Supreme Court archives catalogue the history of Queens

As Queens County Clerk, Audrey Pheffer presides over Queens Supreme Court’s centuries-old archives. Eagle photos by David Brand.

By Rachel Vick

Below the floors of the Queens County Supreme Courthouse sit thousands of court files, with many dating back to the very foundation of the United States.

Away from the rush of day-to-day court life, the court’s archives serve as time capsule for legal history and detail centuries of life in Queens. The vault preserve documents from as far back as the 18th Century. 

The records include census cards, marital records and naturalization records, which are being digitized for the first time. Raymond Weaver secured a federal grant for the project and is partnering with St. John’s University to create a database compiling the free public access records.

Sites like ancestry.com pull the same information from court records, but Weaver said that “people shouldn’t have to pay to learn about their geneology.”

Many of the court records have been digitized for ease of use, thanks to organizational efforts of said Administrator of the County Clerk Kevin Rothermel. Staff will next upload all of the non-confidential records onto the database, Rothermel said. 

The document search department is responsible for knowing about all the different types of records in order to best serve the public, “There’s people who will come in and say, ‘My great-great-great grandfather was a volunteer firefighter,’ and someone will have to pull from the documents that volunteer fire departments had to file in the 1800s,” Rothermel said.