Shortly after I began working as an archivist at the Municipal Archives in 2017, I was asked to write a finding aid for the “insolvency assignment” records. My first thought was… what’s an insolvency assignment? I had no idea. But I did notice that the date span of the records extended back to the late 18th century, so that was promising. With a little research I learned that an insolvency assignment was a legal process during which debtors and/or their creditors petitioned the New York State Supreme Court to appoint an assignee to manage the sale of the debtor’s property to pay off debts owed to his or her creditors.