Nor is the year 1656 memorable in the annals of Albany alone. In
that same year your imperial metropolis, then numbering about three
hundred inhabitants, was first laid out as a city, by the name of New
Amsterdam.[A] In eight years more, New Netherland becomes New York; Fort
Orange and its dependent hamlet assumes the name of Albany. A century
of various fortune succeeds; the scourge of French and Indian war is
rarely absent from the land; every shock of European policy vibrates
with electric rapidity across the Atlantic; but the year 1756 finds
a population of 300,000 in your growing province. Albany, however,
may still be regarded almost as a frontier settlement. Of the twelve
counties into which the province was divided a hundred years ago, the
county of Albany comprehended all that lay north and west of the city;
and the city itself contained but about three hundred and fifty houses.
[Footnote A: These historical notices are, for the most part, abridged
from Mr. Brodhead's excellent history of New York.]