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The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society was organized on the evening of February 27, 1869, by seven gentlemen meeting at the home of Dr. David Parsons Holton in New York City. On March 26 a certificate of incorporation was filed in the office of the Secretary of State of New York, stating that "the particular business and objects of the Society are to discover, procure, preserve and perpetuate whatever may relate to Genealogy and Biography, and more particularly to the genealogies and biographies of families, persons and citizens associated and identified with the State of New York." In April the By-Laws were adopted and officers elected, the first president being the historian Dr. Henry R. Stiles. The seal of the Society was adopted on May 8, 1869.
In establishing the Society the founders were inspired by the example of the
New England Historic Genealogical Society, founded in 1845. In at least one
respect, however, they differed from the New England model. While women would
not be admitted to membership in the Boston society until 1898, the New York
society on May 1, 1869 elected Mrs. Frances K. Forward Holton a member, followed
by many others (see "Women
in The NYG&B Society").
The Society immediately established a library, and in December 1869 published an eight-page Bulletin. The reception of this publication encouraged the Trustees to launch a quarterly journal, The
New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, the first issue of which was dated January 1870. Thus were established two of the oldest institutions in American genealogy. Today the Society is the second oldest genealogical society and library in the United States, and the Record the second-oldest genealogical periodical in continuous publication in the English-speaking world.
The Society's first permanent home was at Mott Memorial Hall, a house at 64 Madison
Avenue. In 1888 the Society obtained space in the Berkeley Lyceum Building
at 19 West 41st Street, and two years later moved to the new Berkeley Lyceum
building at 23 West 44th Street. In 1891 Mrs. Elizabeth Underhill Coles died,
leaving the Society a bequest of $20,000 (see "Elizabeth
Underhill Coles").
With this money the Society was able to purchase in 1896 a four-story brownstone
at 226
West
58th
Street, between Broadway and Seventh Avenue. This became "Genealogical Hall," the
home of the Society for the next 33 years.
The Society's present building holds many mementos of Genealogical Hall. There is a plaque in the lobby commemorating Mrs. Coles' gift, and the library is graced by a beautiful stained-glass window which was presented to the Society by the Record Committee in 1898. The window was installed in the library at Genealogical Hall until 1929 and then languished in storage until 1992, when it was carefully restored and installed in a north window of the present library, largely due to the generosity of then president Henry S. Middendorf.
One of the Society's most ambitious early projects was the erection
of a statue of Christopher
Columbus on the Mall in New York's Central
Park. The statue was unveiled in 1894 as part of the Columbus quadricentennial,
and it can still be seen in the Park today.
By 1912 Genealogical Hall was already inadequate to hold the library, and the Trustees decided to try to raise $65,000 to acquire the adjacent building lot for expansion. J. Pierpont Morgan contributed $10,000 on the condition that the Society raise the remainder, and this was accomplished by the end of 1913, mainly through the efforts of president Clarence Winthrop Bowen. Various factors intervened to prevent the proposed expansion, and Mr. Bowen was still president 16 years later when the Society moved across town into its former location at 122-124-126 East 58th Street.
The new facility, erected at a cost of $300,000, replaced three brownstone houses on the site. It was designed by the noted New York architectural firm of La Farge, Warren and Clark. The formal dedication on December 11, 1929, was attended by an impressive list of dignitaries, headed by former President of the United States Calvin Coolidge and former Governor of New York and Secretary of State (and future Chief Justice of the United States) Charles Evans Hughes (see the Record, April 1930, and Diamond Jubilee supplement to the Newsletter, January 1990).
The new building provided impressive and ample space for the growth of the library. Over the years the Society had also expanded its publications program. By 1929 each issue of the Record ran over 100 pages, and it had become recognized as one of the leading scholarly journals of genealogy. Since 1890 the Society had also published several volumes of its Collections, starting with the marriage and baptismal registers of New York State's oldest church, the Reformed Dutch Church of New Amsterdam and New York City.
