The archival collection at John Jay Homestead includes seventy-five linear feet of family documents, and thousands of historic photographs. The collection also includes approximately three thousand historic books.
Augustus Jay Letter of Denization
Signed on March 4, 1686, this document certified the right of John Jay’s grandfather, a French Huguenot refugee, to live and conduct business in the English colony of New York. It is, in all likelihood, the oldest surviving Jay family document of American origin.
Jay’s Appointment as Chief Justice of New York State
This is John Jay’s official commission as the first Chief Justice of New York State. It was signed in Marbletown, New York on October 17, 1777, the day after the British burned Kingston, New York State’s first capital, to the ground.
Sarah Jay’s Dinner List
Sarah Jay’s handwritten record of the guests who came to dine at the Jays’ New York City house from 1787 into 1789, when her husband was U. S. Secretary for Foreign Affairs, is the most famous American “society”-type document of the eighteenth century.
Frederick Douglass’s Eulogy Booklet
John Jay’s son William became one of America’s most important abolitionists. A year after his death in 1858, his fellow abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, delivered this twenty-four page eulogy to honor him at the Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City.
