40 Fun Facts About New York Colony

New York was renamed in 1664 for a duke who later became which king, toppled in the Glorious Revolution?

James II owned the colony personally as Duke of York, so his accession to the throne in 1685 turned New York into a royal province.

Which peg-legged director-general surrendered New Netherland in 1664 after his townspeople refused to fight?

Peter Stuyvesant later settled under English rule on his farm outside the city, an estate known as the Great Bouwerie, and lived there for the rest of his life.

After New Yorkers toppled a gilded lead statue of George III in 1776, what is the metal said to have become?

Musket balls, some 42,000 by tradition, were cast from the lead in Connecticut for the Continental Army, while fragments that escaped the melting pot survive in New York museums.

Which US president, born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1782, grew up speaking Dutch and learned English at school?

Martin Van Buren is the only president whose first language was not English; in his Hudson Valley village most people still spoke Dutch over a century after English rule began.

Which animal, whose pelts drove New Netherland's trade, still appears twice on the official seal of New York City?

The beaver shares the seal with flour barrels and the sails of a windmill, emblems of the city's earliest trade goods and of its Dutch beginnings.

Which New York City thoroughfare is said to have begun as the Wickquasgeck trail, a Native path across Manhattan?

Broadway was the Heeren Wegh, or Gentlemen's Way, to the Dutch; the English renamed it for its unusual width after they took over the city.

Which Ivy League university was founded in colonial New York in 1754 as King's College, under a charter from George II?

Columbia took its new name in 1784, after the Revolutionary War had shut the college for eight years; its early trustees included former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

Which Native people is Peter Minuit credited with buying Manhattan from in 1626, for goods valued at 60 guilders?

The Lenape were the island's indigenous people; the 60-guilder figure comes from a November 1626 letter that Pieter Schagen sent to the Dutch government.

Which Yale-educated schoolteacher was hanged by the British as an American spy in New York City in September 1776?

Nathan Hale was the only volunteer when Washington called for a spy behind enemy lines; the British caught him and hanged him at the age of 21.

The 1735 acquittal of New Yorker John Peter Zenger, jailed for attacking the governor, was a landmark for which liberty?

Freedom of the press gained an early symbol when the jury accepted lawyer Andrew Hamilton's argument that printing the truth could not be libel.

Delegates from nine colonies met in New York City in October 1765 to protest which new British tax law?

The Stamp Act was repealed within months, after the congress issued a Declaration of Rights and Grievances denying Parliament's right to tax colonies that had no seats in it.

Which 1777 American victory in upstate New York persuaded France to enter the Revolutionary War as an ally?

Saratoga ended with General Burgoyne surrendering his whole army and handing his sword to Horatio Gates, who held it for a moment and then gave it back.

Which American novel of 1826 is set around the 1757 siege of colonial New York's Fort William Henry?

The Last of the Mohicans follows Colonel Munro's two daughters on their way to the fort on Lake George; James Fenimore Cooper subtitled it A Narrative of 1757.

In which New York city did Benjamin Franklin present a plan to unite the colonies at a 1754 congress?

Albany hosted delegates from seven colonies, who approved the plan, but every colonial legislature then rejected it for taking away some of their powers.

Which Manhattan neighbourhood began as a Dutch village organised in 1658 and named after a city in the Netherlands?

Harlem was originally spelled Haarlem, like the Dutch city; the area had been home to the Wecquaesgeek, a Native band the settlers called Manhattans.

Which writer invented the Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker as the author of his 1809 comic history of New York?

Washington Irving promoted the book with a hoax, placing newspaper notices about the missing historian that worried some city officials enough to offer a reward for his return.

Which privateer, hanged in London for piracy in 1701, lived in New York City and helped build Trinity Church?

William Kidd lent the runner and tackle from his ship to hoist the church's stones; the Scottish-born captain had settled in the city as a young man.

New York belonged to which regional group of British America, nicknamed the Bread Basket for its grain exports?

The Middle Colonies were also the most ethnically and religiously diverse in British North America, with settlers from England, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands and the German states.

Which shell beads, called sewant by the settlers of New Netherland, served the colonists as everyday currency?

Wampum was cut from whelk and quahog clam shells; European traders adopted it as money, and New England made it legal tender from 1637 to 1661.

How did New York's delegates vote when the Continental Congress approved independence on 2 July 1776?

They abstained because their instructions from home did not yet allow a vote for independence; New York's Provincial Congress gave its backing a week later, on July 9.

The 1667 Treaty of Breda let England keep New Netherland while the Dutch kept Run, an island prized for which spice?

Nutmeg and mace made tiny Run so valuable that the Dutch, once in possession, chopped down every nutmeg tree on the island to stop the English from retaking it.

Which New York fort on Lake Champlain did Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys seize from the British in May 1775?

Ticonderoga's captured cannons were later hauled across Massachusetts under Henry Knox to the heights above Boston Harbor, forcing the British to leave that city.

Which league of Native nations, also called the Haudenosaunee, allied with colonial New York through the Covenant Chain?

The Iroquois Confederacy pictured the alliance as a silver chain mooring an English sailing ship to its Tree of Peace, the image that gave the treaties their name.

Which colony was created in 1664 when the Duke of York gave his lands west of the Hudson River to two courtiers?

New Jersey was named after the Channel Island homeland of Sir George Carteret, who received the land as a reward for his loyalty during the English Civil War.

Which future state did colonial New York claim as its own, clashing with New Hampshire over rival land grants there?

Vermont's settlers responded by founding their own republic, and some towns New York had chartered there survive only as names on paper.

On which Dutch ship did Henry Hudson sail up the river later named after him in the summer of 1609?

Half Moon, or Halve Maen, was hunting for a Northwest Passage to the Pacific, and turned back once her crew judged the river ahead too narrow and shallow.

Which trading monopoly, chartered in 1621, conceived New Netherland as a way to profit from North America's fur trade?

The Dutch West India Company held a 24-year monopoly on trade and colonisation along the American coast from Newfoundland to the Straits of Magellan.

Which rival colony on the Delaware River did the Dutch of New Netherland conquer and absorb in 1655?

New Sweden left a lasting mark all the same: its Swedish and Finnish colonists brought the log cabin, later an icon of the American frontier.

The Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 asked New Netherland's ruler to lift his ban on worship by which religious group?

Quakers were not among the thirty or so signers, who spoke up for their neighbours; the petition is seen as a forerunner of the religious liberty in the Bill of Rights.

By 1703, more than 42% of New York City households held enslaved people, a share second only to which colonial city?

Charleston, in South Carolina, was the only colonial city ahead; in New York many of the enslaved worked as domestic servants and labourers.

What name did the Dutch give New York City when their fleet briefly recaptured the colony in 1673?

New Orange lasted little more than a year: the Treaty of Westminster handed the colony back to England in 1674, and both the province and its chief town took their English names again.

Which title did New Netherland give investors who earned a vast estate by planting a settlement of fifty or more there?

A patroon held manorial rights over his tract, and his first tenants paid him rent while being excused public taxes for ten years.

Parliament voted in 1767 to suspend New York's assembly until it complied fully with which act?

The Quartering Act required colonial legislatures to house and supply the regiments; New York's assembly had met most of its demands, but not all.

New York's Evacuation Day, marking the British departure in 1783, faded once which November holiday took root?

Thanksgiving came to fall on or near the same date, 25 November, after Abraham Lincoln's 1863 proclamation, which left the older city celebration redundant.

Which German-born militia captain seized control of New York in 1689 and was executed for treason two years later?

Jacob Leisler, a merchant, ruled the southern part of the colony until a new royal governor arrived in 1691 and had him arrested, tried and put to death.

Which frontier settlement in colonial New York was destroyed in February 1690 by a French and Native raiding party?

Schenectady was unguarded when 114 French soldiers and militiamen and 96 allied warriors struck, destroying most of its homes and killing or capturing most of its people.

Which Hudson Valley town, New York's first state capital, did British troops burn in October 1777?

Kingston was a major granary for the colonies, so the British burned large stores of wheat along with all but one or two of its buildings.

Which English officer took the surrender of New Amsterdam in 1664 and became New York's first English governor?

Richard Nicolls went on to draft the Duke's Laws, a code proclaimed on Long Island in 1665 that provided for trial by jury and stayed in force until 1683.

Which Irish-born governor called New York's first representative assembly in 1683, which passed a Charter of Liberties?

Thomas Dongan also divided the province into its twelve original counties that November, and the charter declared that taxes could be levied only by the people's assembly.

Days after the British occupied New York City in September 1776, what disaster destroyed up to a quarter of the city?

A great fire destroyed between 400 and 1,000 buildings; General Nathanael Greene had urged burning the city to deny it to the British, an idea Congress rejected.