{"id":277937,"date":"2025-06-06T21:40:19","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T21:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/indexing-felony-indictment-records-update-nyc-department-of-records-information-services\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T21:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T21:40:19","slug":"indexing-felony-indictment-records-update-nyc-department-of-records-information-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=277937","title":{"rendered":"Indexing Felony Indictment Records, Update \u2014 NYC Department of Records &#038; Information Services"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The felony indictment series date from 1790 through the 1970s and are a significant component of the Archives\u2019 collections related to the administration of criminal justice. Beginning in 1990, the Archives received federal funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for projects to preserve, index and reformat these materials. The Archives successfully persuaded the Endowment that the records had national importance based on their volume (thousands of cubic feet), date span (1686 to through the 20th century), and for their intellectual content. Generations of both academic and family historians have mined these records for unique information about the people of the city, specifically, and more generally, American urban history. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">In 1997, the Archives received support from the NEH to index and microfilm the felony indictment files from 1879 through 1892. A second award from the NEH supported digitization of the microfilm. Creation of the index to this series greatly expanded researcher access. Two years ago, the ongoing demand for information from the records prompted the Archives to launch a project to continue indexing the series. The work began with cases filed in 1879, and has proceeded in reverse chronological order. Currently, case files from 1868 are being indexed. <em>For the Record <\/em>described the indictment record indexing project in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.nyc\/blog\/2023\/8\/4\/what-were-working-on-now-indexing-felony-indictment-files?rq=indictment\">What We&#8217;re Working on Now &#8211; Indexing Felony Indictment Files<\/a>. Since then, the names of 28,665 defendants have been added to the index. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The indexing project includes entering names of the defendants, the offense, and date of indictment, into a searchable database. As noted in the previous article, the types of cases found in this series include indictments for a wide variety of felony crimes. As expected, there are hundreds of larceny, assault, and robbery cases. Prosecutors also charged numerous defendants with fraud, libel, forgery, arson, perjury, and keeping a disorderly house. The high volume of homicide, murder, and manslaughter cases points to the harsh reality of life in a densely populated growing city. Similarly, cases of cruelty to animals are a reflection of the vast equine population at that time.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">As noted above there are a wide variety of offenses handled by the prosecutors. Among the more notable cases, at least in terms of quantity, are the bigamy files. The case of the people vs. Marie Wellerdick, from June 1879, may be typical. A letter from her attorney in the file informed the District Attorney that the defendant \u201cwas abandoned by her [first] husband.\u201d Then, some years later she \u201clived with Albert Weber as his mistress and had two children by him.\u201d Two years later, Weber became very ill and \u201con his death bed he requested her to marry him.\u201d\u00a0 She, believing her former husband dead, \u201ccomplied with his wishes and the ceremony was performed on the 18th day of August 1873.\u201d Inconveniently, the first husband was not dead. The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Horace Russell, however, decided to withdraw the charge. In a note added to the case file, he wrote that the defendant \u201cwas not of such a character as that she should be prosecuted further. A death bed marriage to satisfy the conscience of a dying man might not to be made an occasion of a criminal conviction.\u201d June 7, 1879.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The felony indictment series date from 1790 through the 1970s and are a significant component of the Archives\u2019 collections related to the administration of criminal justice. Beginning in 1990, the Archives received federal funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for projects to preserve, index and reformat these materials. The Archives successfully persuaded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":277938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[15936,50007,26409,42079,6594,15935,13235,4834,4238],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-277937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-department","tag-felony","tag-indexing","tag-indictment","tag-information","tag-nyc","tag-records","tag-services","tag-update"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Indexing Felony Indictment Records, Update \u2014 NYC Department of Records &amp; Information Services - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=277937\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Indexing Felony Indictment Records, Update \u2014 NYC Department of Records &amp; Information Services - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The felony indictment series date from 1790 through the 1970s and are a significant component of the Archives\u2019 collections related to the administration of criminal justice. Beginning in 1990, the Archives received federal funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for projects to preserve, index and reformat these materials. 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