A group of Dutch settlers, mostly merchants and fur traders looking to do business with Native Americans, settled the banks of the Mohawk in an area between the present Ferry, Front and State streets and Washington Avenue in 1661. This group of twelve houses surrounded by a wooden stockade, 200 Dutch feet (about 187 feet, or 56.6 m) on a side is considered the founding of the city of Schenectady. After the 1674 Treaty of Westminster ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War the settlement, like all established by the Dutch in New Netherland, came under British control as part of the Province of New York.
