A NYS history question from a friend sparked the repeat-need
to identify a GOOD REFERENCE BOOK about NYS history.  I'm still
trying to locate such a book with acceptable NYS detail for his
question.  While searching the Internet, I found this forum.

The question was to identify the 12 original counties defined
in 1683 for the then-colonial NY.  I found my initial response
within a day, in the 1882 Dutchess County history.  The mention
of the "former" NYS counties of Dukes and Cornwall made me want
to locate more info in a general NYS reference, with details or
at least a summary of the major land/boundary changes of NYS.

But so far my personal library, the Pok Adriance Library (scanning
the stacks; still FUN!), the bibliog-list in the WPA NYS book,
and other attempts have provided little additional data.

I briefly checked the index of Flick's 10-vol, but found no entry
for Dukes or Cornwall (weak-indexes are the bane of my quests),
and nothing circa 1683 with even a list of the counties.

In searching the Internet, I stumbled on a Dukes-county-MASS
website that gave the date of the transfer of it to MASS.
Another webpage at SARA, State Archives & Records Administration,
has the "image" of the 1664 charter defining the NY colony lands,
labelled "present-day New York, New Jersey, most of Maine, and
parts of Connecticut, and Pennsylvania."

So WHAT REFERENCE includes coverage of those changes that traded
off or separated the now non-NYS areas?  Coverage should include
the separation of Vermont (Charlotte), as well as Mass and Conn
boundary adjustments, etc.

I suppose this is too much detail for any general NYS history used
even at a college level.  It may also be partly applicable to a
Colonial-NY book theme, and not covered under the NY-"State" title.

What books are necessary to get "acceptable" NYS history coverage,
even if they must be acquired via "used book" search?  Do any of
them cover this land-and-boundary-change topic that I'm seeking?