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Excerpt from Kingston: Its Representative Business Men and Its Points of Interest The early history of any town whose origin antedates the Revolution is of interest, but that of Kingston is of extraordinary interest, intimately connected as it is with and indeed forming an essential part of the history of our country at its birth, and of the history of the Empire State, of which Kingston was at one time the third town in importance. The student of our national history must of necessity give much time to that of Kingston, not only because the town was the scene of some very decisive events during the struggle for liberty and attained such prominence as to cause its destruction by fire at the hands of the British, whose excuse was the necessity of exterminating this "nest of rebels" as they were pleased to call it, but also because here was convened and organized the first Senate of the State of New York, and also because among Kingston's residents were numbered some of the boldest and most successful fighters against "Taxation without representation." But the record of these happenings does not, strictly speaking, form a part of the early history of Kingston, for the first attempts at settlement in this place were made more than 150 years before the Revolution, so that in order to get at the first beginnings here we must go back to the good old days when Holland and not Britannia "ruled the waves"; when the Dutch people were as bold explorers as they were successful traders, and when no other nation was more respected or formed a more powerful factor in the worlds development. We must go back to 1609, when Hendrick Hudson set sail from Holland in the little ship Half-moon, furnished him by the Dutch East India Company, by whom he was commissioned to seek a passage to the East Indies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.