Access to the resources of the Town Historian, and at Lorenzo State Historic Site, the Cazenovia Public Library, the Village of Cazenovia, the Town of Cazenovia, the Madison County Clerk's Office, the Madison County Historical Society, the Chenango County Clerk's Office, and the Chenango County Historical Society vary greatly and you must call or write them before you visit.

        As a community historian I stay away from genealogy for various reasons, but I cannot escape it entirely.  In reality, the research that I do is akin to one giant genealogy, not of an prolific extended family of the Smiths or Joneses, but of the Cazenovians.  Genealogists tend to focus on the personal history and ancestors and descendants of the individual, whereas I focus on the spatial history, through all generations of the collective individuals which make up the community.
        When studying any community, whether it be from the point of view of the architectural historian, landscape architect, or archaeologist, the individuals who made and make the community cannot be ignored.  In a very diverse community such as Cazenovia, there have been untold numbers of characters and personalities, of varying tastes and talents, who have left their mark upon the pages of our history. The gamut ranges from the Noblesse Oblige so perfectly expressed in people such as Ledyard Lincklaen, master of Lorenzo and village father in the mid-19th century, to the more numerous but equally uncommon (and far too often ignored) commoners such as Nannette Hill Bromley, one of the few African-Americans who called Cazenovia home and lived out her days in a house on Nelson Street.  The historical record is much kinder to people like Ledyard Lincklaen, but record of such people as Nannette Hill Bromley are not entirely wanting by any means.
        For the genealogist or historian (I make a rigid distinction between the two) there are hundreds of sources in Cazenovia from which pertinent material can be found.  Cazenovia is a well documented community, but that record is not evenly spread across the 205 yeas since white folks first set up tents at the foot of Lake Owahgena.  Nor is it increasingly detailed from the early days to the present.  It is our earliest period (1790s to 1820s) and our middle period (1840s to 1865 and 1865 to 1917) that seem to be best documented.  The early records of the Holland Land Company and Samuel Forman's store provide a profusion of information on who was doing what in the village and town in the earliest generation.  From the 1840s to the time of the first World War the Cazenovia newspapers are at their peak of recording events, personal and community-wide.  Reminiscences, many of which were made in the latter half of the 19th century, also tend to focus on the early days.
        Although we are coming to the end of the 20th century, there is a great deal of disparity for comparable information of personal and community events.  It has been a struggle to get people to believe that this era in our history is as important as the founding days and thus few photograph collections, family histories, and other historical data has been generated or has found its way into the hands of people who could use it for research.  A great deal of material is still in the hands of the families who generated it and far too often they fail to see the value of such material to the community.  Since the 1950s we seem to have been at a crisis level in saving our own life histories for the future.  Cazenovia has had at least one weekly paper since 1808 and the largest gap in the the collection that is available for researchers is that from 1984 to the present - budget cuts, profit margins, and ignorance and carelessness lead to severe apathy towards the newspaper as a future historical document.  The change away from the written record will also have severe impact on the documents of the 20th century.  While it is a task to find information on someone who lived in Cazenovia in the first years of settlement, it is even more difficult to find someone in the 20th century, and if the search for the individual is successful, it is often impossible to put some kind of life story behind them.
 

Please write or call the following places first to make sure that the resources you need are available or that someone is there to help you.  A letter at first is recommended as some simple questions can be better answered through the mail rather than you trying to make it to the facility during their open hours.

Town Historian, Peggy Ladd, keeps an office at the Town Office (at 7 Albany Street, Cazenovia, NY, 13035, [315] 655-9213) and her assistant for genealogical inquiries is Rush Marshall (at the Cazenovia Public Library, 100 Albany Street, Cazenovia, NY, 13035, [315] 655-9322).

Lorenzo State Historic Site (RD 3, Rippleton Road, Cazenovia, NY 13035, [315] 655-3200) has a manuscript collection that is unparalleled for all kinds of research, especially genealogy.  This should be your first stop as the massive document collection is fully indexed and easy to use.  The document collections at Lorenzo range from the stupendous records of Samuel S. Forman's store (Cazenovia's first store, 1793 to 1820+); the Holland Land Company records (Lorenzo's builder, John Lincklaen, was the resident agent for the Co.), detail land transactions and other aspects of the growing community; a full set of microfilmed Cazenovia newspapers; complete census records on film; cemetery records; and a myriad of other great sources for genealogists.

The Cazenovia Public Library (100 Albany Street, ... 655-9322) has a great variety of resources that are easy to use.  What is nice about this collection is that it is compiled of some original source material but mostly contains collections of transcribed, published, or other material that has been gathered here from many other places including up-to-date cemetery records (my compilation), town and village records, family genealogy files, church records, and other such sources.  The Library also has nearly all of the local history books, microfilmed newspapers, and most census stuff.

The Village of Cazenovia (Albany Street, [next door to the Library] ... 655-3041) contains some original materials but these consist primarily of fragile Village Minute Books which don't contain much genealogical info.  The Village maintains Evergreen Cemetery which has well over 5,000 burials from 1799 to the present and the books for this cemetery have a good deal of data that is not recorded on the tombstones.  A transcription of the tombstones is available at Lorenzo.  A second set of the Evergreen Cemetery Records are also kept by the Sexton at the cemetery on Fenner Street.

The Town of Cazenovia (7 Albany Street, ... 655-9213) contains some original materials, but most or all of this has been transcribed and is available at the Library.  The Town Death Records are there and these have not been fully transcribed, but a pretty good index is available.  The office of the Town Historian, Peggy Ladd, is there and she could help you with your searches.

The Madison County Clerk's Office (County Office Building, Wampsville, NY, 13163 [315] 366-2261) has the deeds, mortgages, and other county records from 1806 to the present.  These records are easy to use and it would be better if you could check these materials yourself as the staff is not really supposed to do research for you.  In searching for a property refer to my "How to Research an Old House" page where I present some suggestions on how to use the Deeds at the County Clerk's Office

The Madison County Historical Society (Main Street, Oneida, NY, 13421, [315] 363- 4136) has some Cazenovia material, but I am not sure how easy this material is to use.  Great improvements have been made in the past years, so give them a try anyway!

The Chenango County Clerk's Office (Norwich, NY 13815 [607] 337-1450) has the earlier county records from 1798 to 1806 which is before the time that Madison County was formed.  The deeds here are important, but not particularly informative.  I have made transcripts of nearly all the deeds for properties in the Lincklaen Purchase (Cazenovia, Nelson, DeRuyter, Lincklaen, German, and Pitcher) but this project ceased when I moved south - I will check for names and particular properties upon request to myself (Dan Weiskotten) at danwcaznf@gmail.com.

The Chenango Co. Historical Society (45 Rexford Street, Norwich, NY [607] 334-9227) has very little or no Cazenovia material, but they have lots of material on the southern towns (Lincklaen, German, Pitcher) in the Lincklaen Purchase.