As the Central Library of the Mohawk Valley Library System, the librarians at the Schenectady County Public Library provide reference service to the residents of Fulton, Montgomery, Schenectady and Schoharie Counties.
Inquiries by mail are answered as time permits, for a cost of $5 per lookup. Send a check made out to Schenectady County Public Library to Robert Sullivan, SCPL, 99 Clinton St., Schenectady, NY 12305-2083.
Please Note: Some citations in the obituary index are for papers not owned by the Schenectady County Public Library. The newspaper list will give you sources to obtain copies of these records.
While we are not genealogists and do not have the staff to do lengthy research, we will do city directory searches and newspaper searches if you have a reasonably close date. See our Vital Records section for an index to obituaries for certain periods (roughly 1822-1858, 1868, 1902, 1881-May 1885, 1902, 1993-June 1995 and Dec. 2005-date); we also have paper indexes for 1903-1905, 1907, 1909, 1913-1918 and 1979 through Aug. 1997. The Social Security Death Index may also provide some information. SCPL cardholders also have access to our Newsbank subscription, which includes most of the text of some local newspapers:
- Schenectady Daily Gazette (Aug. 15, 1997 - date)
- Albany Times Union (March 1986 - date)
- Albany Knickerbocker News (March 1986 - April 15, 1988)
- Saratogian (June 20, 2005 - date)
- Troy Record (May 24, 2005 - date)
Some local papers make the full text of obituaries available for limited periods: the Albany Times Union (1 year), the Gloversville Leader-Herald (2 months), the Saratogian (30 days), the Glens Falls Post-Star (30 days) and the Troy Record (1 day). See also the index to the Saratogian produced by the Saratoga Springs Public Library since January 1, 1999.
For more extensive research questions, e-mail scplresearch@sals.edu before you send money. You may wish to consult the Schenectady County Historical Society (e-mail: librarian@schist.org) or our list of local researchers.