Ironically, Henry Hudson, English explorer, was in the employ of the Dutch West India Company when he explored what is now the New York area. Read about the colony the Dutch established at the mouth of the Hudson River and see how the...

Provides information about life in the colonial village of Albany. Includes many resources about important structures, happenings, and people. A great resource for information on colonial America as a whole.

Compares life in the three regions of the thirteen British colonies - the New England colonies (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut), the Middle Colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey), and the...

Essay on the fight between Dutch and British colonial powers over New Amsterdam which eventually resulted in British dominance and the renaming of New Netherland to New York.

This website contains a general description of the time and reason for the first large slave auction held in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Click on Teacher's Guide for teaching resources.

A Dutch map from 1661 showing New Amsterdam. Part of a map collection from the British Library.

This site gives a brief background of the ethnic makeup of New Netherland.

A fascinating article that examines the discovery in 1991 of a large Negro burial ground in lower Manhatten. The African American cemetery was used during the 18th century. Archived.

Read about the early history of New York City and a special day in May called Bird Day. Page contains images and hyperlinks to other resources, such as historical maps and documents.

Provides information about the foods eaten by settlers in New Amsterdam and how they prepared it. Describes the different utensils and dishes that were used for cooking and for food consumption.

Excerpts from Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664, published in 1909, and available for free from Google Books. The first excerpt is from a 1644 account of Henry Hudson's descriptions of the new land he saw on his 1609 voyage. The...

Every English colony practiced slavery, building an empire-wide system of white racial dominance and African oppression.

Essay looks at the phenomenon of religious pluralism in the middle colonies. Author discusses religious sects in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, as well as African Americans and Native Americans.

Byrdcliffe was an artist colony founded in 1902-03 in New York. This exhibition from the Johnson Museum of Art is the first traveling exhibition of Byrdcliffe and it features art objects, historical materials, architecture, music, and...

Article on the Middle Colonies provides facts on religion, history, economy, and government of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and New Jersey.

This website gives just a brief run-down of the founding of the 13 original colonies.

Read about the arson conspiracy trials in New York in which slaves were accused of conspiring to burn down the city. Information is included about other slave revolts over the decades.

Site provides a history of courtship and marriage customs in the Dutch colonies of New York, beginning in the early to mid-1600s.

A straightforward explanation of the British conquering of the Dutch settlement of New Netherland in 1664. Taken from The Encyclopedia of American History.

Chronicles the life of the first New World governor of the Hudson Bay Colony, Henry Kelsey.

This site provides links to a variety of coins used in the colonies and in the confederation. Extremely detailed.

A learning module on the American Revolution that includes three supporting questions accompanied by formative tasks and source materials, followed by a summative performance task. Students investigate the question of whether the...

Overview and biographical facts on the life of Peter Stuyvesant who was involved in the early colonization of America and the Dutch New York Colony.

Three seventeenth-century homes in Pennsylvania and New York and three accounts from those English colonies of the factors leading to prosperity and permanence.