Genealogy Files

The Woodbury Historical Society’s genealogy files, having been compiled for nearly a century since the days of local historian Emma McWhorter in the 1930s, are a substantial aspect of our collection. Her original family information, later updated through the efforts of Sammie Babcock and Ellen Benjamin, is contained on 4x6 index cards with some research revealing materials dating before the American Revolution. They all feature a family name, approximate dates of marriages, births, deaths, and names of children as well as who they may have married. Some even list where an individual lived and their professions. Such an effort required combing through family bibles, cemetery records, and Orange County Court Records before the era of the internet.
Today, the Woodbury Historical Society compliments this original research by sharing the following items from families that once lived in Woodbury:

Books on local family genealogy and genealogy research

Family Cards: compiled by local historian Emma McWhorter and providing birth, marriage, and death dates for many local families

Subject files on many local families, some families have so much material that their materials are stored in external acid-free boxes

Obituaries: cataloged in alphabetical order

Photographs of individuals and families

Records, including birth certificates, deeds, diaries, letters, wills, and more

Please CLICK HERE to see our listing of families represented in our files. If you need more information or would like to make an appointment for research, please call town historian Leslie Rose at (845) 928-6770 or email woodbury1889@optonline.net.

When using our database, please take note of the following terms used to identify how items are organized:

File: denotes a hanging file stored in one of our fire-resistant cabinets. Most collections have at least a file.

Box: sometimes, certain collections are so large that they expand into being stored within acid-free boxes. There are a few collections that are so large, they need their own cabinets.

Book: some subjects contain books on their materials, and can be cross-referenced with our library database.

| Return to the top |