"Aubange" a Aubange Travel Page by ottofire

New York and its origins.
Legend and Reality

According to the legend, New York was founded in 1626 by the Dutch in the southern part of Manhattan Island. Some schoolbooks, history books, television broadcasts - and down to cigarettes makers - even say that the founder of New York was named Peter Stuyvesant.

The reality is somewhat different...

It is in May 1624 that the "Nieu Nederlandt", a ship chartered by the West India Company, arrived in sight of Manhattan Island. The vessel carried about thirty Belgian families: most of them were Walloons accompanied by a few Flemings.
The passengers were soon dispersed: eight men were left at the lower part of Manhattan and erected there a fort - on the site of the present Battery Park. Four couples and eight men were sent to the Delaware River, where they also built a fort (near the present town of Gloucester, New Jersey). Two families and six men were sent to the Fresh River (now Connecticut), where a small fort was built, on the site of the present city of Hartford. About eighteen families remained on the "Nieu Nederlandt" and proceeded up the Hudson. They finally landed near the present city of Albany (capital of the State of New York).
Those first steps in the colonization of this territory were actually the follow up of a process that started a century earlier.

It is indeed in 1524 that the French expedition led by the Florentine Giovanni Da Verrazzano discovered the New York bay for the first time. King Francis I being at war with Spain, the information was sent to the Record Office. During the next tens of years, the Spaniards were almost the only ones who showed interest for the New World and exploited its resources.
Willem Usselinx

In 1555, Charles V abdicated in favor of his son Philip II. His intolerance soon brought the Netherlands in the chaos. The Duke of Alba, sent by the King of Spain, imposed a merciless repression towards the protestants, in rebellion against the misuses of the Catholic Church.