On 6/26/01 (12:26:34 PM EDT), Martha Dickinson Shattuck ([log in to unmask])
posted a "correction" to my earlier post on the first  3 municipalities
(Breuckelen in 1646, Fort Orange in 1652 and Nieuw Amsterdam in 1653) in what
is now New York State, as:

"The dates of chartering the villages of New Netherland, and the municipality
of
New Amsterdam, can be found in the introduction to E. B. O'Callaghan's Laws
and
Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638-1674.  O'Callaghan notes Hempstead being
chartered in 1644, Gravesend in 1645, Flushing in 1645 with a schout and full
court in 1648, Beverwijck and Middleburg in 1652, then New Amsterdam in 1653.
(The rest of the villages through 1664 are also listed.)"


I was referring to municipal corporations, not settlements, and my source is
the Department of State of New York State:

"At first the Dutch rulers of New Netherland did not draw a sharp line
between their overall colonial or provincial government and that of their
major settlement, which was called Nieuw Amsterdam.  It was not until 1646
that the Dutch West India Company granted what appears to have been certain
municipal privileges to the "Village of Breuckelen" -- lineal ancestor of the
present-day Brooklyn -- located across the East River from Nieuw Amsterdam.
Fort Orange, which later became the City of Albany, obtained similar
municipal privileges in 1652.  When in 1653 the "Merchants and Elders of the
Community of Nieuw Amsterdam" won the right to establish what was called "a
city government", the municipality which became New York City was born."

                    Local Government Handbook, page 3, 4th Ed., 1987
                          State of New York Department of State


Regards,

Walter Greenspan