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, New York
When New Netherland was captured by the English in 1664, the name was changed from "Beverwijck" to "Albany" in honor of the Duke of Albany (later James II of England and James VII of Scotland). Duke of Albany was a Scottish title given since 1398, generally to a younger son of the King of Scots. The name is ultimately derived from "Alba", the Gaelic name for Scotland. The Dutch briefly regained Albany in August 1673 and renamed the city "Willemstadt"; the English took permanent possession with the Treaty of Westminster (1674). On November 1, 1683, the Province of New York was split into counties, with Albany County being the largest. At that time the county included all of present New York State north of Dutchess and Ulster Counties in addition to present-day Bennington County, Vermont, theoretically stretching west to the Pacific Ocean; Albany became the county seat. Albany was formally chartered as a municipality by provincial Governor Thomas Dongan on July 22, 1686. The "Dongan Charter" was virtually identical in content to the charter awarded to the city of New York three months earlier. "Dongan" created Albany as a strip of land wide and long. Over the years Albany would lose much of the land to the west and annex land to the north and south. At this point, Albany had a population of about 500 people.