Charles Gehring, 86, retired last week after 50 years spent translating 17th-century Dutch documents about life in Albany and the colony of New Netherland. He stands before an early Dutch map and rare books in the New Netherland Research Center.

A facsimile of the 17th-century Dutch documents that Charles Gehring spent 50 years translating, showing the condition of ancient records damaged by floods, in battles, in leaky ship holds and badly burned in the massive 1911 state Capitol fire.

Charles Gehring, with the help of colleague Janny Venema, completed translations on about 80 percent of 12,000 pages of 17th-century Dutch records of life from Manhattan to Albany and across the colony of New Netherland.

Charles Gehring in his eighth-floor office of the State Library and he has worked since 1974 on translating 17th-century Dutch documents that reshaped our understanding of America’s roots.

ALBANY — In the annals of Albany cultural history, Charles Gehring stands alone.

He is the ultramarathon man of 17th-century Dutch translation, the greatest of all time.

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Gehring, whom friends call Charly, was hired in September 1974 and retired on April 2, a day before his 86th birthday.

He has spent 50 years translating thousands of handwritten Dutch documents that chronicled daily life in colonial Albany and beyond. He is the founder of the New Netherland Project for translation and director emeritus of the New Netherland Research Center in the State Library.

“Charly is an institution. He essentially created the field of New Netherland studies,” said Russell Shorto, author of “The Island at the Center of the World,” an acclaimed history published by Doubleday in 2004.

“This book would not exist without the work of Charles Gehring,” Shorto wrote in the book’ acknowledgments.

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Gehring’s translations fill 18 thick volumes and are published by Syracuse University Press. His work has helped scholars and historians transform our understanding of the founding of America by writing an origin story that predates the Pilgrims and reclaims New York’s long-neglected Dutch roots.

“I literally fell into this work,” said Gehring, who wears quadrifocal........

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