Hoboken () is a southern district of the arrondissement and city of Antwerp, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located at the Scheldt river. The name of the district has its origins in Middle Dutch. Name The name Hoboken is derived from Medieval Dutch Hooghe Buechen or Hoge Beuken, meaning High or Tall Beeches. To this day there is a hospital in Hoboken named "Hoge Beuken". A local children's story says that the name "Hoboken" is derived from a little boy who accidentally dropped his sandwich in the Schelde river, which flows near Hoboken. In the local dialect of Dutch, a "boke" is a sandwich and "ho" is a way of shouting "stop", so he must have shouted "Ho, boken!!!". History The first historical records of Hoboken date from the 1135 parish of capellam de hobuechen qua libam. At that time Hoboken was part of Wilrijk, in the Duchy of Brabant. It has since then evolved from a small village to an industrialized district of Antwerp. From the 13th to the 15th century the fiefdom of Hoboken was the property of the Lords of the lands of Rumst: Perwijs, Counts of Vianden, Count of Flanders, House of Luxembourg and House of Orange-Nassau. In 1559 William of Orange sold the lands of Rumst and Hoboken to Melchior Schetz (the new Lord of Hoboken). In 1579 the city of Antwerp joined the Union of Utrecht and became the capital of the Dutch Revolt. In 1585, Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, captured Antwerp after a long siege. During the siege of Antwerp, Hoboken was partly flooded and was raided by enemy soldiers. As part of the terms of surrender of Antwerp, its Protestant citizens were given four years to settle their affairs before quitting the city. Most settlers went to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (the unoccupied part of the Union of Utrecht) in the north, starting the Dutch Golden Age. Antwerp's banking was controlled for a generation by Genoa, and Amsterdam became the new trading centre of the region—the population of Amsterdam went from 30.000 in 1570 to 60.000 in 1600 and the Amsterdam Canal District was constructed to accommodate the traders and bankers from Antwerp (including much of its Jewish population). Many of the early American settlers were refugees from Antwerp and the Southern Netherlands. The first settlers in New York were Belgians (Flemish Dutch