During its Golden Age, the Dutch Republic of the Seven United Netherlands had settlements around the world, including a monopoly on trade with Japan, Jakarta, Java and Asia.



They invented a way of financing these endeavors without taxes - the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

People could buys shares in the Dutch East India Company whose ships sailed to Indonesia or Japan. It was the first modern stock market.

And in case the ships sank, the Dutch invented "insurance" companies.



The Dutch started a Dutch West India Company which sent Henry Hudson to find a water route west across America to the Pacific.



Though unsuccessful, Hudson claimed the land along the "Hudson" River, and founded the New Netherlands Colony, receiving its charter JUNE 3, 1621.

The Dutch began a New Amsterdam Stock Exchange which met along a street near the wall of their settlement.



In 1624, the Chamber of Amsterdam wrote articles for the Dutch Colony, establishing the Dutch Reformed denomination:

"They shall within their territory practice no other form of divine worship than that of the Reformed religion...

and thus by their Christian life and conduct seek to draw the Indians and other blind people to the knowledge of God and His word, without, however, persecuting any on account of his faith, but leaving each one the use of his conscience."



The New Amsterdam Charter of Freedoms, June 7, 1629, gave land to wealthy "Patroons" who helped 50 families emigrate, stating:

"Colonists shall...in the speediest manner...find out ways and means whereby they may support a Minister and Schoolmaster, that thus the service of God and zeal for religion may not grow cool."



One Dutch family that immigrated was the Roosevelt family, as Franklin D. Roosevelt told the Detroit Jewish Chronicle, March 7, 1935:

"All I know about the origin of the Roosevelt family in this country is that all branches bearing the name are apparently descended from Claes Martenssen Van Roosevelt, who came from Holland sometime before 1648."

Beginning in 1639, Lutheran Germans, Swedes and Finns, as well as Anglicans from England, began immigrating, numbering 500 of the colony?'s 3,500 population in 1655.



Presbyterians erected their first meeting house on Eastern Long Island in 1640, and the first Jews arrived in the colony in 1654.

In 1664, the British took control and changed the colony's name to New York.

The New Amsterdam Stock Exchange then became the New York Stock Exchange, referred to as Wall Street.

Though British established the Anglican Church, French Protestant Huguenots began arriving in 1680.



The New York Charter of Liberties and Privileges, (paragraph 27), passed October 30, 1683, stated:

"That no person or persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ shall at any time be any ways molested...But that...every such person...fully enjoy his or their...consciences in matters of religion...not using this Liberty to Licentiousness...

The respective Christian Churches now in practice within the City of New York....shall...enjoy...freedoms of their Religion in Divine Worship and Church discipline."

The first Methodist meeting in the American Colonies was in New York City in 1766.

In 1781, was the first mention of a public Catholic worship service in New York.

In 1811, the New York Supreme Court's Chief Justice, Chancellor Kent, stated in the case of Peoples v Ruggles:

"Christianity was parcel of the law...that whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government...

The people of this State, in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity...

We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors."



In 1838, the New York State Legislature wrote:

"No people on the face of the globe are without a prevailing national religion....

With us it is wisely ordered that no one religion shall be established by law, but that all persons shall be left free in their choice and in their mode of worship.

Still, this is a Christian nation. Ninety-nine hundredths, if not a larger proportion, of our whole population, believe in the general doctrines of the Christian religion.

Our Government depends for its being on the virtue of the people, - on that virtue that has its foundation in the morality of the Christian religion."



Get the book, The Original 13-A Documentary History of Religion in America's First Thirteen States

New York's State Constitution, 1846, 1894, and 1938, stated in its Preamble:

"We, the People of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this Constitution."