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Sand Lake, New York
Sand Lake is a town in south-central part of Rensselaer County, New York, United States. Sand Lake is about 13 miles east of Albany, New York. Within the town are three hamlets: Averill Park, Glass Lake and the hamlet of Sand Lake. Its four lakes are a source of recreation. Many commercial enterprises of the 19th century and into the 20th century relied on power generated from the Wynants Kill Creek and Burden Lake mills. The area is known for fertile soil for grazing and agriculture. The estimated population for 2016 census was 8,490. History Early History Sand Lake was first home to Native Americans. In 1629, Kiliaen van Rensselaer acquired a 700,000-acre land grant to establish a Dutch colony, encompassing what later became Sand Lake. Called the Manor of Rensselaerswyck, it was 48 miles across and 24 miles long. In 1664, it became a colony of England and was called the Province of New York. It flipped back to the Dutch in 1672, and returned to the English in 1674. ...
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Administrative Divisions Of New York
The administrative divisions of New York are the various units of government that provide local services in the State of New York. The state is divided into boroughs, counties, cities, townships called "towns", and villages. (The only boroughs, the five boroughs of New York City, have the same boundaries as their respective counties.) They are municipal corporations, chartered (created) by the New York State Legislature, as under the New York Constitution the only body that can create governmental units is the state. All of them have their own governments, sometimes with no paid employees, that provide local services. Centers of population that are not incorporated and have no government or local services are designated hamlets. Whether a municipality is defined as a borough, city, town, or village is determined not by population or land area, but rather on the form of government selected by the residents and approved by the New York Legislature. Each type of local government ...
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Kiliaen Van Rensselaer (merchant)
Kiliaen van Rensselaer (; 1586 – buried 7 October 1643)Janny Venema, ''Kiliaen van Rensselaer (1586-1643): designing a new world'', State Univ of New York Press, January 2011, was a Dutch diamond and pearl merchant from Amsterdam who was one of the founders and directors of the Dutch West India Company, being instrumental in the establishment of New Netherland. He was one of the first patroons, but the only one to become successful. He founded the Manor of Rensselaerswyck in what is now mainly New York's Capital District. His estate remained throughout the Dutch and British colonial era and the American Revolution as a legal entity until the 1840s. Eventually, that came to an end during the Anti-Rent War. Van Rensselaer was the son of Hendrick Kiliaensz van Rensselaer, a soldier from Nijkerk in the ''States army of the duke of Upper Saxony'', and Maria Pafraet, descendant of a well-known printers' dynasty. To keep from risking his life in the army like his father, he ap ...
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Troy, New York
Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital District. The city is one of the three major centers for the Albany metropolitan statistical area, which has a population of 1,170,483. At the 2020 census, the population of Troy was 51,401. Troy's motto is ''Ilium fuit, Troja est'', which means "Ilium was, Troy is". Today, Troy is home to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the oldest private engineering and technical university in the US, founded in 1824. It is also home to Emma Willard School, an all-girls high school started by Emma Willard, a women's education activist, who sought to create a school for girls equal to their male counterparts. Due to the confluence of major waterways and a geography that supported water power ...
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Troy And New England Railway
The Troy and New England Railway Company was an electric trolley that operated between Averill Park and Albia (in Troy, New York). Riders could pick up the trolley from Troy's city trolley. It operated around 1895 to 1925. James K. Averill had this line established, with the intention to extending the route to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Its route essentially paralleled the Wynantskill Creek and then West Sand Lake Road from Albia to Sand Lake. There were stops at several places, including Brookside Avenue, Sand Lake Road at Steamview Lane, and at Sagendorf Lane. The trolley cars were open sided in the summer and windowed side cars were used during the winter months. Flatcars and box cars were used to transport freight. The cars were powered by an overhead wire that connected to electric motors within the trolley. Trolleys ran from 5:30 in the morning until midnight. Children took the trolley to get to school. It is likely that the trolley stopped offering service when automobile ...
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Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Output greatly increased, and a result was an unprecedented rise in population and in the rate of population growth. Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested. The textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leadi ...
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Poestenkill, New York
Poestenkill is a town in Rensselaer County, New York, United States. The population was 4,530 at the 2010 census. The town is southeast of Troy and is centrally located in the county. The town is named after the Poesten Kill, an important stream in the area. The phrase ''poesten kil'' (with only one ''l'') is traditionally said to be Dutch for "foaming water" or "foaming creek". While '' kil'' is, indeed, Dutch for "water" or "creek", Dutch dictionaries do not support the claim of ''poest'' meaning "foam". It seems more likely that the creek was named after the nickname ''Poest'' for the 17th-century local farmer and miller Jan Barentsen Wemp, who had a pimple (''poest'') or had difficulty breathing (''poesten'' = to breathe); he owned a farm and a mill on the ''Poestenkil'' creek. Among the earliest settlers in the town was Archelaus Lynd. He leased 300 acres of land from the Van Rensselaers and made his first clearing in the area of Hillside Cemetery, which was known as The L ...
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Berlin, New York
Berlin is a town in Rensselaer County, New York, United States. The population was 1,880 at the 2010 census. The town is named after Berlin in Germany, although natives pronounce the name differently, with the accent on the first syllable. The town of Berlin is located on the eastern border of the county and is often pronounced with an emphasis on the first half of the name. History The town was first settled ''circa'' 1765. It was named a town in 1806 and formed from the town of Petersburgh, one of the many New York towns with a German name. On July 25, 1962 Berlin was a site to the 1962 Berlin Explosion, Where a Semi-Truck full of 7000 gallons of propane crashed and blew up in the town killing 10 including the truck driver. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and (0.45%) is water. The highest point is Berlin Mountain, 2,818 feet (859 m) above sea level, near the Massachusetts border in the Taconic Mou ...
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Rensselaerwyck
The Manor of Rensselaerswyck, Manor Rensselaerswyck, Van Rensselaer Manor, or just simply Rensselaerswyck ( nl, Rensselaerswijck ), was the name of a colonial estate—specifically, a Dutch patroonship and later an English manor—owned by the van Rensselaer family that was located in the area that would later become the Capital District of New York in the United States. The estate was originally deeded by the Dutch West India Company in 1630 to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, a Dutch merchant and one of the company's original directors. Rensselaerswyck extended for miles on each side of the Hudson River. It included most of the land that would later become New York counties of Albany and Rensselaer, as well as parts of Columbia and Greene counties. Under the terms of the patroonship, the patroon had nearly total jurisdictional authority, establishing civil and criminal law, villages, and a church (in part to record vital records, which were not kept by the state until the late 19th ...
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Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. The network was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The enslaved persons who risked escape and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the "Underground Railroad". Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession (except 1763–1783), existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. However, the network now generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln.Vox, Lisa"How D ...
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Stephentown, New York
Stephentown is a town in Rensselaer County, New York, United States. The population was 2,903 at the 2010 census. The town, which was originally Jericho Hallow in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was renamed for Stephen Van Rensselaer. The town is located in the southeastern corner of the county, and has a sign proclaiming it to be the only Stephentown on Earth. History Stephentown was first settled around 1765. The town was formed in 1788, from the East Manor of Rensselaerwyck District. The Stephentown pioneers were from New England, primarily Rhode Island and Connecticut. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and (0.16%) is water. The southern town line is the border with Columbia County, New York, and the eastern town boundary is the border of Massachusetts. The western and central portions of the town are part of the Rensselaer Plateau. Demographics As of the census of 2010, there were 2,903 people, 1,141 ho ...
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