Why "Nobody" Lives In Upstate New York

[brownelvis54]

The Finger Lake region is absolutely stunning, extremely beautiful

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Upstater here 

One of the major reasons that Upstate doesn't grow is because of the high tax structure. People in Upstate feel as if they are a money line to NYC (as in taxes). They love NYC, it's just that NYS taxes up north would be nil if we weren't supporting the money pit (NYC)

A little bit of history about New Netherlands. We picture in our head, that New Netherlands looked like the state as we see today, the "wolf head looking west". However, New Netherlands looked a lot more like a banana (some might say, a penis) with three major "cities", if they could be called that. Albany, primarily a fur trading post had a population of several hundred. New Amsterdam (NYC) had a population of roughly a thousand. And the state capital was Kingston, with a population of about 5,000. It looked like this:

The orange shading is New Netherland


The reason the British decided to take New Netherland was because New England was getting crowded and they wanted to expand westward. The Dutch families of New Netherland were not well armed and gave up with nary a shot being fired. However, even after the British taking over the area, hardly any British family moved west of the Hudson River for the next hundred and fifty years. The reason being was, the British had so many hostilities with the natives that they didn't trust them. The Dutch though, had a good working relationship with the natives so they were used as sort of a buffer. The Mohawk Natives were known as "The Keepers of the Eastern Wall". So the land was primarily German/Dutch and New Paltz, which was a French Huguenot city. To clarify, there was no such thing as Germany, as it did not become a country until 1871. Most of the "Germans" who had settled in New Amsterdam were actually "Palatines" who came to the area with the Dutch from the "Palatinate"...the valley along the Rhine River. The village of New Paltz was called "Neue Pfaltz", which translated means New Palatine. At the time, what is now known as "Germany", was just an ad hoc collection of independent self-governing colonies, sometimes called, "city-states". The population was basically made up of "Franks", which is the Dutch root word for "French". In fact, the Dutch name for France is Frankrijk and the German word for France is Frankreich (both terms mean "the Realm of the Franks"



Britains didn't really leave New England en masse to NY, NJ, and PA until after the War of Independence was over. And only then because payment to Revolutionary War soldiers (called "Patriots" in the U.S. and "Rebels" or "insurgents" by the British) was in the form of land grants in those areas. A soldier might get 20 acres or 100 acres pr even a thousand acres in the middle of "Indian" country, but it was up to them to either make peace with them or fight them once they settled

Another interesting tidbit of history. Even the Dutch feared the natives to some point, so they built a fort at the tip of Manhattan and then a barrier wall across the entire island as a safety precaution. A road ran alongside the wall, and guess what they called it? Wall Street...hence the name today



Population of Upstate is roughly 11 million, alone it would be 8th largest state in the Union

Sorry, as a "History" major for a couple years at SUNY Cortland, I get carried away. I should've been a history teacher instead of an engineer

[Bill Brown]

Very interesting Ric. Thanks for the history lesson.

Bill

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Another little tidbit of history that some might find interesting, is the reason behind the name, the New York Knicks. As it turns out, the Dutch were the originators of Knickers, which of course, carried over into New Amsterdam and was standard men's dress wear, as well as newly-named New York City for the next century or so...hence, the folks from NYC were given the nickname, "Knickerbockers" by just about everyone outside the city because of their unique style of clothing...similar to the name "Yankees" given to those from the northeast, by southerners

Presumably, the Netherlands (so called "nether" because it was uninhabitable and "hell on earth") was lowland and little more than a country-sized swamp. Protestants under attack during the Reformation had fled to the Netherlands to avoid persecution and death. They built dykes and drained the swamp and turned the "nether world" into some of the most fertile lands in the world. They wore boots all the time as there was a lot of wet land to deal with. So short baggy pants with a tight cuff above the boot line was standard Dutch wear. So even after they moved to the new world, their style of clothing carried over into New Amsterdam/New York City, although they eventually got rid of the high boots and switched to high socks

So the next time you wonder why the city's basketball team is called the New York Knicks, it's because of the original nickname of New Yorkers

[LennG]

Thanks Ric for all that great info. We spent a week in the Finger Lakes region last summer with my family and grandkids. Our first time in this region in many years. We loved it.

My wife had to go to Seneca Falls the supposed setting for 'Its a wonderful life '. We even found the museum there that is dedicated to it.
Wonderful country.

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Thanks Ric for all that great info. We spent a week in the Finger Lakes region last summer with my family and grandkids. Our first time in this region in many years. We loved it.

My wife had to go to Seneca Falls the supposed setting for 'Its a wonderful life '. We even found the museum there that is dedicated to it.
Wonderful country.

I love the Finger Lakes. After I retired, I started a Wine Touring business for a few years. I would take people to wineries around Cayuga and Seneca Lakes. Met a lot of great people and got to know the owners of many of the wineries. It was fun while it lasted. I used to go to Owasco Lake to smelt many years ago and I still see Skaneateles Lake during my many travels...usually on motorcycle. Very pretty countryside