“EXCELSIOR!,” DECLARES NEW YORK’S COAT OF arms. That motto, Latin for “ever upward,” could easily refer to many aspects of the state’s history: the pattern of gradual settlement from the Hudson River north, the state’s burgeoning population size, or the daring heights of New York City’s skyscrapers.
Read on for how to research your ancestors in New York State, whether they were life-long residents or just briefly passed through its bustling ports.
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND
Indigenous groups have lived in modern New York for thousands of years. Five tribes—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca—formed the powerful Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) in Upstate New York by the time of European contact in the 1600s. (A sixth, the Tuscarora, joined later.) Other notable groups include the Munsee Lenape, Schaghticoke and Mohicans.
Englishman Henry Hudson sailed up what’s now the Hudson River on behalf of the Dutch in 1609, claiming it for the Netherlands. The Dutch settled Fort Orange (near modern Albany) in 1624, then “New Amsterdam” on the coast
