Schenectady

Schenectady, a city and county-seat of New York, on the Erie Canal and the south bank of the Mohawk River, 17 miles by rail NW. of Albany. It is the seat of Union College (1795; since 1873, in virtue of the affiliation to it of law and medical schools at Albany, Union University), and contains machinery and locomotive works, stove-foundries, woollen and flour mills, broom-factories, &c. Schenectady was settled by the Dutch in 1661. In 1690 the place was burned and sixty of the inhabitants massacred and ninety carried off by the French and Indians. Pop. (1890) 19,902.