Introduction to Records & Collections
The Summary of Town Historical Records identifies archival records housed in the Town Hall of Bethlehem, New York. The majority of these records are available to the public through the Town Clerk's Office.

Record Segregation
Records are segregated by origin. Some records came from both the offices of the town clerk and the town historian. The town clerk's records are primarily related to the town administration, and also encompass judicial, town taxation, educational, public work, and public assistance records.

The town historian's records consist of mostly collections, which detail the histories of families, schools, community organizations, and include some military records, as well as maps and engineering plans. There is a series description of different sets of documents. For most record series, a detailed index is provided which identifies individual documents and where they are located. Computer databases support the archival records, offering an additional finding aid to retrieve desired information.

Also, this index contains an inventory of miscellaneous documents and secondary research sources, including books, some film, and interviews. There is also a set of archived historic photographs depicting the Town of Bethlehem as early as 1880. These documents and their subsequent finding aids are available through the office of the town clerk and town historian.