New York - Albany County

Albany's New Netherland Families

Albany Co. NY GenWeb Project

Albany County's Official Website

Albany Historical Sites and Visitor Links

Afro-Albanians

Books on Albany Co. Genealogy and History

The Colonial Albany Project Website

Map of Albany Co. (1895)

New York State Official Website

This term of convenience generally is used to describe the Europeans who came to the Dutch West India Company territories in North America between 1624 and 1664. Numbering only a few thousand, they settled primarily in the lowlands that became the states of Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. That regional entity was known as New Netherland.

The settlers of New Netherland represented a range of European backgrounds. They had been recruited by the West India Company and by individual company Directors from all the provinces of the Dutch Republic, from the surrounding Low Countries, from Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, from the German states, France, the other countries of continental Europe, and from England, Scotland and Ireland as well. Almost half of those who came to New Netherland before 1664 were not technically of Dutch ancestry. But all of them were transported across the Atlantic in support of Dutch commercial initiatives. They found themselves in a New World that initially was structured by Dutch political and social conventions. Without regard for ancestry, these original settlers are widely known today as the New Netherland Dutch.

Most of these émigrés were young and with no particular distinction or attachments in Europe. With a few exceptions, they were extra people whose best option might well have been to undertake a voyage to a new land that was at once mystifying, terrifying, and exciting! Some of these settlers came as families - husbands, wives, and children. Others (chiefly young men and boys) came individually. They were farmers and husbandmen, artisans and tradesmen, soldiers and clerks, laborers, and a few with more specialized training as surgeons, ministers, and skippers.

Married settlers raised large families which included children born in Europe and in America. Younger émigrés found marriage partners that often crossed ethnic lines. By 1664, the natural increase of the European-born New Netherland Dutch was largely responsible for the growth of the colony’s settler population to perhaps as many as 9,000 people. The population of New Netherland has been studied and analyzed by David S. Cohen and Oliver A. Rink.

Flourishing demographically, the New Netherland Dutch thus became the core settler stock for most early New York communities in the New York City area, and upriver, particularly in Kingston, Schenectady, and Albany. By 1664, eighty-two New Netherland family groups were present in the stockaded village of Albany. By the time of Albany’s chartering in 1686, their American-born children were raising families whose sons and daughters were themselves marrying and having children. These stories of original settlers and their children have been a primary concern of the Colonial Albany Social History Project. An article addressing the question of "What happened to the New Netherland Dutch?" was published in 1990.

This term does not include Native Peoples who once inhabited the land that became Albany but lived separately from Europeans in the community setting, or African slaves who were brought to America against their will and in most cases could not freely participate in community life. More than one-tenth of the individuals in the People of Colonial Albany community biography was of African ancestry. They were an integral part of the early Albany story and are of special concern in our community-wide inquiry. As research continues, the stories of these Afro Albanians will take their places alongside the Europeans on the community landscape. Before 1664, a small number of slaves were present in Beverwyck. Not calling them original settlers underscores the forced nature of their participation.