Republishing the Manhattan Past list
Once upon a time, there was a website called Manhattan Past. It had a lot of goodies on that site, but the one The Legal Genealogist used most often was its list of the laws of New York, from its earliest colonial times through to 1922, as published volumes could be found on Google Books.
Over the past few months, something has happened to that Manhattan Past website, and every attempt to access it leads to an error message. The domain name is still registered, at least until later this year, but the contents… well… they can’t be reached directly.
Enter the Wayback Machine. A fabulous feature of the Internet Archive, the Wayback Machine lets us access older captures of web contents even if the website itself is no longer accessible. It’s “a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites. Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web.”1
And the Wayback Machine gives us the last captured version of the list of the laws of New York, dated 15 September 2017. You can access it directly at this link here.
To ensure that this amazing list remains accessible as widely as possible, here’s a republished version of the list of New York colonial and state laws by itself — purely factual information for which there can be no copyright — and with the hope that Manhattan Past gets resurrected and we can all go back to linking to it directly.
Laws of the State of New York2
New Netherland
Colonial New York
1664-1719
1720-1737
1738-1755
1755-1769
1769-1775
1774-1775
1777-1784
New York State
1785-1788
1789-1796
1797-1800
1801
1802-1804
1804-5 1806
1807-1809
1810
1811
1812
1813 v1 v2
1814-1815
1816-1818
1819-1821
1822
1822-1824
1823
1825
1826
1827
1828 2nd session
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847 v1 v2
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857 v1 v2
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866 v1 v2
1867 v1 v2
1868 v1 v2
1869 v1 v2
1870 v1 v2
1871 v1 v2
1872 v1 v2
1873
1874
1875
1876 v1 v2
1877
1878
1879
1880 v1 v2
1881 v1 v2 v3
1882 v1 v2
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892 v1 v2
1893 v1 v2
1894 v1 v2
1895 v1 v2 p1 v2 p2
1896 v1 v2
1897 v1 v2 v3
1898 v1 v2
1899 v1 v2
1900 v1 v2
1901 v1 v2 v3
1902 v1 v2
1903 v1 v2
1904 v1 v2
1905 v1 v2
1906 v1 v2
1907 v1 v2
1908 v1 v2
1909 v1 v2
1910 v1 v2
1911 v1 v2 v3
1912 v1 v2
1913 v1 v2 v3
1914 v1 v2 v3
1915 v1-3
1916 v1 v2 v3
1917 v1 v2 v3
1918 v1 v2 v3
1919 v1-2
1920 v1 v2 v3 v4
1921 v1 v2 v3
1922 v1-2
SOURCES
- “Frequently Asked Questions: What is the Wayback Machine?,” Internet Archive (https://archive.org/ : accessed 27 Sep 2018). ↩
- “Laws of the State of New York,” Manhattan Past, via Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/ : accessed 27 Sep 2018). ↩
Judy,
Are these as listed above known as sessions laws? I thought the easiest way to use statutes was by the compiled statutes annotated. It does not seem that these are those. Asking for a friend! LOL!
Yes, these are session laws, and while compiled statutes may be easier, there will always come a time when you need to fill in the gaps between compilations by looking at the session laws. That’s what makes this list so valuable and why it needs to be preserved.