1524 --  Giovanni da Verrazano (an Italian explorer in the service of Francis I of France) sails into New York  Harbor on the Dauphine in search of the Northwest Passage. (From the statue in Battery Park by _______.)

1525 -- Esteban Gomez  (a Portuguese explorer of African descent in the service of Charles V of Spain), searching for gold and silver, sojourns briefly in the estuary of the river later to be called the Hudson River.

1609 -- Henry Hudson (an English explorer in the service of the Dutch) sails into New York Harbor on the Half Moon. 

1610 -- Fur trading, in the hands of a few experienced, profit-seeking traders,  begins on the Atlantic Coast. 

1613 -- Adriaen Block (a Netherland's mariner) sails into the East River.  Marooned on Manhattan Island,  he builds the Onrust (Restless) with native timber and sails through Hell Gate.

1621 -- The Dutch West India Company is chartered by businessmen to seek a profit and protect Dutch interests from other imperial powers.

1624 - -Belgian and Dutch settlers arrive at Manhattan, mostly French-speaking Walloons employed by the  Dutch West India Company.  The new colony is called New Amsterdam.

1626 -- Peter Minuit, the first director general of New Amsterdam, purchases Manhattan Island from the Algonquian Indians, for beads, trinkets, cloth and axes and other items valued at approximately $24 (est. in 1869 currency).

1628 -- The Dutch Reformed Church is founded under the ministry of Jonas Michaelius.  There are 50 communicants at the first service.  The Manhattan census for this year ( informal and of questionable accuracy), nevertheless states that there are 270 colonists, 30 houses and a half dozen farms.

1633 -- Wouter Van Twiller arrives with a troop of 104 musketeers, and assumes the Director Generalship of New Amsterdam.  Only 27 years old and formerly a clerk in an Amsterdam warehouse, he is  related by marriage to Van Rensselaer, a wealthy businessman associated with the Dutch West India Company. 

1635 -- Fort Amsterdam is completed, with four bastions mounted with artillery, but also with earthen ramparts that crumble away.  

1635 -- Caesari Alberti, the first Italian settler arrives from __________.

1638 -- The first ferry  runs between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

1640 -- By a decade before mid-century, the Dutch already own most of the New York area, comprising what is now  Metropolitan New York and the lands that extend up the Hudson River and into Albany.   In another few years,  additional purchases from  native Indians add all the boroughs and almost all the islands of present-day New York to the Dutch empire in the New World.

1641 -- The first tavern opens and it's called the Wooden Horse. 

1647 -- Peter Stuyvesant becomes governor of New Amsterdam.  Addressing the colonists and those in charge, he says:  "I shall govern you as a father his children, for the advantage of the chartered West India Company...."  His rule is despotic.  During his tenure he establishes a curfew, deprecates and punishes
the abuse of alcohol.  Albeit no doubt under public pressure,  he  permits the first election in New Amsterdam.
 

1653 --  New Amsterdam receives its own charter, separating it from the province of New Netherland, and ending the supervision and control of the Dutch West India Company.  Peter Stuyvesant and the colonists celebrate their elevated status with a parade down Broadway.  Also in this year Peter Stuyvesant oversees the creation a palisade wall, along the present route of Wall Street.    The wall spans a length of  2,340 feet (almost half a mile). 
 

1654  -- Jewish settlers arrive, firstly Jacob Barsimon in the summer; and then some 23  Sephardic Jews (from Spain and Portugal), and they form the congregation known as Shearith Israel.  Stuyvesant's  persecution and arrests of the Quakers in  Flushing result in the signing of the Flushing Remonstrance, a  protest demanding absolute religious freedom that is subsequently upheld by the courts in Amsterdam.
 

 1664 --  The Duke of York sends an armada of  four British men-of-war carrying 500 soldiers, under Colonel  Richard Nicholls, to the Port of New York which is coveted for its growing trade.  Nichols anchors in the Narrows and captures  Staten Island.   On August 34th, Nichols makes demands to Peter Stuyvesant that he surrender New Amsterdam.   Stuyvesant hesitates, and Nichols then anchors opposite  Fort Amsterdam and  disembarks troops in  Brooklyn.  On September 6, prominent citizens urged Stuyvesant to yield to  Nichols demands, and and two days later he signed articles of  capitulation.   To make the transfer of ownership definitive,  Nichols promptly renamed New  Amsterdam  --  New York!

1665 --  Thomas Willett is appointed the first Mayor of the city of New York.
 

1674 -- The Treaty of Westminster is signed, formally ending the Anglo-Dutch War and confirming the earlier cession of New  Netherland to the English.  The Dutch receive in exchange the Caribbean islands of Curacao and Demerara.

1676 --  The Broad Street Canal is  filled and and the area above it paved, thus making it a street.

1685 -- Thomas Dongan, the first Catholic Governor of New York, drafts a charter for the colonial Assembly, providing for government by election, consensual taxation, trial by jury and religious  freedom. 

1697 -- Trinity Church is established as a place of worship for Anglican colonists, under a royal charter from William III.  The first service in a new church at the present location, on  Broadway and Wall Street, is celebrated on March 13, 1698.

1701 -- Captain William Kidd is hanged in London for piracy, while his family continues to dwell in New York 

1702 -- Queen Anne appoints her cousin, Lord Cornbury, Governor of New York.  He engages  in cross-dressing, and sometimes shocks conservative colonists with his bizarre behavior.   More importantly, Yellow fever strikes New York in epidemic proportions and carries away some 500 souls, or about 1 in 9 of  the City's dwellers.

1712 -- As the number of slaves  increases and their treatment worsens under British rule, they determine to rebel.  On April 7th, a band of some 20 slaves sets fire to several houses and kills ten white residents.

1719 -- Fraunces Tavern, a Georgian-style townhouse is built is as residence for the wealthy merchant,  Etienne de Lancey.  In 1760 it's converted into a tavern by George Washington's steward, Samuel Fraunces.  This is where George Washington bids farewell to his officers in 17___. 

1722 -- The City's first Presbyterian Church is completed on the north of Wall Street

1725 -- William Bradford publishes the City's first newspaper,  the New York Gazette,  a weekly organ  in the service of the British government.

1731 --  A Smallpox epidemic rages through the City and sweeps away some 600 souls.