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New Utrecht


Coordinates: 40°36′36″N 74°0′12″W / 40.61000°N 74.00333°W / 40.61000; -74.00333

New Utrecht was established in 1652 by Dutch colonists in what is today Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York. It was the last of the original six towns to be founded in Kings County, now the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It was named after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands.

In 1643, Anthony Janszoon van Salee, a half-Dutch, half-Moroccan son of a pirate, and a resident of New Amsterdam, obtained from the director-general of New Netherland a patent on a tract of farmland of more than 200 acres on western Long Island. It ran along the shore of the Bay and stood opposite Staten Island. Most of the land remained wild until, in 1652, Cornelius van Werckhoven, a surveyor born in Utrecht and a principal investor in the Dutch West India Company, took it over. Upon his death in 1655, Jacques Cortelyou, guardian for Werckhoven's children, received permission to sell lots of the land to create a town. Twenty lots were laid out. Cortelyou named the settlement Nieuw Utrecht after Werckhoven's hometown.


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