In 1919, New York State took the lead with the passage of legislation to create a legion of officially appointed historians in every town, village, city, borough and county across the Empire State.  Unique in its concept, it provided every municipality with a distinctly identifiable person whose duties would be to ensure that the history of that area was collected, preserved and used to promote the history and heritage of our communities.

For the next sixty years, these historians worked independently without the ability to network, and learn from each other.  In 1979 a group of town, village and city historians banded together to form a new group called the Association of Municipal Historians.  This group sought to hold conferences, have lectures and train to become better historians.  Seven years later, in 1986, the County Historian Association of New York State was created to mirror that need for the sixty-two historians representing our counties.

The groups held separate conferences, workshops and direction until 1998.  It was in that year that the boards of both groups met and agreed to merge the two organizations into one stronger and more effective tool for the local government historian.  In 1999, that new group became the Association of Public Historians of New York State.  It was recognized by the New York State Board of Regents as the official group representing the needs and work of these historians.

From its inception, the Association saw as one of its priorities to raise the level of professionalism among the historian -- to create a system that would allow each historian to receive the basic training and education needed to fulfill their responsibilities as historian.  This is now the registration program that works to recognize the work and achievements of each historian both on a local and statewide basis.  The Association established a system of twelve regions across the state.  Each regional coordinator’s responsibility was to develop meetings that offered further training, education and networking to the local historian.

Today, there are over twenty regional and statewide meetings and conferences held each year, promoting local history and the work of the historian.  Although there are over 1600 municipalities in New York State, APHNYS recognizes that it is the needs of each historian that must be met if we are to be diligent in our work to promote the history and heritage of our great state.  For as someone once said “all history is local.”