Joseph Hidley’s Painting of Poestenkill c. 1855
I did - so I did some research! And I found the awesome roots n web site - which has a history of all Rensselaer county town names.
Not surprisingly, many of the names are based on the Dutch heritage which runs rampant throughout the Capital District. AND they have relevance to the Hudson River and the creeks and lakes in the area. AND of course the wealthy landowners who owned most of the land earned some names as well.
For example, Averill Park is named after James Knox AVERILL, who owned quite a bit of land in the area as well as a famous horse named “Moscow”. One source says that James Knox Averill died on 21 May 1881. Our cemeteries database has a James K. Averill (1846-1900) who is buried at Sand Lake Union Cemetery in Sand Lake. The hamlet of Wynantskill, a part of the town of North Greenbush, takes its name from the Wynantskill, a creek that runs through it. The creek was named for Wynant Vanderpoel, whose land the creek traversed; he had a sawmill on the creek.
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