Rensselaerwick, these, collectively, being named Albany in honor of the
Duke of York, Albany being one of his titles.

The Dutch of the "Old Colonie" did not take kindly to the supremacy of
the English. They obeyed the laws and the constituted authorities but
they stubbornly maintained their autonomy as far as practicable, holding
aloof from their English neighbors, keeping to their own language, their
own manners and customs, and their own habits of life, generation after
generation. As the "Old Colonie" extended its borders and new elements
were added to its population, these Dutch characteristics were gradually
modified and finally disappeared altogether, but they resisted modern
influences many years and as late as the middle of the nineteenth
century, evidences of Dutch ancestry were still to be noticed among the
people of the "Old Colonie."

My father's house, where I was born, stood on the south side of Beaver
street next to that of the Ostranders where the last Walloon Civil Chief
was said to have lived. As a child I heard Dutch spoken in the street,
in the stores and the market. We spoke Dutch, more or less, at home, and
no other language at my grandfather's farm. The Sears family came from
Cape Cod, but my mother was a Van Der Zee, and although the first Van
Der Zee came from Holland in 1642, the family was as Dutch as ever in
1842, two centuries later. Mother learned English, at school but spoke
it very little until after her marriage, and then crooned nursery rhymes
in Dutch to her children; "Trip a trop a tronches," "Wat zegt Mynhur
Papa," etc.

My father's store was "on the Pier," which is equivalent to saying he
was a flour merchant. The Pier was a sort of bulkhead between the canal
basin and the river, and it was occupied by a single row of buildings,