10500 BC Paleo-Indians populate the future Hudson and Mohawk valleys
1609 Henry Hudson sails the Halfmoon up the future Hudson River to a point south of present-day Albany. Lucrative fur trade inspires the creation of the Dutch West India Company
1630 Dutch merchant Killiaen Van Rensselaer, patroon of Rensselaerwyck, purchases Indian land
1634 Lubbertsland, now Troy, is named after early settler Lubbert Gijsbertsz
1651 Kiliaen Van Rensselaer purchases what we now know as the Wynantskill area from native peoples
1656 Kiliaen Van Rensselaer first leases water power on the lower creek, near the Hudson River
1658 Wynant Gerritse van der Poel begins milling in present-day South Troy on the Wynantskill, or Wynant’s Channel
1660s Grist mills are built along the Poestenkill
1707 Derick Van der Heyden rents 497 acres along the Hudson from the Poesten Kill to the Piscawen Kill for three and three-quarter bushels of wheat and two fat hens
1735 The Van Schaick House is built on Van Schaick Island, opposite present-day Lansingburgh. General Schuyler will quarter his staff there in 1777
1763 Abraham Jacob Lansing purchases Stone Arabia Patent (Lansingburgh)
1768 Joshua Lockwood and William Carpenter build the first grist mill in the Sand Lake area
1771 A map of New City (Lansingburgh) is filed to distinguish it from Old City (Albany). Lansingburgh merchants prosper, supplying customers in Vermont, in Lake George, and along the Hudson
1786 Van der Heyden’s land is owned by grandson Jacob I. Van der Heyden (north patroon) and great-grandsons Jacob David Van der Heyden (middle patroon) and Matthias Van der Heyden (south patroon). New City’s growth pressures the patroons to sell lots to settle the area around Ashley’s Ferry, where the stagecoach line between New City and Old City crosses the Hudson. This will become the core of downtown Troy
1787 Flores Bancker plans a village on Jacob David Van der Heyden’s farm in the style of Philadelphia, with regular squares and rectangular streets. Settlers include physician Samuel Gale and merchants Benjamin Thurber, Colonel Albert Pawling, Colonel Abraham Ten Eyck, and Benjamin Covell
1789 Van der Heyden’s settlement is named Troy at a meeting at Ashley’s Tavern. New Hampshire brothers Samuel and Ebenezer Wilson arrive in Troy, establishing a brick manufactory at Ferry Street and Sixth Avenue
1791 Henry Burden born
1792 Mahlon Taylor purchases an old mill site on the Poestenkill Gorge, rebuilds the dam, and constructs the first paper mill in northern New York
1795 The first bridge across the Mohawk, a toll bridge, connects Cohoes and Waterford
1799 First dam appears on what would later be known as Glass Lake
1800 Knowlson family moves to Sand Lake from Albany, where they had been dry goods merchants, build what is now known as the Andrew Knowlson House, and invest in local glass, lumber, and textile mills
1804 The first bridge over the Hudson River north of New York City, a Burr Arch Truss, built by the Union Bridge Company, connects Lansingburgh and Waterford
1806 Rensselaer Glass Works is established at Glass (House) Lake
1807 The first iron mill on the Wynantskill commences operations
1807 The success of the North River Steamboat of Clermont wins Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston a monopoly over steamboat operations in New York
1808 Connecticut native Benjamin Hanks and son Julius open a bronze foundry in Gibbonsville (now Watervliet), beginning a world famous bell industry involving four different but related firms
1809 Troy Iron and Nail Factory opens on the south side of Wynantskill’s upper falls; 13 years later, engineer Henry Burden will become superintendent and, after inventing machines to make horseshoes and railroad spikes, will assume full ownership in 1848
1812 To provide ammunition and supplies for the War of 1812, Congress purchases property from James Gibbons, at Gibbonsville (now Watervliet), to build an arsenal. Samuel Wilson, nicknamed Uncle Sam by the troops he feeds, supplies meat packed in barrels stamped “US” to the encampment near Greenbush
1816 Troy incorporated as a city
1819 Henry Burden arrives in Albany from Scotland
1820 Orasmus Eaton opens a Troy coach factory. In 1831, apprentice Uri Gilbert becomes a partner as focus gradually shifts to the manufacture of railroad passenger cars. After a fire in 1852, the firm moves to Green Island
1820 Lansingburgh Academy opens with Reverend Samuel Blatchford (RPI’s first President) as principal, and students include author Herman Melville and future US President Chester A. Arthur
1820 G. C. Arnold builds first cotton mill in Sand Lake area on site of what would later be the Faith Mills, owned in the late 1800s by Andrew Knowlson
1821 Struggling educator Emma Willard relocates her Female Seminary from Waterford to Troy’s Moulton Coffeehouse on Second Street. In 1908, Emma Willard School will move to Pawling Avenue
1821 Charles and Nathaniel Starbuck and Ephraim Gurley initiate area stove manufacturing. Thirty years later, seven Troy foundries will operate, the most popular stove being Philo P. Stewart’s
1822 Henry Burden becomes the superintendent of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory
1823 The first state dam and lock on the Hudson, between Troy and Green Island, opens Lansingburgh to seasonal sloop navigation
1823 The Troy Sentinel becomes the world’s first publisher of “A Visit From Saint Nicholas”
1824 Stephen Van Rensselaer III, patroon of Rensselaerwyck, founds the Rensselaer School, now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in the Farmers Bank Building at 703 River Street, Troy
1824 Chief Justice Marshall declares the Livingston/Fulton steamboat monopoly unconstitutional. In gratitude, the Troy Steamboat Company will later name their first steamboat after him
1825 The Erie Canal opens from Buffalo to New York City
1825 Henry Burden gets his first patent, for a spike-making machine
1825 Troy’s first bell manufacturing business opens
1826 Andrew Meneely starts his first bell factory
1827 Hannah Lord Montague invents the detachable collar. The collar industry thrives, earning Troy the nickname “Collar City”
1829 Deborah Powers inherits her husband William’s Lansingburgh floor cloth business, the forerunner of linoleum, after his death in a varnish fire. D. Powers and Sons, Inc., flourishes under her leadership, expanding to Newburgh and New York City
1829 Twenty-three parties form themselves into the Wynants Kill Association, the stated object of which is “to get control, and to draw and to drain the Lakes that discharge their waters into the Wynants Kill, in a way that will make them most useful to the undersigned”
1830 Eastern Union Turnpike is completed between Sand Lake and Hancock, Massachusetts
1831 Canvass White designs a dam across the Mohawk River above Cohoes Falls, allowing Cohoes and its future Harmony Mills to become nationally significant in textile manufacturing
1835 Henry Burden gets the first of five patents for a horseshoe-making machine
1835 Henry Burden acquires half interest in the Troy Iron & Nail Factory
1838 While relying on the use of five small and increasingly inadequate water wheels, Henry Burden begins construction of his great wheel (see 1851 below)
1838 Moby Dick author Herman Melville moves to Lansingburgh, where he writes Typee and Omoo
1840 Census data indicates Troy is, per capita, the fourth wealthiest city in the US
1840 Benjamin Marshall creates a Troy cotton mill by damming the Poestenkill above Mt. Ida Falls, inspiring additional factories by Kellogg, Manning, Orr, and Smart
1840 Burden is granted a patent for the hook-headed railroad spike and the machine to make it
1841 Rev. Peter Havermans arrives in Troy, becoming pastor of St. Peter’s and, later, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Churches
1845 Trojans William Gurley and Jonas Phelps partner to make precision instruments and eventually will become famous as W. & L.E. Gurley, world’s largest manufacturer of surveying instruments
1845 William Manning, Gardner Howland, and Alvin Williams found the Mt. Ida Mill that in 1855 becomes Manning and Peckham and eventually Hammermill Paper Company in Green Island in 1962
1845 George W. Eddy establishes a stove-making foundry, later specializing in valve-making
1845 About a million pre-famine Irish emigrants have relocated to England and North America
1845 Staats Tompkins builds paper mill on Wynantskill where it now crosses Burden Lake Road
1846 New York State Legislature passes an act of incorporation for the “Wynants Kill Improvement Association,” which authorizes “trusts for the benefit of the owners and occupants of Mill Privileges on the Wynant’s Kill"
1847 Cornerstone of St. Joseph’s Church laid
1848 Henry Burden achieves sole ownership of his company and renames it Henry Burden & Sons
1848 The Troy Gas Light Company is formed. In the 1870s, it will build its famous Gasholder House
1848 Rev. Peter Havermans says the first Mass at St. Joseph’s Church
1849 Erastus Corning’s Albany Iron Works builds the first steam-powered rolling mill near today’s Menands Bridge
1850 Troy (Catholic) Hospital opens, following fund-raising drive by Rev. Havermans, and is operated by the Sisters of Charity
1851 The famous Burden Water Wheel (60 feet in diameter, 22 feet wide, 280 horsepower on a routine basis, 1100 horsepower as theoretical limit, and therefore the most powerful vertical water wheel in history) is put into use
1852 St. Patrick’s Day riot
1853 Troy boasts seven stove foundries, employing 670 people and making 75 thousand stoves a year
1854 The Troy Union Railroad Company opens the Sixth Avenue Union depot
1856 Names of African-American citizens are no longer italicized in the Troy City Directory, but oppression continues
1860 Charles Nalle, fugitive slave, escapes authorities amid an angry mob on First and State streets in Troy with Harriet Tubman’s assistance. Uri Gilbert, Nalle’s employer, raises $650 to buy his freedom
1860 After a fire destroys the Philip Upham Tavern at the site, James M. Mosher builds the Crooked Lake Hotel on the east shore of Crooked Lake
1861 New Haven entrepreneur Cornelius Bushnell works with naval architect Samuel Pook to develops plans for the ironclad Galena and recruits Troy iron manufacturers John A. Griswold and John F. Winslow to supply iron plating
1861 In Troy, Battery Associates (Bushnell, Ericsson, Griswold, and Winslow) sign contract with very tough terms for construction of the Monitor for $275,000; construction will eventually involve the following assignments:
·        Corning, Winslow & Co., Troy—deck and hull armor, angle iron for frame
·        Griswold’s Rensselaer Iron Works, Troy—rivets, bar iron for pilot house

·        Clute Bros. Foundry, Schenectady—auxiliary steam engines, gun carriages, special anchor hoisting mechanism, engine room grates
·        Continental Iron Works, Greenpoint, Brooklyn—construction and launching of the ship
·        Novelty Iron Works, Manhattan—turret assembly
·        Delamater Iron Works, Manhattan—main engines, boilers, etc., plus propeller
1861 Designed by John Ericsson, the U.S.S. Monitor is constructed, with armor plates forged at the John F. Winslow Iron Works. With the financial backing of John A. Griswold, the contract is signed in a small room now preserved in the present-day Franklin Plaza
1862 The Monitor and the Virginia pummel each other for five hours, ending in a technical stalemate; Troy native George S. Geer serves as the Monitor’s Fireman, hoisting cannonballs up into the turret
1862 The Monitor sinks during a squall off Cape Hatteras, taking 16 crew to the bottom
1862 Henry Burden builds his Lower Works along the Hudson above the Wynantskill
1862 A spark from an engine crossing the Troy-Green Island Railroad Bridge ignites the wooden roof, destroying 75 acres of Troy’s downtown
1863 Draft and anti-black riots occur in response to the war. A mob trying to burn down the black Liberty St. Presbyterian Church is discouraged by Rev. Peter Havermans, founder of Troy’s first Catholic parish. Burden iron workers protest the Troy Daily Times editorial’s support of $300 payments to escape conscription
1864 Labor activist Kate Mullany organizes the first truly all-female labor union in the country, the Troy Collar Laundry Union
1865 New dam appears on Glass Lake, raising the level over a foot, and Burden Lake is created
1865 Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, escaped slave and former pastor of Troy’s Liberty Street Presbyterian Church, offers an anti-slavery prayer before the House of Representatives, the first person of African-American descent to do so
1865 John A. Griswold introduces the Bessemer process to the US, converting pig iron into steel, at Rensselaer Steel and Iron Works
1868 Woodside Presbyterian Church is built
1869 St. Luke’s Episcopal Church is consecrated for the “English iron workers”
1871 Henry Burden dies
1873 St. Michael’s Church assumes some of the pastoral responsibilities of St. Joseph’s Church in South Troy
1875 Troy Music Hall opens and becomes famous for its superb acoustics
1875 Railroads, taking 11 hours compared to 10 days by canal to transport goods from Buffalo to New York City, now handle the bulk of commercial traffic
1880 Labor organizations protest working conditions, and stove manufacturers leave Troy
1880s Burden Iron Company is producing almost a million horseshoes a week, and about five thousand people work in South Troy’s iron and steel industries
1886 Prosperous breweries in Troy produce over 175,000 barrels
1890 Census reveals combined Troy church membership of 40,945, two-thirds of entire population, with about 29,000 Catholics
1890 The Burden Water Wheel ceases operation, and in 1896 the Upper Burden Iron Works are abandoned. The wheel is in all likelihood the inspiration for the world’s first Ferris Wheel in 1893, designed by RPI graduate George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.
1890 The Soldiers and Sailors Monument is erected in Washington Square (now Monument Square) in Troy to honor local soldiers
1893 Troy’s Ross Valve moves to Oakwood Avenue and begins to become world famous
1895 The Troy & New England Railway Company begins operation of an electric trolley line between Troy and Averill Park
1896 The Burden Water Wheel is stopped and the “Upper Works” of the Burden Iron Company are abandoned
1897 Rev. Peter Havermans dies
1897 Troy Public Library moves to the William Howard Hart Memorial Building, home to one of Troy’s many famous Tiffany windows, donated by Mary E. Hart
1897 Wealthy dry goods merchant William H. Frear opens the new Troy Cash Bazaar in the Frear Building
1900 Troy’s Chamber of Commerce is formed
1900 Area trolley car workers begin a series of strikes over the next 30 years
1901 Lansingburgh consolidates with Troy, retaining separate school districts
1901 The Wynantskill Improvement Association is incorporated under the Membership Corporation Law, with five directors:  James A. Burden, William Kemp, Robert T. Smart, Peter McCarthy, and W. Nelson Ells
1903 Troy purchases the Warren and Vail properties on Congress Street, at which site Garnett D. Baltimore, RPI’s first black graduate, designs Prospect Park
1907 The Approach is built where RPI’s main building was destroyed by fire in 1904, linking downtown with RPI
1909 Cluett Peabody and Company of Troy builds a bleachery at Peebles Island, the first place to use the Sanforization process invented by Sanford Cluett. It later will become a facility of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation
1914 The Burden Water Wheel collapses. Remnants will be sold for scrap in the 1940s
1915 Holy Trinity Church founded, assuming the pastoral responsibilities in South Troy for the Polish-American Catholic community
1916 Russell Sage College for Women opens on the former Emma Willard campus
1916 The new Federal Lock and Dam is completed at the foot of Bond Street
1918 The Waterford locks are built and the New York State Barge Canal system is completed
1925 The Troy & New England Railway Company ceases operations
1925 Bus service between Glass Lake and Troy commences
1929 Edward T. Heald publishes Taconic Trails:  Being a Partial Guide of Rensselaer County Rambles by Auto and Afoot (Albany:  J. B. Lyon Company, 1929)
1932 Trolley car service ends in Troy
1934 Troy Airport opens south of Campbell Avenue on the Williams family property, later becoming an industrial park
1938 Burden Iron Company ceases operations
1940 Republic Steel purchases the Burden Iron Company’s Lower Works property
1940 The remains of the Burden Water Wheel are salvaged for their scrap metal
1941 Troy Cash Bazaar closes and is sold to investors
1948 The North/South Arterial, proposed from the Menands Bridge to the Waterford Bridge, is successfully blocked by the Lansingburgh Third Avenue Association, and will later be built on the Watervliet side of the Hudson
1951 The last bell foundry in the region closes, area foundries having cast over 100,000 bells including the Liberty Bell’s replacement in 1876. The most famous are the bells of the two Meneely foundries
1955 Union Depot closes, ending passenger train service in Troy
1966 The Troy Urban Renewal Agency begins to demolish the central downtown business area
1967 Troy Plaza opens on Hoosick Street, siphoning retail business from downtown
1972 The Preservation Committee of the Rensselaer County Historical Society spins off the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway
1974 The Gateway buys the Burden Office property at the foot of Polk Street from Republic Steel for $10 after having successfully nominated it to the National Register of Historic Places
1977 The Green Island Bridge collapses when a pier from the 1834-era bridge is weakened by high waters. It will be rebuilt in 1981
1977 Carl Grimm purchases the Frear Building, hoping to resurrect downtown Troy
1979 The Hudson-Mohawk Urban Cultural Park is established. The Uncle Sam Atrium opens in the Frear building with Denby’s and Carl’s as short-lived anchor stores
1980 The Collar City Bridge opens, completing the link with Interstate 787
1980 In the new Uncle Sam Atrium, Carl Grimm opens Troy’s first new movie theater in 45 years
1981 Rensselaer Technology Park is planned on 1,200 acres on Route 4 at Jordan Road, incorporating the historic Philip DeFreest farmhouse as an administration building
1982 Railroad tracks from Green Island to Waterford are removed and Matton Shipyard in Cohoes closes. The Arrow Shirt Factory moves 200 jobs out of Troy
1990 Hedley Park Place office complex opens in the former Cluett building in Troy
1999 The refurbished Approach reunites downtown with RPI at the Winslow Building, the Junior Museum’s new location
2000 The Arts Center of the Capital Region moves from Washington Park’s Uri Gilbert House to renovated buildings on River Street, helping to revitalize downtown Troy