Introduction The Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies contains indexed transcripts and abstracts of a wide range of documents relating to the American and West Indian colonies. For many searches, use of the material provided in the calendar may be sufficient. If you want to see the original documents, this note explains the arrangement of the calendar and the means of locating the records. The first volume of the calendar, published in 1860, covers the period 1574 to 1660. It is indexed to page numbers.
Subsequent volumes cover periods of between one and seven years.
In these, the references given in the indexes are to item numbers, not to page numbers. It was considered 'more convenient for the simplification of a printed calendar' to alter that arrangement and to adopt one chronological sequence, divided primarily by colony and type of document. The bulk of these records are now in CO record classes. However, the calendar also contains references to papers in other series, such as various classes of State Papers Domestic and records of the War Office. Finding the Modern Document Reference Note that where enclosures are listed under the transcript or pr cis of a letter or despatch, the reference will be given at the very end, after the last enclosure.