History of New York City (1665–1783) port British ships evacuated in 1783. The English had renamed the colony the Province of New York, after the king's brother James, Duke of York and on June 12, 1665, appointed Thomas Willett the first of the Mayors of New York. The city grew northward and remained the largest and most important city in the Province of New York, becoming the third largest in the British Empire after London and Philadelphia. The Dutch regained the colony briefly in 1673, then finally lost it permanently to the English in 1674 after the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Leisler's Rebellion, an uprising in which
Thomas Corcoran (mayor) Thomas Corcoran (mayor) Thomas Corcoran Jr. (1754 - January 27, 1830) was an Irish American merchant who served as mayor of the town of Georgetown, District of Columbia and 22 terms on the Georgetown Common Council. He also held several appointed positions with the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia. He was one of Georgetown's and Washington's first philanthropists, and the father of banker and philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran. Thomas Corcoran Jr. was born in 1754 (the exact date is not known) to Thomas and Elizabeth ( Wilson) Corcoran in County Limerick in the Kingdom of Ireland. Thomas