This is a transcription of births, marriages, and deaths from the records of the First Presbyterian Church at Goshen. It is of importance because no public vital records exist for Orange County before the mid-19th century. Goshen, the county seat, was founded only two generations after the county's inception.

Since its inception in 1870, "The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record" has been at the forefront in publishing articles on Long Island families, many of them lengthy, definitive studies spread out over several issues. In a number of these articles the English or Dutch origin of families is established. No better purpose could be served than to gather these articles together and reprint them in their entirety, thus making available a mass of information on Long Island families that has previously been difficult to locate. With the articles appropriately consolidated and arranged, and additions and corrections from "The Record" properly appended, this two-volume compilation becomes the single greatest repository of Long Island genealogies in existence. In addition, it is fully indexed and is published with an introduction by Henry B. Hoff, former editor of "The Record."

This is a collection of articles published originally in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record containing primary source materials on Long Island.The records included range from censuses and lists of early inhabitants to newspaper notices, wills, deeds, town records, and Bible and family records. Among the census records in this volume are the Southold census of 1686, the Hempstead census of 1698, and the 1800 federal census of Kings, Queens, and Suffolk counties. Early Kings County wills and deeds are abstracted, as are wills found in Queens County deed books. In addition, there are town records or vital statistics for Newtown, Huntington, Gravesend, Hempstead, and, especially, Southold. The entire collection of articles is completely indexed (25,000 entries!) and forms the perfect companion volume to the two-volume Genealogies of Long Island Families (see Item 3433).