For a description of the events leading up to the establishment of Beverwijck, I suggest "The Founding of Beverwijck, A Dutch Village on the Upper Hudson" by Charles Gehring, published in The Dutch Settlers Society of Albany Yearbook, Volume 51, 1989-1993, pp 4-11. The so-called cannon shot describes a distance of ca. 3000 feet. In the case of Beverwijck the arc around Fort Orange reached present-day Orange Street to the north, Fourth Avenue to the south, and Eagle Street to the west. See Council Minutes, 1652-1654, New York Historical Manuscripts Series (Baltimore, 1983) translated and editied by Charles Gehring, pages 18-19 for the order to proclaim the WIC's jurisdiction and to place boundary markers at these locations, i.e., "to erect or cause to be erected north, south and west of the fort a post marked with the honorable Company's mark at the aforesaid distance [600 geometrical paces or 1200 steps, about a salute gun's shot], determining the provisional jusrisdiction of the aforesaid fort."

Charles Gehring
New Netherland Project

>>> [log in to unmask] 06/28/01 09:49 AM >>>
I believe that the distance was "one cannon-shot". It was Pieter Stuyvesant who made a decision worthy of Solomon in separating the village from Fort Orange, a case of Dutch West India Company interests competing with those of the Van Rensselaer Patroonship. There was actually brawling and blood shed before the radius was drawn. Try Alice Kenney's Stubborn for Liberty., published, I believe by Syracuse University Press circa 1975 or so.

>>> [log in to unmask] 06/27/01 09:53AM >>>
On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Beverwyck was a physically separate town laid out to the north of Fort Orange
> and some distance from it.  It was under the jurisdition of Fort Orange.
> Beverwyck became Albany in 1664.

The term, "some distance," leaves me wondering whether that means 200
feet, a mile, or what.  Does anyone have information that would narrow
that down?