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• Overview
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New York State Governor Registers of Commitments to Prisons

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Overview of the Records

Arrangement

Chronological by year, then arranged by prison, then chronological by month, then sometimes roughly alphabetical by convict's last name.

Scope and Content Note

These registers report summary information on convicts committed to correctional institutions each month. No statute specifically required prison wardens to report this information to the governor, so it is unclear exactly why these reports were made. However, legislation of 1847 (Chapter 460, Revised Statutes Part IV, Chapter 3, Section 53, Subdivision 8) required wardens to make detailed reports of convicts committed to the state prison inspectors, and the reports in this series might have been abstracted from those detailed reports for use by the governor's office.

Information is handwritten in columns on preprinted pages which were later bound into volumes for each year. Each monthly report from each prison provides the following information: name of convict; county; crime; court; judge; date of sentence; date received at prison; term; and remarks (e.g. noting previous prison terms).

Reports are present for the following institutions: Sing Sing Prison; Clinton Prison; Auburn Prison; State Prison for Women (Auburn); New York Penitentiary (Blackwell's Island); Kings County Penitentiary (Brooklyn); Albany County Penitentiary (Albany); Onondaga County Penitentiary (Syracuse); Monroe County Penitentiary (Rochester); Erie County Penitentiary (Buffalo); State Reformatory at Elmira; Eastern New York Reformatory (Napanoch); New York House of Refuge; Western House of Refuge; and Western House of Refuge for Women.

Alternate Formats Available

Items Online

The entire series is digitized and is available to New York State residents for free on Ancestry.com New York. You must sign up for a free account to access these records without a paid subscription. To learn more, go to How to Use Ancestry.com New York

Ancestry.com

Governor's Registers of Commitments to Prisons, 1842-1908 on Ancestry.com

Other Finding Aids

Available at Repository

Volume list is available at the repository.

Partial name index is available at the repository.

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of this material.

Access Terms

Detailed Description