Colonial days in old New York

At the first break of day, every spring and summer morn, the quiet Dutch sleepers in the old colonial town of Albany were roused by three loud blasts of a horn sounded far and w...

As soon as the little American baby was born in New Netherland, he was taken to the church by his Dutch papa, and with due array of sponsors was christened by the domine from th...

The domestic life of the Dutch settlers flowed on in a smooth-running and rather dull stream, varying little through either honor-bearing or discreditable incident from day to d...

The earlier towns in New Netherland gathered usually closely around a fort, both for protection and companionship. In New Amsterdam, as in Albany, this fort was an intended refu...

The first log houses of the settlers, with their “reeden roofs,” were soon supplanted by a more substantial form of edifice, Dutch, naturally, in outline. They were set with the...

The old Dutch homestead of colonial times fitted the place and the race for which it was built. There was plenty of solid level earth for it to stand on,--so it spread out, sunn...

There is no doubt that the Dutch colonists were very valiant trenchermen; more avid, perhaps, of quantity and frequency in their food than exacting of variety. Cardinal Bentivog...

There is much evidence to show that the women of Dutch descent of the early years of New Netherland and New York had other traits than those of domestic housewifery; they partoo...

The Dutch goodwife worked hard from early morn till sunset. She worked in restricted ways, she had few recreations and pleasures and altogether little variety in her life; but s...

The most important holidays of the early years of the colony were, apparently, New Year’s Day and May Day, for we find them named through frequent legislation about rioting on t...

Daniel Denton, one of the original settlers of Jamaica, Long Island, wrote “A briefe Description of New York” in 1670. When he speaks of the “fruits natural to the island” of Lo...

The court records of any period in our American history are an unfailing source of profit and delight to the historian. In the town or state whose colonial records still exist t...

Sunday was not observed in New Netherland with any such rigidity as in New England. The followers of Cocceius would not willingly include Saturday night, and not even all of the...

As soon as a death had been announced to the dwellers in any little town in colonial New York, by the slow ringing or tolling of the church-bell, there went forth solemnly from...