This list of eighty-two distinct family groups roughly represents the settler population of the villiage/town of Beverwyck at the end of the so-called New Netherland period.

Already, these pre-urban dwellers were beginning to separate themselves from the farmers and husbandmen of the surrounding countryside.

This list also represents the largest number of New Netherland family names in the city during its first two centuries of life.

From this core group, a number of families left the Albany community - establishing new settlements at Schenectady, Kinderhook, Niskayuna, Catskill, Schaghticoke, Hoosic, Saratoga, and beyond. Some became tenants of the Van Rensselaers. Others left the region entirely.

Still others literally "died out" in the Albany setting.

Those who remained formed the core population of what became the city of Albany in 1686.

Beginning during the 1670s and 80s, the children of the New Netherland Dutch found marriage partners and raised American-born families of their own.

The Albany community continued to grow and to feed the growth of the entire Hudson-Mohawk region based on the natural increase of its New Netherland-ancestry settler stock. Although many people came and went, Albany’s New Netherland Dutch roots remained strong for another 200 years.

Throughout the eighteenth-century, most of the successful Albany families from all backgrounds could call on their direct connection to the settlers of New Netherland - particularly through the families of the city's wives and mothers.

At the same time, it is important to note that as many of those popularly known as the "New Netherland Dutch" traced their roots to the German, French, and Scandanavian states surrounding the Netherlands and even across the channel to what became Great Britain in 1707.

However, another major part of the early Albany story must be attributed to the contributions of its newcomers.