New York State History

ALBANY, or Beverwyck, is one of the oldest of the permanent European settlements in the United States. In 1610 the Dutch navigators came up the Hud­son, or, as the Indians had christened it, the Sha-te-muc, and built trading houses to traffic for furs with the various Indian tribes. As early as 1614 a stockade fort was erected on an adjacent island, and three years later was swept away by a freshet of unparalleled violence. A new fort was built in 1623 on Market Street, now Broadway, below State Street, and was called Fort Orange, in honor of the Stadtholder of Holland. For a time the village was called Beverwyck, and also the Fuyck, or Hoop-net; but when James, Duke of York and Albany, came in pos­session of New Netherlands, Nieuw Amsterdam became New York, and Orange, or Beverwyck, was known as Albany.

In 1647 Fort Willemstadt was built upon the hill at the head of State Street, near the site of the old Capitol, and later on it gave place to Fort Frederick. The Indi­ans called Albany Pempotawuthut.*

In Governor Dongan's report on the Province of New York, in 1687, we are told that ''at Albany there is a Fort made of pine-trees fifteen foot high and foot over with Batterys and conveniences made for men to walk about, where are nine guns, small arms for forty men, four Barils of powder with great and small shott in pro­portion. And truly its very necessary to have a Fort there, it being a frontier place both to the Indians and ffrench."

Under the Dongan charter, in 1686, Al­bany became a city of one mile on the river and three and a half miles long. All outside of these limits belonged to the Colonie Rensselaerwyck. In 1683, Alba­ny County, comprised all the territory north of Dutchess and Ulster counties on both sides of the river, and Albany was looked upon as the fount of authority in church and judicial matters.

The Albany Dutch Church, founded in 1640, was the only one north of Esopus, un­til long after 1700, that had an established ministry, save the church at Schenectady. In this Albany church preached the well-known dominies Schaats, Dellius, Lydius, Van Driessen, Van Schie, Frelinhuysen, Westerlo, and Johnson; and here, also, were all the children baptized soon after birth, and the names entered on the Doop Boek. †

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 * A place of fire—a council ground.

† Baptism Book