Guide to the William C. Bouck Papers,
1727-1866

Sheriff of Schoharie County, 1812-1814; member of the New York State Assembly, 1813-1814; Postmaster, West Middlebury, N.Y., 1821; member of the New York State Canal Commission, 1821-1840; Governor of New York State, 1843-1844; Assistant U.S. Treasurer at New York City, 1846-1849.

Correspondence, appointment papers, official documents, and other papers chiefly relating to Bouck's political career include incoming letters concerning his duties as sheriff, the revision of regulations concerning the militia, and state and local politics. Also, considerable correspondence and reports on construction and repair of the Erie, Chemung, Chenango, Champlain, and Crooked Lake Canals, also information on technical problems, seasonal openings and closings, and labor procurement, 1830-1842; letters on political struggles over the enlargement of the canal, on internal improvements in general, on U.S. Mail contracts in Schoharie County, on his campaigns for the governorship in 1840 and 1842, and on the antirent movement in Scoharie and Rensselaer Counties. Correspondence as governor concerns appointments, reform of the judiciary, revision of state constitution, temperance, inspection of foodstuffs in Albany and New York City, Sabbath observances, conditions at state prisons with special attention to facilities for women, minors, and the insane, a Quaker's request for remission of fines under militia law, Candor residents' objections to the use of schools for religious meetings, sale of Oneida Indian Reservation land, state politics, the Barnburner-Hunker factionalism in the Democratic Party, and pre-Civil War tensions.

Later correspondence relates to Bouck's employment by the U.S. Treasury Department and to state and national politics. Other materials include deeds, bills of seizure, and other documents pertaining to the sale of lands in Schoharie County and adjacent areas. Additional items include New York State Militia commissions; copies of wills and probate papers, and other legal documents of Bouck, his father, Christian, and his grandfather William; papers relating to Bouck's Wisconsin land investments and his rental incomes and other personal and family business; estate inventory of Cornelius Feeck; and business papers of Benjamin and Juliet Best and John Ferguson. There are also papers regarding Bouck's activities in the Lutheran Church, including report on Hartwick Seminary property and correspondence on domestic and foreign missions. Miscellaneous items include letters on a portrait of Bouck by Charles Loring Elliott, a letter from John H. Bartholomew on conditions in Chicago in 1856, letters and advertisements on medical cures, and many pamphlets and reports. Correspondents include Daniel S. Dickinson, Lewis Cass, Samuel Beardsley, Jabez D. Hammond, Dorothea Dix, William L. Marcy, and others.

Includes a 1755 Royal land grant, with seal, from George II to William Bouck "confirmed a grant from the Indian occupants in 1747, [to] the property so long known as the Governor Bouck's farm, including Bouck Island" in the town of Fulton, Schoharie County, New York State. The farm was owned by the Bouck family until its sale in 1925 by Katherine Bouck Cornell and William Bouck Cornell to Edgar A. Church.

Schoharie County Historical Society. The Quarterly Bulletin. Apr. 1943: vol. 7, num. 2.

Hagan, Edward A. William C. Bouck : New York’s Farmer Governor. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2006.