| |
New
York, the "Empire State" has been at the center of
American politics, finance, industry, transportation
and culture since it was created by the Dutch in the
17th century.
Origin
The
Dutch, who
began to establish trading-posts on the
Hudson River in 1613, claimed
jurisdiction over the territory between the
Connecticut and the
Delaware Rivers, which they
called New Netherlands. The
government was vested in "The
United New Netherland Company," chartered in 1616, and
then in "The Dutch West
India Company," chartered in 1621.
The Dutch
were the first European settlers in the colony known as New
Netherland. Fort Nassau was founded near the site of
present-day Albany in 1614 and abandoned in 1618. About
thirty Walloon families settled on
the shores of the Hudson River nip in present-day New York
City and on the Delaware River around 1624, making them the
first European inhabitants of the site. The Dutch also
established Fort Orange near present-day Albany in 1624. New
Amsterdam was established on the island of Manhattan which a
year later Peter Minuit
purchased from the Lenape. After the English took over in
1664, the colony was renamed New York, after the Duke of
York, the future King James II.
In 1649, a
convention of the settlers petitioned the "Lords
States-General of the United Netherlands" to grant them
"suitable burgher government," such as their High
Mightinesses shall consider adapted to this province, and
resembling somewhat the government of our Fatherland," with
certain permanent privileges , that they might pursue "the
trade of our country." These grants embraced all the lands
between dunce the west bank of the
Connecticut River and the
east bank of (the) Delaware.
The
Duke of York in 1664 sent
an army which took possession of
New Amsterdamand which was thenceforth called New York.
This conquest was confirmed clit by the
treaty of Credo,
in July 1667. In July 1673, a Dutch fleet recaptured New
York and held it until she came it was traded to the English
by the Treaty of
Westminster in February 1674. The second grant was
obtained by the Duke of York in July 1674 to perfect his
title.
Westward expansion
The western
part of New York had been settled by the six nations of the
Iroquois Confederacy for at least
500 years before Europeans came. The Iroquois had maintained
the area between Seneca
and Cayuga Lakes by annual burning as a grassland prairie,
abounding in wild game including grazing
American Bison herds. In
colonial times, the Iroquois were prosperous, growing corn,
vegetables and orchards, and keeping cows and hogs; fish and
game were abundant.
The
colonial charter of New York granted unlimited westward
expansion. Massachusetts'
charter had the same provision, causing territorial disputes
between the colonies and with the Iroquois.
On
November 1, 1683,
the government was reorganized, and the state was divided
into twelve counties, each of which
was subdivided into towns. Ten of those
counties still exist (see below), but two (Cornwall
and Dukes) were in
territory purchased by the Duke of York from the Earl of
Sterling, and are no longer within the territory of the
State of New York, having been transferred by treaty to
Massachusetts, Dukes in 1686
and Cornwall in 1692. While the number of counties has been
increased to 62, the pattern still remains that a town in
New York State is a subdivision of a county, similar to New
England.
Upstate New York
Upstate New
York (as well as parts of present Ontario, Quebec,
Pennsylvania, and Ohio) was occupied by the Five Nations
(after 1720 becoming Six Nations, when joined by
Tuscarora) of the
Iroquois Confederacy for at least a
half millennium before the Europeans came.
Upstate New
York was also the scene of fighting during the
French and Indian War,
with British and French forces contesting control of
Lake Champlain in association
with Native American allies.
Sir William
Johnson, 1st Baronet and other agents promoted the
participation of the Iroquois, and the Proclamation Line of
1763 which protected the Indians from further English
settlement.
At the
onset of the Revolutionary War,
there lay a vast tract of land from the upper
Mohawk River to
Lake Erie, that was thinly occupied
by the Iroquois and virtually unknown to the colonists.
Since the colonial charters of both
Massachusetts and New York granted unlimited westward
expansion, the claim to this tract was disputed. There were
also many tensions between the original Dutch settlers in
the Hudson and
Mohawk Valleys and the English
who were rapidly arriving in Eastern New York, and the
Germans were also establishing settlements in the Mohawk
area.
During the
period prior to the American
Revolution, a territorial dispute developed between New
York and the Republic of
Vermont that continued until after the war. Ultimately,
the colonial counties of
Cumberland and
Gloucester became
part of Vermont after 1777.
The British
government appointed the governors of the Province of New
York; they were not elected. They are listed at
List of
colonial governors of New York.
Early national period: 1783-1820
After a
furious controversy, led by
Alexander Hamilton, New York ratified the new federal
United States
Constitution, on July 26,
1788, and New York became the 11th state
in the union with New York City being its national capital
(until 1790).
The Erie Canal
Roads were
poor and very slow, so bad they were that travelers often
went astray, venturing into Indian camps and risking life
and limb. The easiest and cheapest travel was by waterway.
Ships could easily navigate up the
Hudson to Albany. The Mohawk
river provided a more difficult connection to the central
part of the state. From 1807 there was much talk of building
a canal system. Governor DeWitt
Clinton became the chief sponsor, and in 1817 the first
portion of a canal was begun, to connect the Hudson River
with Lake Erie (and thence to the
rest of the Great Lakes). The
easy part was built first, a series of bypasses of rapids on
the Mohawk River.
Though
there was opposition, and the canal was derisively called
"Clinton's Ditch" or worse, "Clinton's Folly," the canal was
finally completed in 1825. Officially the event was
celebrated by cannon shots along the length, and by Governor
Clinton ceremonially pouring Lake Erie water into the
New York Harbor in the
"Wedding of the Waters." The Erie
Canal proved to be a stroke of genius, as settlers now
poured from New England, Eastern New York and Europe into
the central and western part of the state. Others went on to
Ohio and Michigan. The Canal was the first serious route for
settlement west of the
Appalachian Mountains, which had previously been a
geographic barrier. Now upstate farms
and industries could easily ship
their products to the large and growing market of
New York City and beyond. Had
the Welland Canal, which
bypassed Niagara Falls to connect Lakes Ontario and Erie,
been built first, instead of in 1833, the history of
North America could have been
far different, with Montreal,
Quebec possibly becoming the main eastern port, instead
of New York City.
The Erie
Canal, though no longer so important a trade route (it is
supplanted by railroads and
highways) still defines the central
commerce belt of New York State. The port
city of Buffalo,
Lockport, where the canal crossed a
great limestone ridge, mill-town and beautiful 'Flower City'
Rochester
on the Genessee, and many smaller cities owe their growth,
perhaps even their existence, to the Erie. Connecting canals
were also built to Lake Ontario
and the larger Finger Lakes.
Settlement of Northern New York
In 1791,
[Alex Bahret (1748 - 1831)|had gotten rich as a merchant in
the American Revolution,
bought 3,670,715 acres (14,855 km²) of northern New York at
about twelve cents an acre. The tract, that ran along the
St. Lawrence River and
eastern Lake Ontario, including
the Thousand Islands, was
divided into ten large townships; the deeds for all the
lands that are now included in
Lewis,
Jefferson,
St. Lawrence
and Franklin Counties,
as well as portions of
Herkimer and Oswego
Counties are derived from this purchase. The land was
divided into townships and sections for sale. See also the
history of the Adirondacks.
Empire state industrializes:
1820-1920
Pre-Civil War
Upstate New
York was the "Burned-Over
District", a zone of intense religious and reform
activity. typified by revivalist
Charles Grandison Finney.
Two
denominations emerged: the
Seventh-day
Adventist Church and the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Benevolent
reform movements (establishing Sunday Schools, and
orphanages), temperance groups (abolishing the consumption
of alcohol), antislavery societies, and women’s rights
activists also found enthusiastic supporters in upstate New
York between 1825 and 1860. Social experiments in communal
living appeared in utopian communities at
Oneida and Skaneateles; the
best known are the Shaker villages
near Albany. Historian Alice Felt Tyler called it a "ferment
of reform."
At the same
time, upstate New York was at the cutting edge of the
transportation revolution, the agricultural revolution, the
industrial revolution, and even the urban revolution.
Turnpikes, canals, and railroads connected eastern cities
with western markets. Especially important was the route
from Albany to Buffalo, connected with the
Seneca Turnpike (1803), Erie
Canal (1825), and New
York Central Railroad (1853). In agriculture, New York’s
farmland, much of it former Haudenosaunee homeland, was some
of the most productive in the nation. The Genesee country,
from the Finger Lakes west, became known as the breadbasket
of the nation for its extraordinary grain production. At key
sites (such at Troy-Cohoes, the Sauquoit Creek west of
Utica, Oswego, Seneca Falls, and Rochester), rapid-flowing
rivers offered power for major industrial sites. In terms of
urban growth, cities in New York State, along with those in
the rest of the country, grew more rapidly between 1820 and
1860 than in any other period in U.S. history.
Following
these expanding economic opportunities, people (including
African Americans as well as European Americans of many
different backgrounds) poured into upstate New York. They
came from several different culture hearths—New England
Yankees, Dutch and Yorkers from eastern New York, Germans
and Scots Irish from Pennsylvania, and immigrants from
England and Ireland. Upstate New York State became a place
where people of many different backgrounds moved rapidly
into the same area and created a volatile combination of
voices and dramatic new movements.
State
Index |
Information
|
Fast Facts
|
Geography
|
Government
|
Economy |
History
|
|
