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?