You won't believe my jaw-dropped reaction when I turned on the news on TV 20 mins ago to realize the royals are here in my state like 30 mins away! It's all over our local Upstate NY TV news right now and they include mentions of his mother's previous visit
Royal visit: A king and queen are coming to Upstate NY
Excerpt and a family coincidence*:
The royals are also scheduled for an afternoon trip to the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site*, once the home of Dutch General Philip J. Schuyler and his wife, Catherine Van Rensselaer, for a discussion on climate change with youth. Schuyler was a Revolutionary War general and a U.S. Senator in America’s first Congress; the mansion is where his daughter Elizabeth Schuyler married Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.
King Willem-Alexander is also expected to deliver a short address at a network event at the Governor’s Mansion in the evening.
We retired in Upstate NY partly because is just beautiful and more affordable than when we lived for decades in Connecticut, and partly because of my spouse's family of NY Dutch origins going as far as the 1630s colonists. Of the many, many descendants from the younger son of two Norwegian-Dutch colonists, Aneke Jans and Reverend Bogardus, was
Dutch General Philip J. Schuyler, my spouse's distant cousin from the 19th century. We visited that museum, a small residence, the Dutch Royals will go to back in 2018.
Unfortunately, we can't swing by the Albany area today since we have a car-related errand to do in Schenectady between 3-6 PM. But I'll follow the news on TV, and I'll post anything on the local news.
Just imagine the thought the Royal Forums became real, or Royal, today and in our area!
Some news from his activities in the work trip to the USA
Queen Maxima in an amazing daytime look:
King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands Co-Pilots Plane on Work Trip to the U.S. with Queen Maxima
In Atlanta Georgia
Article:
King and queen of the Netherlands pay tribute to MLK during visit to Atlanta
I believe they arrive in NY later today for dinner with our NY Governor in the state capital, Albany, which is 1/2 hour drive from us to the East, so that will be on the afternoon and 10 PM local news.
Before New York became an English possession, this area was colonized by Dutch settlers whose descendants still live and thrive here to this day. In upstate NY cities, towns and places have names given to them by the colonists from Netherlands and the old Sacred Roman (German) Empire. But the Dutch location names are everywhere in Upstate NY that a colony was established by using the Hudson River to navigate from the current Atlantic NYC opening into the heart of the state and further north.
Another Dutch navigation point was the Mohawk River, used by the Dutch to move toward the west of NY. The river is just 15 minutes away south of our home and back in the 19th century Dutch descendants, like General Shuyler, build the damns that improved navigation and commerce during the fur trade. In those days you could be in the Atlantic and navigate into the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers all the way to the center of the state.
The visits from Dutch Royals every few years are a big thing here in Upstate NY since Dutch descendants shaped commerce despite of doing it under the English, and then the USA flags.