How did you first get involved in local history and archival work?
I was fortunate to be born into a family that valued genealogy and local history. My parents took me to museums and historic sites throughout my childhood and later facilitated volunteer opportunities at the North Carolina State Museum. The research I conducted for the Civil War exhibit there offered my first taste of archival work, which deepened during my journey through higher education. During my junior year abroad at the University of Exeter in England from 2001– 2002, I conducted extensive research at the British National Archives, which introduced me both to the operations of a professional archive and the variety of accessibility services on offer. My subsequent doctoral research expanded that experience across major archives in the United States and the U.K. As the Historian at the David Library of the American Revolution from 2010–2012, I inherited a digitization project of manuscript primary sources, which equipped me with the experience and training to design the Ancient Documents Project and the Archival Imaging Initiative.
What does/did a typical day of work or research look like for you?
I spend a lot of time serving as the communications hub for the Dutchess history community and for ongoing projects in the Dutchess County Clerk’s Office. I routinely field research inquiries from the public, connecting historians and genealogists with experts and records-holding institutions within Dutchess County. I also assist the local historical societies and historians with various projects and questions. Where appropriate, I work to connect researchers with digitized materials and offer pointers on accessing physical originals held in the Dutchess County Archives.
County Clerk Brad Kendall has several in-house digitization projects on which I consult while also managing the Ancient Documents Project and the Archival Imaging Initiative. I check in with our imaging services vendor for the Ancient Documents Project and monitor progress on the re-housing of these documents from old bankers boxes to new archival housing, along with the numbering and indexing of the documents at the item level. For the material we image in-house, I consult with the County Archivist on solutions to challenges presented by the poor condition of original documents. I also build in time to conduct research and develop presentations for my regular public programming, including the Dutchess County Historic Tavern Trail.
What particular skills or perspectives do/did you bring to your work and research?
I bridge the worlds of history and archives. Usually, those disciplines only meet at the counter where the documents are handed over from one party to the other. My background in archaeology introduced me to the processes of site formation, which I translated into the processes of collection formation. Historians seldom consider why some sources survive and others do not. Contents of a collection owe much to decisions made by countless individuals over the decades and to accidents. We will never know how many documents were lost in the Dutchess County Courthouse Fire of 1786, but we have some very interesting charred documents that testify to the impact of that event.
On the archival front, I’m always thinking about access. I hear it is fashionable in my graduate programs today to treat records as things rather than containers of specific information. I think that archivists should be well versed in the nature of their collections and how that material can assist researchers. Jim Folts at the New York State Archives is a great example of that principle: a skilled records manager who is infinitely helpful in advising researchers where to look for data relevant to their research questions.
What are you most proud about your work in this field?
I am most proud of the strides that Dutchess County has made in granting free public access to primary source materials that would otherwise be extremely difficult to entirely impossible for researchers to see. With support from Dutchess County Clerk Brad Kendall and Dutchess County Executive Sue Serino, along with past executives Marc Molinaro and William O’Neil, we’ve leveraged grant funds, invested in cutting-edge technology, and engaged with a variety of skilled partners to deliver one of the best archival access programs in the country. In addition to the government records accessible through the Ancient Documents page on the Dutchess County website (www.dutchessny.gov/ancientdocuments), we have improved access to thousands of pages of rare materials contained in municipal archives. Our imaging work has the added benefits of raising awareness of the needs for collections care and creating digital surrogates of records in case the originals are lost. These achievements have been an enormous team effort, engaging staff from our imaging vendors and the New York State Archives to the Dutchess County Clerk’s Office and the Dutchess County Office of Central and Information Services. It continues to be a true pleasure to work with these talented minds in order to advance public knowledge.
What have been some challenges and how did you navigate them?
With the Ancient Documents Project, we faced many challenges in the initial design of the project parameters, ranging from scanning resolution to delivery media to crafting the request for proposals. We navigated those with significant assistance from New York State Archives. We owe a lasting debt of gratitude to our now-retired Regional Advisory Officer Linda Bull and Jim Folts. Over the subsequent years, the greatest challenge has been the sheer scale of the project. We have fluctuated between imaging 15,000–25,000 captures from the Ancient Documents Project every year, which has required an increasingly involved process of re-housing unindexed originals from old bankers boxes to new archival housings. We have kept the conventions of previous management projects on this collection by numbering documents and recording indexing data at the item level. While volunteers and interns could initially cover the workflow, we have had to rely increasingly on staff from the Legal Division of the Dutchess County Clerk’s Office. Developing the online search portal to grant access to the digitized material has been an ongoing conversation with our IT team, especially Josh Waters, Rich Byrne, and Jake Morrison, whose respective genius are always finding ways to improve our public interface.
What have been a couple of the most memorable/exciting/unexpected things you’ve come across while doing research?
There are several cases within the Ancient Documents Project that stand out in my memory for a mix of reasons. One of those is the sad experience of the humorously named Sylvanus Garliks, who never returned from retrieving a cow from a friend in October 1743. His remains were later discovered by the side of the road where he expired, the details of which are covered in Ancient Document 1656.
There’s the manumission of Cornelius Jansen (Ancient Documents 1015 and 1015A), a formerly enslaved resident of Rhinebeck. The twist here was that Cornelius’s father was the enslaver: Cornelius’s mother had been enslaved, which meant that Cornelius was, too. Reading of the father liberating his son, and of two elite residents of Rhinebeck offering the required bond to guarantee Cornelius’s freedom, was a complicated and moving discovery.
Finally, the incident involving soldiers of the British 17th Regiment of Foot searching for deserters in eastern Dutchess in 1761 was pretty amazing (Ancient Documents 4242, 4242A-C). Despite being on government business, these soldiers found themselves swarmed by a mob led by Justice of the Peace Roswell Hopkins and confined in the Poughkeepsie Jail.
The NYG&B’s 2025 Preservation in Action theme is “The Power of One.” How has that been a factor in your work and what does that mean to you?
When I made the transition from academia to government service in 2012, a long-serving colleague advised me that I was about to learn a whole new meaning for the term “public service.” For me that meant learning the power of teamwork and how little can be achieved by a person working alone.
Teams require leadership and coordination, a set of skills that I have learned and refined largely thanks to the excellent examples provided by County Clerk Kendall and his senior staff. One person must inevitably propagate the vision for the completed product and set the parameters and processes through which the work of many will come together to deliver that product. In my own case, that has meant being the one to create and maintain the vision of a cohesive, accessible online archive; establishing the policies and procedures guiding the work that bridges the gap between analog and digital, and ensuring that the many teams involved at different levels and different locations are operating in concert. One visual analogy would be an orchestral conductor, working with a variety of skilled and experienced individuals arranged into teams whose individual efforts come together in the delivery of a symphony.
Why is preserving local history important to (1) you personally and (2) for the community?
Personally, preserving local history is important because it is the most relatable form of the past. Large-scale history in foreign places, like the Roman Empire, are great for mystery and romance. But for actual impact, nothing beats knowing why most roads in Dutchess County don’t go directly between the places of modern importance. The secrets held in the local landscape, buildings, and collections help me to see a depth to familiar places that makes my home even more meaningful to me. Local history is the most powerful way to demonstrate that the past was real, with actual people living in it who faced most of the same trials and tribulations that we do today. There is comfort in that continuity.
For communities, preserving local history hits these same points at a higher level of magnitude. What makes a historical society, a church congregation, or a town, other than the shared memories that they contain, are the multiple generations of stories through which every newly arrived individual can find a place for themselves within. There is no such thing as a tabla rasa where human beings are concerned: our local past is the building block for the local present as well as for the future.
Can you share with us or give us a glimpse of what's next on the horizon for you?
Being the first year of the 250th Anniversary Cycle for the American Revolution, much of what is ahead links in with Dutchess County’s Revolutionary history. I hope to launch a major update of our online archives, adding material generated through the Archival Imaging Initiative so that researchers and the public at large can access early documents from Dutchess County that are otherwise hidden away in local historical societies or the county records center. We want to make sure that everyone has easy access to the data contained in these documents, though we still want to encourage research visits to Dutchess County. There’s lots to see and do: check out Destination Dutchess for suggestions!
Another large project for 2025 is managing our first year of Rev250 Programming Grants. The Dutchess County Legislature generously created a special fund to encourage and support signature programming by our local historical societies exploring Dutchess County’s experience of the Revolution and the subsequent impact over the past 250 years. As a result, we have 23 projects launching between June and November 2025. I’ll be administering the grant, making sure that the whole process runs smoothly.
What advice would you give to other archivists and historians (or those thinking about going into the field)?
Records are about people, first and foremost. Both the people that created them and the people who use them now to make discoveries and tell stories about the past. Accessibility for use must always be a primary consideration for archival programs.
Primary sources, particularly manuscript primary sources, are objects as well as records. In the age of digital access and manipulation, do not lose sight of the value of the original paper records. They take up space and they can often be difficult to use directly or to grant access to, but their analog format contains value that cannot be replicated digitally. There is much to be said and thought about touching a document that a long-past person created.
Historians should approach archives and archival collections mindfully. I learned a great many valuable pieces of information for my work as a historian by asking archivists about their work and perspective on managing the survival of our elusive past. The processes of collection formation, management, and access are particularly important for historians to consider, since those elements introduce bias into the pool of information upon which historians base their interpretations and narratives.