Dec. 14, 2012. Q. Roosevelt Island was formerly called Blackwell’s Island. Who was Blackwell? A. Blackwell’s Island, named for a family that farmed it for generations, was midway in a long Richmond County has kept its original name. The island itself was named in the 1600s for the Dutch parliament, known as the Staten-Generaal, and was “Staaten Eylandt” to the Dutch. In 1683, after the island landed in British hands, the county was named for Charles II’s illegitimate son, Charles Lennox, First Duke of Richmond. There are hundreds of classical names for towns in Upstate New York. How about a shout out for my former hometown, Greece, NY, a suburb of Rochester. According to the wikipedia entry, “The Town of Greece was established in 1822 …The name Greece was selected because of the contemporary struggle of Greece for independence from Turkey.”. The small colonial town that the Dutch founded in North America was called New Amsterdam. We now know it as New York City. The story of how the name evolved has many twists and turns and is, in fact, a tale of war and peace. New Amsterdam was the talk of the town in 1953, as New York City commemorated the 300 th anniversary of its city charter. How Did New York Lincolnshire Get Its Name? By Tanya Garner / November 16, 2022. English: The hamlet was named after the city of York in Yorkshire – unlike New York City in the USA, which was named after the 17th-century Duke of York, James Stuart, the future James II. Category:New York, Lincolnshire. human settlement in United Kingdom. It is named after James Duane, the first mayor of New York after the British evacuation. He was a founder of the New York Manumission Society, but is named as a slaveholder in Trinity Church records. His father Anthony was listed as a slaveholder in records of the 1741 slave rebellion plot. Is New York named after YORK England? The settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under English control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. When did the British lose New York? After winning independence American land surveyors divided upstate New York into gridded districts, which were then named. In particular, central New York, which was sparsely populated, was heavily surveyed for the establishment of the Central New York Military Tract, a settlement scheme for veterans of the Revolution. 1SNsTR.