In a set of early records from Westchester County is an unassuming reminder of the history of witchcraft in colonial New York.  Although written in a daunting-to-read seventeenth century hand, the reminder is a statement dated September 5, 1670, acknowledging payment of fourteen pounds to a Katharine Harrison by Joseph Palmer, “fully and abessolutely” satisfying his debt….

This post is by Ted O’Reilly, Curator & Head of the Manuscript Department Nearly four hundred years ago, in the winter of 1648, a man named Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert drowned in the frigid Hudson River. Bogaert had fallen through the ice while pursued by soldiers from Albany’s Fort Orange. He had arrived in the New…