During the colonial period, Queens became one of the twelve original counties of the colony of New York. At the meeting of the Colonial Assembly on October 17, 1683, Queens was laid out to border Long Island Sound to the north, Suffolk County to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and Kings County to the west. The decree went into action on November 1, 1683. Covering three hundred ninety-six square miles, Queens was formerly part of the Yorkshire “riding,” or jurisdiction. Queens was named in honor of Queen Catherine of Braganza, Queen to King Charles II, who reigned from 1638 to 1705. The county was later subdivided into five townships: Flushing, Hempstead, Jamaica, Newtown, and Oyster Bay. Hempstead was divided into the Towns of Hempstead and North Hempstead in 1784.[1] On January 1, 1898, about one-third of the county, the three western towns, consolidated with the City of New York. It is officially designated as the Borough of Queens in the City of New York.[2]
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Maspeth: From Small Dutch Community to Part of the Great Metropolis
[1] Henry Isham Hazelton, The Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, Counties of Nassau and Suffolk, Long Island, New York, 1609-1924 (New York: Lewis Historical, 1925), 939.
[2] Edward J. Smits, The Creation of Nassau County (Mineola, NY: Nassau County Dept. of Public Works, 1960), 20.
