Library index offers easier access to Stamford's history

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August 8, 2012

Library index offers easier access to Stamford's history

Anonymous Staff Report The Daily Star Wed Aug 08, 2012, 03:30 AM EDT

Area history buffs will have an easier time digging into the annals of the Stamford area, thanks to a new index at the Stamford Village Library.

The holdings of the library's History Room, which include microfilm, newspapers, books, maps and scrapbooks, are now indexed for easier research, according to a media release from the library.

The History Room's collection includes nearly 60 family history books; books on the history of Stamford and the surrounding area; and microfilm, newspapers, picture postcards, scrapbooks, documents, yearbooks and maps, available during regular library hours.

The newspaper collection includes issues of The Delaware Republican, Hobart Independent, Stamford and Bloomville Mirror and Stamford Mirror-Recorder.

Assorted hard copies of newspapers range in years from the 1850s Bloomville Mirrors to 1996 Daily Stars.

Scrapbooks, containing mostly newspaper clippings, have been donated to the library from the 1880s through the 1960s.

The oldest document is believed to be a copy of a mortgage between Lawrence Kortright and John Howard dated 1770.

There is almost a complete set of years of the Stamford Central School yearbooks from 1937 to the present; the Stamford Seminary yearbooks, S.S. Camera, 1914 through to 1936; and the Northern Catskills Occupational Center 1977-91.

Maps date from the 1860s to the 1960s.

The library also has a postcard collection posted on newyorkheritage.org.

Stamford-specific items include fire department minutes pertaining to the three fire companies from 1889-1970s; assorted Seminary documents and catalogues from 1849 to the 1930s; Daughters of the American Revolution minutes and annual event booklets from 1918-1960; 20 Don McPherson scrapbooks compiled in the 1930s; and the Griffin collection, which includes handwritten death and marriage records from the mid-1800s. Schoharie County items include scrapbooks, genealogy and snippets from the Jeffersonian and Jefferson Courier newspapers dating from 1872 to 1918, and cemetery records.

The library, at 117 Main St. in Stamford, is open from noon to 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. For more information, or to request assistance with research, call the library at 652-5001.