Volume 28 provides a translation of the oldest existing deacons' account book found in Albany, New York's Dutch Reformed Church. Complete with background information on Albany's colonial community and the founding of the area's first church, this volume will be of great interest to church historians and genealogists as well as to the Reformed church at large.

Winner of the 2004 Annual Archives Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of the New York State Archives presented by the Board of Regents and the New State York Archives Beverwijck explores the rich history and Dutch heritage of one of North America's oldest cities—Albany, New York. Drawing on documents translated from the colonial Dutch as well as maps, architectural drawings, and English-language sources, Janny Venema paints a lively picture of everyday life in colonial America. In 1652, Petrus Stuyvesant, director general of New Netherland, established a court at Fort Orange, on the west side of New York State's upper Hudson River. The area within three thousand feet of the fort became the village of Beverwijck. From the time of its establishment until 1664, when the English conquered New Netherland and changed the name of the settlement to Albany, Beverwijck underwent rapid development as newly wealthy traders, craftsmen, and other workers built houses, roads, bridges, and a school, as well as a number of inns. A well-organized system of poor relief also helped less wealthy settlers survive in the harsh colonial conditions. Venema's careful research shows that although Beverwijck resembled villages in the Dutch Republic in many ways, it quickly took on features of the new, "American" society that was already coming into being.

The story begins in Europe, with a brief history of the church out of which the Reformation grew. The scene then shifts to New Amsterdam in 1628, where a miniscule church survived the English conquest and eventually grew into the Reformed Church in America. By Grace Alone follows its story into the twenty-first century. In addition to the sequential story of the Reformed Church's development, there are vignettes of people involved in events small and great - from the diary of a frail young woman who survived near calamity at sea but ended her life at eighty-one, the widow of the president of Queen's College, to the boy from a farm in Iowa who built the Crystal Cathedral. The reader will also be helped by timelines in every chapter, as well as a glossary, an index, and many illuminating illustrations.

One of the RCAs foremost researchers here offers commentary that explains the proper roles of elders, deacons, classes, and synods and details the procedures necessary for successful church life. Based on the Book of Church Order, this helpful volume will assist church leaders in their callings and prevent the myriad difficulties that arise when appropriate procedures are not followed. A necessity for every pastor, elder, and deacon.

A biography of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, one of the founding directors of the Dutch West India Company and a leading figure in the establishment of the New Netherland colony

Stuyvesant Bound is an innovative, compelling reassessment of the last Director-General of New Netherland. Donna Merwick employs a multidisciplinary approach to examine the layers of culture within which Peter Stuyvesant forged his career and performed his identity.

The story of New Baltimore, New York, a small Hudson River town, and how outside pressures and local hard work have combined to forge a lasting community

The Dutch involvement in North America started after Henry Hudson, sailing under a Dutch flag in 1609, traveled up the river that would later bear his name. The Dutch control of the region was short-lived, but had profound effects on the Hudson Valley region. In The Colony of New Netherland, Jaap Jacobs offers a comprehensive history of the Dutch colony on the Hudson from the first trading voyages in the 1610s to 1674, when the Dutch ceded the colony to the English. As Jacobs shows, New Netherland offers a distinctive example of economic colonization and in its social and religious profile represents a noteworthy divergence from the English colonization in North America. Centered around New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, the colony extended north to present-day Schenectady, New York, east to central Connecticut, and south to the border shared by Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, leaving an indelible imprint on the culture, political geography, and language of the early modern mid-Atlantic region. Dutch colonists' vivid accounts of the land and people of the area shaped European perceptions of this bountiful land; their own activities had a lasting effect on land use and the flora and fauna of New York State, in particular, as well as on relations with the Native people with whom they traded. Sure to become readers' first reference to this crucial phase of American early colonial history, The Colony of New Netherland is a multifaceted and detailed depiction of life in the colony, from exploration and settlement through governance, trade, and agriculture. Jacobs gives a keen sense of the built environment and social relations of the Dutch colonists and closely examines the influence of the church and the social system adapted from that of the Dutch Republic. Although Jacobs focuses his narrative on the realities of quotidian existence in the colony, he considers that way of life in the broader context of the Dutch Atlantic and in comparison to other European settlements in North America.