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New York: Named For World’s Most Prolific Slave Trader

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King James II by Peter LelyA new book, The Crown’s Silence, The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas by Brooke Newman (Mariner Books, 2026), challenges the myth that Great Britain and its monarchs championed the abolition of slavery and details the royal family’s complicity with and profit from the slave trade and the sale of slave produced commodities.

It also reminds us that New York is named for the world’s most prolific slave trader. [Read more…] about New York: Named For World’s Most Prolific Slave Trader

Dutch Doors in Colonial New York

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An artist’s rendering of Daniel Pieter Winne’s houseThe term “Low Countries” is a political and historic concept rather than a geographic one. Prior to modern nation-building, it referred to an area of northern Europe roughly stretching from Pas-de-Calais in France to the area of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, including French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders.

Born in Ghent in 1500 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, ruled over the vast Habsburg Empire that included the Low Countries. Flanders was crucial to its economy. [Read more…] about Dutch Doors in Colonial New York

The Beaver Quest: Pelts & Testicles

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Fort Orange, 1635, L. F. TantilloIn 1609, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) sent navigator Henry Hudson westward to discover a short route to Asia. Instead, he reached the river that today bears his name, finding a biologically rich and diverse ecosystem.

On his report (published in 1611) of timber rich lands and an abundance of furs, Dutch traders were keen to finance further exploration. [Read more…] about The Beaver Quest: Pelts & Testicles

New Netherland Settlers’ Biographies Go Online

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New Netherland Settlers New York Genealogical and Biographical SocietyThe first set of individual sketches under the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society‘s New Netherland Settlers initiative has now been completed and published online in an interactive, interlinked format.

These initial 50 biographical sketches reflect the full range of the New Netherland Settlers initiative, which aims to document all people who resided within the boundaries of the colony prior to 1664. Individual sketches are being published online as they become available. [Read more…] about New Netherland Settlers’ Biographies Go Online

New Netherlanders’ Views of Indigenous People

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First Dutch Church at Albany as it appears in several of the works of James EightsBy 1642, the number of inhabitants of Rensselaerwyck (spelled Rensselaerswijck in Dutch), at the time basically what is now Albany and Rensselaer Counties, had grown and Patroon Kiliaen Van Rensselaer willingly complied with a requirement of the Dutch West India Company to secure a clergyman for a Dutch Church to conduct services for the settlers. [Read more…] about New Netherlanders’ Views of Indigenous People

Three Little-Remembered New York Colonial Wars

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New-France_2_6_Map-of-New-Belgium-or-New-NetherlandFrom the time Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River in 1609, the area that is now Albany, NY was considered the focal point of trade with Indigenous People.

For over a hundred years, Albany (formerly Fort Orange) was the trading post furthest west and most remote in the colonies. Originally a Dutch colony, most of their neighboring colonies were English. To the North were the French.

Outside these colonies Native People ruled the land. From the early 1600s into the 1760s, French, Dutch, and English empires fought several major wars to gain control of this land. [Read more…] about Three Little-Remembered New York Colonial Wars

Shirley Dunn’s Book: Fort Crailo and the Van Rensselaers

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Fort Crailo and the Van Rensselaers (2)Although it played a highly significant role in the settling and development of the Capital Region, Fort Crailo, the birthplace of “Yankee Doodle” and the manorial seat for generations for one branch of the Van Rensselaer family, remains relatively little known, even within the Capital Region itself.

Shirley W. Dunn’s new book, Fort Crailo and the Van Rensselaers: The Dutch Colonial Origins of Greenbush & the City of Rensselaer (Black Dome Press, 2016) traces the history of Crailo and the Van Rensselaers from the years leading up to the building of Fort Crailo in 1663, through the war years and through the many additions and renovations over the centuries and generations of Van Rensselaers, to the present day in its role as the museum of Dutch history in the Hudson River Valley. [Read more…] about Shirley Dunn’s Book: Fort Crailo and the Van Rensselaers

Shirely Dunn’s History of the Mohican in the Capital District

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Shirley Dunn RIver Indians Mohican History BookShirley W. Dunn’s The River Indians: Mohicans Making History (Purple Mountain Press, 2009) presents a stirring look at the historic events in which the Mohicans, living along both banks of the Hudson River, participated.

Leaders among the native nations on the Hudson, Mohicans welcomed Henry Hudson, who visited them for 13 days. They initiated the upriver fur trade and continued it for a century, especially from Dutchess County to Lake Champlain. [Read more…] about Shirely Dunn’s History of the Mohican in the Capital District

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