POUGHKEEPSIE- For the past decade, the Dutchess County Clerk’s Office and the Department of History have worked to re-house, index, and digitize the oldest legal records in the county, providing free online access to researchers. On Friday, July 21st, a prominent historian of Early America, Dr. Karin Wulf, released a blog post exploring a bastardy case drawn from the online Ancient Documents Search Portal.
Dr. Wulf is currently engaged in a study of how residents of early America defined their family histories. In her post “Love, Actually?,” Wulf explores the complicated romantic relationship between Marytje Berringer Giselbregh and Benjamin Kip of Rhinebeck. The birth of their daughter in October 1760 sparked a bastardy suit which still survives in the Ancient Documents Collection today. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, town governments were required to pay for the upkeep of children born out of wedlock as part of the larger system of poor relief. The crime of fathering a bastard empowered local officials to seek restitution from the putative father, generating a paper trail that one can still follow today. Wulf’s entry takes the reader through the surviving court records, unfolding the complicated dynamics at play in early American families.
“Scholars have long recognized the importance of this collection for the study of Dutchess County’s history,” said Dutchess County Historian William P. Tatum III. “The case files in this collection preserve otherwise forgotten people and incidents from Dutchess County’s past. These records offer information on impoverished individuals, the enslaved, indigenous peoples, and other residents whose own writings did not survive.”
Dutchess County Clerk Brad Kendall said, “ Sharing the historic resources of the Clerk’s Office promotes a greater understanding of Dutchess County history. We are grateful for the continued funding provided by the New York State…
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