NY museum gets trove of colonial-era artifacts

ALBANY, New York - More than 100,000 artifacts from one of the earliest European settlements in North America are now housed at an upstate New York museum located near where the objects were discovered more than 40 years ago.

Officials at the New York State Museum in Albany say the items include 36,000 artifacts from the 1620s Dutch settlement known as Fort Orange and more than 80,000 others from the nearby former country estate of Philip Schuyler, the father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton.

The artifacts - mostly everyday objects such as coins, ceramics, tools and gun parts - have been transferred to the museum from the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, which had stored the items at various facilities since they were found during separate excavations conducted in the early 1970s.