Born and bred in New England I’ve got cider mills, clear clam chowder and MacIntoch Apples running through my veins and Chedder cheese on my Apple Pie - I have my guesses as to why New York is not a part of New England but I’d love to hear yours.
As a Nutmegger - I think colonial puritan Connecticut folks tried to settle southern colonies [i.e. Salem, New Jersey] but when New York started to become larger than Boston [and in some ways more important] the “pure” colonials or New Englanders began excluding NY and PA from having strict New England roots.
Having relatives living North of Bangor, Maine I also know they do not consider themselves New Englanders, but instead everything south of Bangor is “Over There”.
Hmmm. And they all do. I think sports teams may be an outlier. The relatives are all voracious Sox and Pats fans…yet they hate going into Bean Town? Odd.
To the OP, not even all of New England is New England. New Haven County, CT and even portions of adjacent counties are unquestionably part of metro New York, no matter what the map says.
My family [all Connecticut folks] are divided evenly between being Yankee fans and Red Socks fans making family BBQ’s a rucus event everytime they happen.
The real answer as stated above is that New York was not an British colony; it was a Dutch colony. They didn’t want to be considered part of “New England” any more than the English wanted them.
Fairfield County is even more part of the New York metropolitan area than New Haven County is.
And as for the Yankees/Red Sox divide, a couple of years ago, the New York Times attempted to determine the dividing line, based on a Quinnipiac University survey.
I live in the outer Boston suburbs and I only go into Boston proper once or twice a year at most and that is only when I have to. I used to live there and liked it at the time but wouldn’t miss it for a second if I never had to set eyes on that city again. Many people in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and central/western Massachusetts feel the same way. Boston isn’t good at making friends even within New England. Boston beats New York City easily in things like education but it is a lot more insular and much less cosmopolitan.
New York isn’t part of New England because New York state is drawn in a stupid way for these purposes. New York City and its environs couldn’t ever be considered New England any more than Philadelphia could. OTOH, northern New York is a lot like northern New England except a little grittier and a little more run down. It is still pretty but not to the same extent as its neighbor, Vermont, is to the East.
