The settlers built their houses on the Indian trail leading Westward to which they gave the name of Beaver street—their grand boulevard which must have been two or three squares long. Beaver Street was the main highway of the Walloon Nation and was the center of the “Old Colonie” as the Dutch neighborhood was subsequently called. Under English rule, the “Old Colonie” or Beaverwick was merged with Fort Orange and Rensselaerwick, these, collectively, being named Albany in honor of the Duke of York, Albany being one of his titles. The Dutch of the “Old Colonie” did not take kindly to the supremacy of the English. They obeyed the laws and the constituted authorities but they stubbornly maintained their autonomy as far as practicable, holding aloof from their English neighbors, keeping to their own language, their own manners and customs, and their own habits of life, generation after generation. As the “Old Colonie” extended its borders and new elements were added to its population, these Dutch characteristics were gradually modified and finally disappeared altogether, but they resisted modern influences many years and as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, evidences of Dutch ancestry were still to be noticed among the people of the “Old Colonie.” My father’s house, where I was born, stood on the south side of Beaver street next to that of the Ostranders where the last Walloon Civil Chief was said to have lived. As a child I heard Dutch spoken in the street, in the stores and the market. We spoke Dutch, more or less, at home, and no other language at my grandfather’s farm. The Sears family came from Cape Cod, but my mother was a Van Der Zee, and although the first Van Der Zee came from Holland in 1642, the family was as Dutch as ever in 1842, two centuries later. Mother learned English, at school but spoke it very little until after her marriage, and then crooned nursery rhymes in Dutch to her children; “Trip a trop a tronches,” “Wat zegt Mynhur Papa,” etc. My father’s store was “on the Pier,” which is equivalent to saying he was a flour merchant. The Pier was a sort of bulkhead between the canal basin and the river, and it was occupied by a single row of buildings, all of which were flour stores. The Genesee Valley was a famous wheat growing country in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the grain was ground in Rochester and shipped down the Erie Canal to Albany, the receiving and distributing center for the trade. My father made business trips to New York, and, sometimes, as far east as Boston, in those days a long journey. He usually arranged to go “down the river” in the Spring, having, beside his own affairs, commissions to fill as delegate to one or more of the May Conventions.