Comb the used book stores for French's Gazeteer of 1861, with much detail on previous boundary changes. Prices may range from $10-50. Hint: The worse the condition the greater the bargain. If the plates are missing so much the better. I recently found a copy, with many of the plates intact but with crumbling binding and stitches coming loose, for $10. Many public libraries have a copy, in case you want to check it out first to see if it meets your needs. >snip> >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. > <snip> >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. The problem is most indexes are non-existant. Many publishers obviously did not to bother with indexes at all, especially regional publishers in the 1920s and 30s. > Happy hunting, David Minor David Minor Eagles Byte Historical Research Pittsford, New York 716 264-0423 [log in to unmask] To be put on the mailing list for the weekly TimeMaster radio scripts, e-mail me at the address above. http://home.eznet.net/~dminor includes NYNY, a series of timelines covering New York City and State, from approximately 450,000,000 BC to 1990 AD.