Griffis, William Elliot, The story of New Netherland

(Boston and New York :  Houghton Mifflin Company,  1909.)

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CHAPTER XX

ALBANY AND ITS ANNALS

The settlement near the head of Hudson River
navigation was named successively Fort Orange,
Rensselaerwijk, Beverwijk, Willemstadt, and Al¬
bany. The business of the Company centred in
the fort, that of the patroon in office and ware¬
house. While in the Church was the focus of the
higher life of the community, the manor house
was the seat of a generous hospitality. After the
English conquest, several of the royal governors
were entertained here, receiving impressions of a
refinement of manners and home life, for which
their prejudices, engendered by national rivalry
and the wars between England and Holland, had
not prepared them.

Concerning Albany there is a rich literature of
description, and the works of Kalm, and Mrs.
Grant, and Cooper's "Satanstoe," may be men¬
tioned as examples, but these and the documents
and writings after 1664 hardly concern us. We
can but glance at life here subsequent to the fall
of New Netherland.

After the learned Domine Megapolensis removed
to Manhattan, the community enjoyed the services
first of Domine Schaats, and then of along line of
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