Historical Society Gets Grant To Digitize Revolutionary War Interviews

ELMSFORD, NY — The Westchester County Historical Society is the recipient of a federal grant that will allow the organization to make some hand-written Revolutionary War-era records more accessible.

Named after the compiler of the documents, The McDonald Papers consists for more than 1,100 pages of hand-written interviews conducted between 1844 and 1850 with eyewitnesses to the Revolutionary War.

The National Historic Publications and Records Commission, which is a part of the National Archives, is giving the Westchester County Historical Society $75,875 so a professional archivist and librarian can transcribe the interviews from long-hand, annotate the accounts (to provide contemporary perspective of place names, for example) and digitize the entire collection.

That will allow for greater accessibility on the websites of the historical society, the county archives and New York Heritage, a repository for hundreds of digital collections from different libraries and organizations.

Susanne Pandich, co-director of the historical society, said the county endured the travesties of the Revolutionary War for seven years as the colonies fought for independence from English rule.

“For the first time, the story of the length, severity and impact of that war on our county and its residents will be told through the voices of those who endured it,” she said.

According to a historical society spokesperson, the compiler of the documents, John M. Macdonald (1790-1863), was a former attorney who devoted much of his life to the study of the Revolutionary War. He recorded by hand 407 interviews with Westchester residents who participated in or witnessed the war.

Although the original papers in Macdonald’s handwriting were lost in the late 1800s while housed in the Lennox Library in New York City, they had been hand-copied into a book by John English. That copy, now in possession of the Westchester County Historical Society, was acquired by local historian Otto Hufeland in 1925.

The collection contains rare primary-source information through first-hand accounts of people who experienced the American Revolution as it unfolded in the geographically significant area of the war, which is now Westchester County.

Interviews include enslaved individuals, those who formed a military unit and those who took up arms to defend their enslavers’ properties from the British and colonists loyal to England. Among those interviewed were Andrew Corsa, one of the Westchester Guides who led American forces through the county, and John Peterson, an African American soldier who participated in several actions in Westchester.

“As the country engages in America 250, these records graphically reveal a realistic perspective of life and opinions during the Revolutionary War, profoundly felt through real-person accounts,” said Barbara Davis, co-director of the historical society.

The project is anticipated to take 12 months.

The Westchester County Historical Society is located at 2199 Saw Mill River Road in Elmsford. The Reading Room is open by appointment only.