* Stone's Life of Brant.
** The most prominent Tories engaged in this business were Bettys and Waltermeyer. We have noticed in another chapter the attempt of the latter to abduct General Schuyler. Among the prisoners thus made by these two miscreants, from Ballston, were Samuel Nash, Joseph Chaird, Uri Tracy, Samuel Patchin, Epenetus White, John Fulmer, and two brothers named Bontas. They were all taken to Canada, and, after being roughly treated, were either exchanged, or became free at the conclusion of the war.
*** Henry or Hendrick Hudson was a native of England. While seeking a northwest passage to Japan and China, he explored the coasts of Greenland and Labrador in 1607-8. After returning to England from a second voyage, he went to Holland and entered the service of the Dutch East India Company, who fitted out the Half Moon for him to pursue his discoveries. It was during this voyage that he sailed up the river which bears his name. The next year (1610) he was sent out by an association of gentlemen, and in that voyage discovered the great bay at the north called Hudson's Bay, where he wintered. In the spring of 1611 he endeavored to complete his discoveries, but, his provisions failing, he was obliged to relinquish the attempt and make his way homeward. Going out of the straits from the bay, he threatened to set one or two of his mutinous crew on shore. These, joined by others, entered his cabin at night, pinioned his arms behind him, and with his sons, and seven of the sick and most infirm on board, he was put into a shallop and set adrift. He was never heard of afterward.
Early History of Albany.—Fort Orange.—First Stone House.—The Church.—The Portrait of Hudson.
discovery was made early in the autumn of 1609.
As soon as the intelligence reached the Dutch East India Company, they sent out men to establish trading posts in the country in 1614, and the place was named, by the Dutch, Beaverwyek, or Beaver town, from the circumstance that great numbers of beavers were found there. A fortification, called Fort Orange, was built in 1623. * The town retained its original name until 1664, when the New Netherlands (as the country upon the Hudson was called) passed into the hands of the English.
1610 These traders ascended the river and built a blockhouse on the north point of Boyd's Island, a little below Albany; and it may be said* that in 1612 Albany was founded, for in that year the first permanent trading post was established there. Next to Jamestown, in Virginia, it was the earliest European settlement within the thirteen original colonies. A temporary fort was erected by the name of Albany, one of the titles of James, duke of York, the brother of Charles II., afterward King James II. of England.