Scope and arrangement
The William Conrad Kopper and Serena Deas Murphy Center genealogical research files contain family papers and genealogical research pertaining to the Belknap, Center, Innes, Murphy, and allied families. Included in the collection are genealogical notes, pedigrees, genealogical charts, as well as original family documents such as wills, contracts, diaries, scrapbooks, and photographs.
The family papers contain original documents such as correspondence, deeds, certificates, wills, and financial and legal records. New York businessmen and philanthropists Aaron Betts Belknap and his son Robert Lenox Belknap are prominently represented. Items of note include the Murphy family's Alabama war claims; Center family photographs including images of Robert Lenox Belknap's home and schooner; and diaries kept by an unidentified member of the Innes family.
Genealogical research concerning the Belknap, Center, Innes, Murphy and allied families consists of correspondence; notes; clippings; ancestral pedigrees; and ephemera. Material relating to family plots and crypts in a number of New York cemeteries and a copy of a "plan of vault in the New Dutch Church Yard, 1765" presented by W. C. Duyckinck are also included.
The William Conrad Kopper and Serena Deas Murphy Center genealogical research files are arranged in two series:
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1816-1957
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1868-1986