 1777 and the Arab Spring 2011

July 19, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Constitutional Conventions in New York, New York Legal History

Editor’s Note: Whether or not New York State should have a new constitutional convention is on the voting ballot this November. As such, the Historical Society took a look back on the history of the State’s Constitution with the April 18, 2017 program Constitutional Conventions in New York: Past, Present, and Future. To start this series of posts about the history of New York’s Constitutional Conventions, Professor Peter J. Galie, who opened the program with his lecture New York State Constitutional Conventions: Back to the Future, compares and contrasts the successes and failures of two foundings.

Peter J. Galie, author of this article, is Professor Emeritus at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of numerous articles in the area of state constitutional law and three books: Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York (Fordham University Press, 1996); The New York Constitution: A Commentary, with Christopher Bopst, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2012); and co-editor with Christopher Bopst and Gerald Benjamin, New York’s Broken Constitution: The Crisis in State Government and the Path to Renewed Greatness (SUNY Press, 2016). He is currently serving on a Task Force on the Judiciary Article of the State Constitution formed by Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, Janet DiFiore.

Photo: “Announcing the Founding,” Secretary of the 1777 Convention, Robert Benson, mounted a barrel in front of the courthouse and read the document to assembled citizens.

When establishing and gaining consent for a new regime, “a new order of the ages,” you need to have a people who are already committed to the principles the regime espouses or are amenable to persuasion and commitment. This is the paradox of founding. Plato, Rousseau, Machiavelli, and the authors of Federalist grappled with this conundrum. Is it possible to begin democratically when there is no tradition of democracy? Is it possible to found a regime on principles the regime wishes to establish?

We think of the national Constitution as the first constitutional republic founded on the consent of the people and embodying principles and values that trace their origins to the Magna Carta in 1215.

But it was not the first. The first fruits of the American Revolution were the state constitutions adopted between 1776 and 1780. The founding of independent constitutional republics began in 1776, not in 1787. New York adopted its first constitution on April 20, 1777. The Provincial Congress that brought forth this founding renamed itself “The Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York.”

Calendar Feature: July 2017 — Dame Agatha Christie (1890–1976)

July 5, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsBlog, Society Calendar, Uncategorized

After the Fourth of July weekend, we’re getting back into the swing of things at the Historical Society. Calendar production for 2018 has just begun, so please enjoy the July feature from this year’s edition. Who knew Agatha Christie was involved in a case in the New York Courts? Read below for more about Hicks v. Casablanca Records.

Dame Agatha Christie, one of the best-selling novelists of all time with works translated into over 100 languages, made her appearance in New York law in Hicks v. Casablanca Records:

In the winter of 1977, defendants in the movie case began the filming of a movie entitled, “Agatha” which, like the book in the related case, presents a fictionalized account of a true incident which occurred during the life of Mrs. Christie…

It appears that on or about December 4, 1926, Mrs. Christie, then married to Colonel Archibald Christie, disappeared from her home in England. This disappearance was widely-publicized and, although a major effort was launched to find her, everyone was at a loss to explain her disappearance. However, eleven days after she was reported missing, Mrs. Christie reappeared, but her true whereabouts and the reasons for her disappearance are, to this day, a mystery.

In view of the death of Mrs. Christie, the public may never know the facts surrounding this incident, but should the defendants prevail herein, the public will have a fictionalized account of this disappearance as set forth in the movie… In each instance, Mrs. Christie is portrayed as an emotionally unstable woman, who, during her eleven-day disappearance, engages in a sinister plot to murder her husband’s mistress, in an attempt to regain the alienated affections of her husband. Given this portrayal of their decedent and assignor, plaintiffs, mindful of the personal nature of defamation and privacy actions, bring the instant actions [for injunctive relief] alleging unfair competition and infringement of the right of publicity.[1]

The court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction, finding no right of privacy “where a fictionalized account of an event in the life of a public figure is depicted in a novel or a movie, and in such novel or movie it is evident to the public that the events so depicted are fictitious.”

Her disappearance remains a mystery, but some have speculated…

[1] 464 F. Supp. 426, 429 (S.D.N.Y. 1978)

Katherine “Kate” Stoneman: Raising the Bar for Women

June 21, 2017October 24, 2018Historical Society of the New York CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Judicial Notice, New York Legal History, Women & the Law

This article was written by Michelle Henry, who has served as Chautauqua County Historian/Records Management Coordinator since 2000. Ms. Henry is certified as a New York State Registered Historian, received the 2010 Wheeler B. Melius Award for outstanding service to records management in NYS, and the 2011 Julia Reinstein Historian Award for Excellence. This post serves as an introduction to Ms. Henry’s in-depth article “Katherine ‘Kate’ Stoneman: Raising the Bar for Women” 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 has already been shipped out only to Society Members. Don’t miss out and Join the Society!

If you have received Judicial Notice, we would like to hear your thoughts about all of the wonderful articles, including this one. What new insights did you learn from the articles? What topics are you looking forward to in the next issue? Comment below!

Photo: Portrait of Kate Stoneman, courtesy of the Jamestown City Historian’s Office.

Kate Stoneman was born in the western frontier county of Chautauqua, New York in 1841, a time when women didn’t have many legal rights or career opportunities. But with the support of her “liberal-minded” parents, she pursued an education and a career previously unattainable for women, and was involved in several of the greatest reforms of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Stoneman was a teenager when Susan B. Anthony held a Women’s Right Convention in the County Courthouse at Mayville, NY in 1854. A county political equality committee was formed, and later became the largest such committee in the state. The women’s rights convention was covered in the local newspapers, which may have been an early source of inspiration for Kate. She undoubtedly had a thirst for knowledge, because she read and re-read one of the few books that her family owned – a musty old law book.

Stoneman pursued a career in teaching at the Albany Normal School, and utilized her familiarity with legal terminology to work as a copyist for a court reporter to support herself. Upon graduation, Stoneman began a career teaching penmanship and drawing. Weightier subjects in science and math were considered too rigorous for a woman’s constitution and were believed to render a woman sterile. Women who rebelled against Victorian ideas of domesticity risked being declared insane, and leading psychiatrists claimed that cure for hysteria (a female malady) for an unmarried woman was the necessary male dominance of marriage.

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 CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Judicial Notice, New York Legal History, Women & the Law

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 CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, Education, New York Legal History1 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 CourtsUncategorized, Blog, Dutchess County Ancient Documents Collection, Early Legal History, Historical Research, New York Legal History

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 CourtsEarly Legal History, New York Legal History, Uncategorized, Blog, Court Records1 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.