So far I have very much enjoyed reading about all the native New Yorkers -- and would like to add several from Columbia County. I am in total awe of the four below named, especially Cornelis VA Van Dyck. Elizabeth Freeman, aka Mumbet, b c1743 (Claverack NY) - 1829 (Stockbridge MA). She was born a slave in the Hogeboom family of Claverack and either given or sold by the Hogeboom father to his daughter and son-in-law Hannah and John Ashley of Sheffield. In their kitchen, she balked at Hannah's brutality and ran away to Theodore Sedgewick's in Stockbridge. Sedgewick and Tapping Reeve (of Litchfield CT) took her case to court, where it is heralded as a first test of the constitutionality of slavery. Peter Van Schaack 1747 (Kinderhook) - 1832 (Kinderhook). The intellectual loyalist returned to Kinderhook after his Revolutionary era banishment and established in his house a law school where a number of future NY politicians and lawyers were trained. His grandson, Henry C. Van Schaack, compiled much of his correspondence, shaping it into a the first biography of an American Loyalist in 1842. Peter was a wonderful writer and thinker ... and is always a great pleasure to read. Benjamin Franklin Butler. 1795 (in what is now Stuyvesant NY) d 1858 in Paris). He was a colleague of Martin Van Buren's from about 1808 through 1839, starting in Hudson NY, where he first clerked under an Buren. He was a member of the NY State Assembly 1827-1833 and part of the Albany Regency; was a leading member of the committee that revised the laws of NYS c1827. He went to Washington in 1833 to serve as US Attorney General, first in Jackson's cabinet and then in Van Buren's until 1838. Then he started NYU Law School, and distinguished himself here by introducing the case method of teaching law. Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck l8l8 (Kinderhook, NY) - l895 (Beirut, Lebanon) for his unique and loving comprehension of another culture. He trained in the United States as a physician and minister and then went to Beirut, Palestine, where he became affiliated with The American University at Beirut during its early years. Although, not its founder, Cornelius Van Dyck was its premiere teacher. He translated the bulk of the Bible into Arabic, designed the first moveable type for Arabic. Once designed, he went to Germany to have it made, and then returned to the United States to raise funds to cover the costs. In addition to the Bible, he translated all major Western medical texts into Arabic, and then he set about to record and publish all Arabic oral literature, science, and folk lore for the first time. Ousted from the ministry because he cared so much for Arabic culture, he really didn't care that he had been 'expelled'. As recalled by his family, he loved the West, the East, and above all he loved God, who had, after all was said and done, had made the controversy. Abu-Ghazaleh, author of American Missions in Syria wrote that: " ... he represents the contribution of a foreigner, who managed to acquire an astonishing proficiency in the Arabic tongue, which enabled him to speak and write it with the ease of a cultured Arab ... As far as the power of example went, his was the most valuable and effective single influence ever exerted by a foreigner in the cultural development of the country." There are more ... but that does it for me for now. Ruth Piwonka