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
Don Willett Don Willett Donny Ray Willett (born July 16, 1966) is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was previously appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas on August 24, 2005, when former Justice Priscilla Owen created a vacancy on that court by joining the Fifth Circuit. Willett was born and raised in Talty in Kaufman County. His adoptive father died at the age of 40, when Willett was six, and he and his older sister, Donna, were reared by their