Research

Administrative History

The Duke's Laws of 1665 and another act in 1674 required that conveyances of real property (deeds and mortgages) worth 30 pounds or more be recorded in the secretary's office in New York City. Counties were established in 1683, and an Assembly act of that year (Chapter 15) required the county clerks to record ("register") deeds and mortgages. Conveyances in which the consideration was more than 50 pounds were also recorded by the secretary. An act of 1710 (Chapter 216) permitted recording in either a county clerk's office or the secretary's office, options that were continued by several laws enacted between 1788 and 1813. Starting in 1799 a series of laws required the county clerk in the new counties in western, central, and northern New York to record all deeds and mortgages for lands in those counties. That requirement was eventually extended to several other counties (including New York County in 1811).

Recording in the county clerk's office (or in the New York City register's office) was required statewide by a law of 1823 (Chapter 263), with two exceptions. A law of 1798 (Chapter 72, as amended by later laws) required that all deeds to which one of the parties was an out-of-state or out-of-country resident be recorded by the Secretary of State. (That statutory requirement was repealed in 1896.) A law of 1806 (Chapter 167) continued to permit retrospective recording, by either the Secretary of State or a county clerk, of deeds pre-dating 1801. The Secretary of State, because he was considered a general recording officer or due to statutory requirement, recorded many other types of documents in the "deed" books.