Talk:List of North American settlements by year of foundation

message: The majority of participants seemed to support the idea of the page being moved, but were split equally between List of earliest European North American settlements and List of North American cities by founding year.  Y'all might find it useful to discuss the possibility of a new title on this talkpage; the current title is grammatically incorrect, and confusing. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 10:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: I support the move to the new title, List of North American cities by founding year, but we should remove the failed European settlements as they are not cities, maybe to a new article on List of abandoned European settlements in North America. What do others think? Also, there are some questionable entries at the end, such as Virginia Beach, which are simply administrative reorganization of long established settlements. Luigizanasi 04:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I argued for deleting this mess. Part of the argument for deleting this list was a POV problem of listing only European-founded cities. If we eliminated sites that are no longer occupied, that would make this a List of currently occupied North American cities by founding year. Let's see if any kind of consensus can develop, but I suspect that some of the contributers to this list won't want to see any restrictions on what they can add to it. -- Dalbury(Talk) 04:11, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: In addition to removing some of the abandoned sites (Jamestown and Fort Caroline were never cities and no longer even exist), most of the claims and other qualifiers should also be deleted.  -Acjelen 05:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move abandoned settlements out 

message: Present cities should be listed at the first settlement, not at the date of the latest or most current incorporation.  Thus, New York City is at 1625 and not 1898. -Acjelen 07:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think any city that grew out of a military post without breaks in occupation should date its founding with the military post.  In the same way, any cities that began as businesses, theocracies, etc. should also be dated with the foundational entity. Fort Worth in Texas is named for an earlier fort, but settlement was not continuous.  It should be dated with the city's founding, not the fort's. -Acjelen 23:17, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Similarly, Albany is listed as founded in 1664, but that is merely the date when the English took over and renamed Fort Orange as Albany.  Fort Orange was founded in 1624, I believe. Pfly 08:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dating 

message: If the user on IP address 216.174.53.27 looks in here, please do not remove a whole category of entries without discussin it in here. -- Dalbury(Talk) 01:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Wholesale removal of items in list

message: The article needs to list qualifiers because "year of foundation" is meaningless without context, as is the word "city". Most of them were not cities when "founded", although some were, so you have important places like St. Mary's City, Maryland (1634) in the same rank as Greenbay, WI (1634) - one was the 4th permanent settlement in British North America, the other was a single-man French trading post. What's needed are multiple column qualifiers:
City Name | Pre-European peoples | First European settlement date | City foundation date | End date | Notes
Other column considerations:
| Nationality = British North America, French North America, Spanish North America etc..
This would provide meaningful rankings. -- Stbalbach 03:42, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Qualifiers 

message: This article is almost entirely Original Research and unverifiable. Something as nebulous as a cities founding date is not as clear-cut as it may seem. Every entry needs a source saying who stated the founding year. There may be, and probably are, conflicting claims for most of these. Please add sources or eventually this will mostly get deleted. -- Stbalbach 14:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the term settlement needs more clarity. Some of the early "settlements" seem to be just outposts for trade or the military with no civilian population. For comparison, Antarctica has had continuous human occupation at scientific outposts for decades, but I wouldn't say these constitute Antarctic "settlements." HISTORBUFF (talk) 19:34, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

text: Many are sourced on the wikipedia pages linked to.  Does that count? Pfly 16:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case it should be easy to copy the source information over, and save readers the trouble of tracking down the source. -- Donald Albury 23:34, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah I think for verification purposes the reference should be in the article here, since the other articles can change and articles are supposed to be standalone. If there was a main article link pointing to the article that contained the reference, then it would not matter, but this entire article should not be built on references contained elsewhere. -- Stbalbach 15:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Some references doesn't fit throughout wikipedia. For example, St Johns established date is 1541 here and it's 1583 on the St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador entry.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.37.88.239 (talk) 03:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

text: There are several duplicate entries in this list (Kamloops and Victoria BC, to name two), and lacking source references it's impossible to know which entries to delete (or modify), without further research. -- Jakaloke (talk) 22:49, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research 

message: Stop now.  The idea of making a sortable table was sound.  However it doesn't differentiate between AD and BC dates.  They may need two seperate tables. Kevlar67 22:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not simply follow the advice given on date sorting at Help:Sorting?  Here is an example taken from the first few entries in the table as of today that contains 3 BC year entries and 4 AD year entries that seems to be numerically sortable in the chronological (not lexical) manner one would hope for: 69.126.127.193 (talk) 02:45, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  STOP! 

message: Last I checked, Brazil was not in North America.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.203.116.57 (talk) 03:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Pretty dumbass move, I agree. I'll remove it. Peter Napkin Dance Party (talk) 02:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brazil not in North America 

message: This list seems rather silly to me.  While the title says "cities," many of these places are towns, and the coverage for my region, New England, is spotty at best.  For example, three inconsequential (at a national level) towns, Billerica,  Chelmsford, and Groton, in my immediate area were all founded May 29, 1655.  The largest, Billerica, is about 40k residents today and remains incorporated as a town.  It seems wrong to me to add these, but they are on equal footing with many of the seemingly random New Hampshire entries someone has put in.  How do we constrain this list?  I'm going to tag for cleanup to bring attention to this because I feel it's not all that useful as it stands.  Thanks, CSZero (talk) 20:25, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe a bit premature.  It really only looks like (from what I could tell) that New Hampshire was guilty of adding small towns without national (or international) historical influence.  Maybe it's ok now?  My criteria would be: A city, A capital, A superlative, or Nationally significant.  CSZero (talk) 20:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doesn't this list need some sort of limit? 

message: Wells and York Maine have been continuously occupied since the early 17th century and Wells, Maine was for a time the Northernmost British colonial settlement in the Region of New England. Portland , Maine as well albeit under the name Falmouth was incorporated long before the date given which is the date the name was officially changed, not the date of incorporation. I think the scope of the list should be either strictly enforced as a city continuously occupied with a certain number of people from a fixed date, or give equal recognition to any settlement continuously settled since a fixed date. This would certainly help to include certain Native-American settlements, while not actually cities in the traditional sense have been occupied for thousands of years. The Indian reservations in Maine for instance may be some of the oldest such sites, for the reservations were created of land that had been occupied since well before pre-Columbian times. In any case the list is incomplete, and is in no way a true, hard and fast guide to the actual founding date for any settlement.- Ryan Collins, Historian of the Dolloff Family and keeper of the family archives.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.69.244.9 (talk) 07:34, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Because no one has thought to add them. Feel free to do so. Remember to cite references. I agree the page is much lacking and not very trustworthy (thus the need for references!) Pfly (talk) 17:15, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  why no mention on the list of early Colonial settlements now towns like York, or Wells Maine ? 

message: I'd just like to point out that the article lists St. John's as inhabited since 1497.  This is based on a (rather sketchy) claim that it was named by explorer John Cabot when he made landfall there that year.
Because of Cabot's shoddy records, though, it is far from certain that he even sighted Newfoundland at all.  (He could just as likely have sighted Nova Scotia, Cape Cod, or even Long Island.)
It is certain, however, that St. John's was already inhabited year-round by 1610, and likely preceeded the founding of Jamestown, Virginia.  I propose that the date on the article be changed to 1605, (which is far more probable.) Pine (talk) 22:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  St. John's, Canada was not founded in 1497. 

message: From the article.."1799 Potosi Missouri United States Town was founded by Moses Austin, the same person which founded Austin, Texas and was the sight of many small battles during the American Civil War"
Austin, TX was NOT founded by Moses Austin. Moses Austin died in 1821, some 18 years prior to its actual founding. The little village of Waterloo on the Colorado River, was chosen by the Texas government, Mirabeau B. Lamar in particular, and planning for the town was done by Edwin Waller.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.244.33.15 (talk) 03:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potosi, Missouri. Austin, Texas 

message: I reverted the addition of flag icons to some of the cities in this list. Adding the flag icons goes against the recommendations of the guideline at WP:Icons. Among other things, very few (none?) of the flags were correct for the date of foundation of the city. Many of the cities have been under a number of flags (I count at least five for St. Augustine), which would be very awkward to represent in this list. This is already a long list, and adding flag icons makes it visually longer. The flag icons do not add any information to the list, and are purely decorative. -- Donald Albury 21:18, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flag icons 

message: Wich one is correct?
San Miguel de Gualdape 1526
Fort Caroline 1564
--88.13.102.5 (talk) 09:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I had thought the Ayllón expeditions were simply slave raids. San Miguel da Gualdape lasted three months, Fort Caroline lasted a year, neither was city. IMO, neither belongs on this list, but I'm not going to try to remove Fort Caroline. I wish we could move all those short lived colonies to a List of failed settlements. -- Donald Albury 10:15, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

text: Sorry, missed these comments. Neither San Miguel nor Fort Caroline were "cities", and neither are still around, so I removed them. An additional list of failed colonies would be fine.--Cúchullain t/c 16:17, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  First european settlement in present day USA 

message: Should San Buenaventura, California (1782) be included in this list?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Buenaventura,_California LorenzoB (talk) 02:26, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  San Buenaventura 

message: Victoria, BC is in the list twice, with two separate dates. TastyCakes (talk) 20:47, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Pfly (talk) 08:22, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Victoria 

message: Many in the list are not cities. Should they not be removed or the title not changed to settlements?
Rectipaedia (talk) 02:24, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cities or Settlements? 

message: If you're going to list Halifax as being founded in 1749, you might list Dartmouth as being founded in 1750.  if you're not going to list Dartmouth on the grounds that it ceased to exists in 1996, then don't list Halifax either, but rather the Halifax Regional Municipality, 1996.  just thoughts. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 03:01, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Halifax 

message: It would be nice if this article would be separated out century-wise, as, it would make it easier to browse.
Thanks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:30A:2ED6:9470:7171:760E:F581:4BF6 (talk) 04:27, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separation by centuries? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I noticed Seattle and Olympia, founded in 1851 and 1859 respectively, both are on the list and Rochester, NY (my city) and Syracuse, NY, founded in 1817 and 1825 respectively, both are not on the list.
Then there’s Schenectady on the list, which makes me think it’s not a insufficient population issue.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ddmkm122 (talk • contribs) 00:18, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  What criteria does a city have to fit to get on this list?