Albany County, New York
The city of Albany was the first municipality within this large county, founded as the village (dorp in Dutch) of Beverwyck by the Director-General of New Amsterdam, Pieter Stuyvesant, who also established the first court in Albany. Albany was established as a city in 1686 by Governor Dongan through the Dongan Charter after the English took over the colony. Schenectady to the west was given a patent with some municipal rights in 1684 and became a borough in 1765.
Albany, Oregon
The first European American settler arrived in 1845; Abner Hackleman was a farmer from Iowa. Taking up a land claim for himself, Hackleman asked Hiram N. Smead to hold another for him until his son arrived from Iowa. In 1846, a year after arriving in Oregon, Hackleman died while returning to Iowa to fetch his family. In 1847 a pair of brothers, Walter and Thomas Monteith, settled in the area, after traveling by ox team along the Oregon Trail from their native state of New York. They were a family of early prominence in the area; in 1848, they bought a claim of from Hiram Smead for $400 and a horse; they plotted out for the town site. They named the city "Albany" after their hometown of Albany in New York. During the same period, Hackleman's son Abram reached his father's original land claim and built a log house in an oak grove still known as Hackleman's Grove. He later built a house, which still stands at the corner of Fifth and Jackson. The small settlement that formed on the Hackleman land became known as the community of Takenah in 1849.
During this early period, the Monteith and Hackleman families were literally and politically on opposite sides of the fence. Residents in the Monteiths' portion of town were mainly merchants and professionals, who aligned with the Republican Party. They tended to sympathize with the Union during the Civil War. The residents in Hackleman's portion of town to the east were made up mostly of working-class Democrats who sided with the Confederacy. The two sides planted a hedge near Baker Street separating their sides of town.