In 1609
Henry Hudson explored the river that bears his name, and in the
1620s the Dutch West India Company established settlements at
Fort Orange (Albany) and Manhattan, influencing immigration by
other northern Europeans. English, mostly from New England, came
to Long Island where the boundary between New Netherland and New
England had to be settled by treaty in 1650. The Dutch claimed
New Netherland from the New York to the Delaware rivers but were
overthrown in 1664 by the English, who renamed the colony for
the Duke of York. A brief comeback was staged by the Dutch in
1673, but after a year New York reverted to English control. In
1688-90 New York was part of the Dominion of New England, and
some documents were generated in Boston.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, New Englanders had crossed
westward into the eastern counties of New York, and settlers from
Long Island and New Jersey had migrated to the lower Hudson valley.
Huguenots had settled in New York City, New Rochelle, and elsewhere
in the late 1600s, and Ulster Scots came to the Hudson area and
settled in Orange and Ulster counties. The first major immigration
of Germans to New York was in 1710, when 847 Palatine families
settled in the Hudson Valley.
The Revolution was a major part of New York's history. The British
occupied New York City and controlled all of Long Island and part
of Westchester County. This provided a refuge for many Loyalists,
including some from New Jersey, while patriots fled from Long
Island to New York and from elsewhere up the Hudson. Major battles
were fought upstate and every effort was made to prevent the British
from taking control of the Hudson Valley and dividing the colonies.
Up to the time of the Revolutionary War, New York had been slower
to expand beyond its original settlements than most of the other
colonies. Much of the land had been held by only a few people,
and Native Americans threatened settlement west of the Hudson
and Mohawk valleys. After the war, however, New York grew dramatically.
Migrations and immigrations increased at a rapid pace, with only
a slight interruption during the War of 1812. Immigration was
fueled particularly by Europeans sailing to the port of New York.
The state became the principal gateway for those heading west,
mostly from New England to the Great Lakes and beyond, although
a great number remained as families made "chain migrations"
across New York (see David Paul Davenport, "The Yankee Settlement
of New York, 1783-1820," Genealogical Journal, 17 [1988/89]:
63-, especially 70). Important to settlement were the Old Military
Tract and St. Lawrence Ten Towns in the north; the Military Tract,
Chenango Ten Towns, and Boston Ten Towns in the central region;
and the Phelps-Gorham and Holland purchases further west. Travel
was greatly enhanced by the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825,
by which one could get from New York City to Buffalo in less than
three weeks. The Hudson River was linked with Lake Champlain by
a canal in the northeast and with the Delaware River by another
in the southeast. By the mid-1800s, a busy system of stage lines
and a network of railroads carried migrants, business people,
and goods over the entire state, which promoted growth of cities
and villages along their paths.
In the nineteenth century, immigrants swarmed through the port
of New York, particularly the Irish and Germans in the mid-1800s,
followed by Italians, Poles, Jews, and others by the turn of the
century. Large numbers of blacks came north after the Civil War
and more so after the world wars, followed by a sizeable Puerto
Rican immigration after World War II. Today, many in New York
City, if not born abroad themselves, have at least one parent
who was.
New York had disputed areas with Massachusetts in Columbia County
and over six million upstate acres, with New York in Dutchess
County, and with Vermont over the counties of Gloucester, Cumberland,
and part of Charlotte. Earlier, New York lost two of its original
twelve counties to Massachusetts: Cornwall to Maine in 1686 and
Dukes in 1692. There was also disagreement over borders with New
Jersey and Pennsylvania. Staten Island, long claimed by New Jersey,
was not fully relinquished until 1855.
Under the Reorganization Act of 7 March 1788, New York was divided
into 120 towns (not townships), many of which were already in
existence. (In parts of New York, particularly in the west, land
was often surveyed into townships, and many people today still
use the term colloquially.) Towns are the primary point at which
many records are kept and their number has increased greatly since
1788. Cities and incorporated villages are part of towns, and
a town may have several hamlets and other communities included
in its own governments.
Since the turn of the century, the modern city of New York has
been comprised of five boroughs with coterminous counties. While
often identified synonymously with the state of New York, the
city is an entity of its own, and some state laws concerning record
keeping do not apply.
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