de Halve Maen, Vol. 93, No. 2

de Halve Maen Journal of The Holland Society of New York Vol. 93, No. 2 2020

The Holland Society of New York requests the pleasure of your company at the 135th Annual Meeting and Dinner on Saturday, April 24th, 2021 at the Lotos Club 5 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065

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de Halve Maen

The Holland Society of New York 1345 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10105 President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III Vice President Richard Van Deusen Treasurer David Conklin

Magazine of the Dutch Colonial Period in America Secretary James J. Middaugh Domine Rev. Paul D. Lent

Advisory Council of Past Presidents Kenneth L. Demarest Jr. W. Wells Van Pelt Jr. Robert Schenck Walton Van Winkle III Peter Van Dyke William Van Winkle Charles Zabriskie Jr. Trustees Thomas Bogart Sally Quakenbush Mason Christopher M. Cortright David D. Nostrand Eric E. DeLamarter Gregory M. Outwater David W. Ditmars Andrew Terhune Sarah Lefferts Fosdick Stuart W. Van Winkle Andrew A. Hendricks Laurie Bogart Wiles Kenneth G. Winans

Trustees Emeriti Adrian T. Bogart David William Voorhees John O. Delamater Ferdinand L. Wyckoff Jr. Robert Gardiner Goelet Stephen S. Wyckoff David M. Riker Donald Westervelt Kent L. Stratt Rev. Everett Zabriskie Burgher Guard Captain Sarah Bogart

Connecticut-Westchester R. Dean Vanderwarker III Dutchess and Ulster County D. David Conklin Florida James S. Lansing International Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr. (Ret) Jersey Shore Stuart W. Van Winkle Long Island Eric E. DeLamarter Mid-West David Ditmars New Amsterdam Eric E. DeLamarter New England Niagara David S. Quackenbush Old Bergen-Central New Jersey Gregory M. Outwater Old South Pacific Northwest Edwin Outwater III Pacific Southwest (North) Kenneth G. Winans Pacific Southwest (South) Paul H. Davis Patroons Robert E. Van Vranken Potomac Christopher M. Cortright Rocky Mountain Adrian T. Bogart IV South River Walton Van Winkle III Texas James J. Middaugh Virginia and the Carolinas James R. Van Blarcom United States Air Force

United States Army Col. Adrian T. Bogart III United States Coast Guard Capt. Louis K. Bragaw Jr. (Ret) United States Marines Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr., USMC (Ret) United States Navy LCDR James N. Vandenberg, CEC, USN

Editorial Committee Peter Van Dyke, Chair Christopher Cortright John Lansing

Copy Editor Rudy VanVeghten

David M. Riker Rudy VanVeghten

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NUMBER 2

IN THIS ISSUE: 26

Editor’s Corner

27

Sawmills in New Netherland: A Scandinavian Perspective

by Frans-Arne H. Stylegar

39

Destruction and Restoration of the Hendrickson Burial Ground

45

Book Reviews: David Ormrod and Gijs Rommelse, eds., War, Trade and the State: Anglo-Dutch Conflict, 1652-89, by Lou Roper Peter Rose, History on Our Plate: Recipes from America’s Dutch Past for Today’s Cook, by David W. Voorhees

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Here and There in New Netherland Studies

48

Society Activities

Vice-Presidents

Editor David William Voorhees Production Manager

Sarah Bogart

VOL. XCIII

byAndrew A. Hendricks

The Holland Society of New York was organized in 1885 to collect and preserve information respecting the history and settlement of New Netherland by the Dutch, to perpetuate the memory, foster and promote the principles and virtues of the Dutch ancestors of its members, to maintain a library relating to the Dutch in America, and to prepare papers, essays, books, etc., in regard to the history and genealogy of the Dutch in America. The Society is principally organized of descendants in the direct male line of residents of the Dutch colonies in the present-day United States prior to or during the year 1675. Inquiries respecting the several criteria for membership are invited.

De Halve Maen (ISSN 0017-6834) is published quarterly by The Holland Society.

Subscriptions are $28.50 per year; international, $35.00. Back issues are available at $7.50 plus postage/handling or through PayPaltm.

POSTMASTER: send all address changes to The Holland Society of New York, 1345 Sixth Ave., 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10105. Telephone: (212) 758-1675.

Fax: (212) 758-2232.

E-mail: info@hollandsociety.org Website: www.hollandsociety.org Copyright © 2020 The Holland Society of New York. All rights reserved.

Cover: Detail from Thomas Pownall, “A Design to represent the beginning and completion of An American Settlement and Farm,” painted by Paul Sandby and engraved by James Peake (London, 1761).

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Editor’s Corner S THE WORLD currently faces its worst pandemic in a century, the media is filled with dire warnings about the resulting consequences of social upheaval and economic stress. Indeed, it seems as if society’s glue is rapidly deteriorating as one group after another vigorously challenges traditional worldviews. Quarantine, social isolation, political unrest, and unresolved anger divide us and seemingly rent the very fabric of our lives. The National Institute of Mental Health succinctly states, “These are confusing, stressful times for all of us.” Yet, historically our current situation is not unique. This issue of de Halve Maen looks at parallels in our past when the integration of cultures and new ideas created positive results despite contemporary socioeconomic upheaval.

A case in point is the early modern era. Horrific dynastic and religious wars shredded Europe in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, leaving mass destruction and total devastation. Colossal migrations resulted and spurred settlers to cross the Atlantic to the relative safety of the American shores. Scandinavia, however, was at that time removed from the devastation occurring throughout the rest of Europe. Nonetheless, as noted by Frans-Arne Stylegar in this issue of de Halve Maen, a significant number of Scandinavians are found among the early settlers of New Netherland, with Norwegians counting for perhaps as much as two percent of the Dutch colony’s European population. How, he asks, does one account for their numbers in New Netherland? In “Sawmills in New Netherland: A Scandinavian Perspective,” Stylegar provides a convincing answer by looking at the colony’s sawmilling technology.

European colonization, Stylegar writes, “was at its core an assault on forests. . . . trees were chopped for different causes: opening land for farming, building and heating houses, building ships, extracting tar and turpentine, supplying charcoal, fueling engines, and so on.” For this reason, he tells us, sawmills were an important component of the American landscape from first settlement. But whereas sawmills were largely wind powered in the Dutch Republic, New Netherland early adapted a water-driven technology. In a carefully constructed argument, Stylegar sets forth the reasons for New Netherland’s adaptation of water-powered technology and in doing so explains the prominence of Scandinavian, in particular Norwegian, settlers in New Netherland.

Four centuries later, the remnants of early European settlement in New York and New Jersey are rapidly disappearing. Such was almost the fate of the Hendrickson Burial Ground in Holmdel, New Jersey. The

A

burial ground had been created in the late seventeenth century and remained active until about 1950, when neglect caused it to fall into disrepair. Subsequently a condominium development surrounded the cemetery and coveted the land it was on. Following the long Labor Day holiday weekend in 2010, an eleven-year-old girl noticed suspicious activity around the burial ground; the burial headstones were being bulldozed and removed.

She alerted her parents. New Jersey state laws were obviously being broken in the removal of headstones and the news rapidly made it into the local press.

In these pages, Dr. Andrew Hendricks, noted developer of the replica ship Half Moon, presents an informative discussion on how further destruction of the burial ground was prevented, the daunting task of uncovering records to preserve the burial ground’s history was undertaken, and the final reconstruction of the cemetery was made possible. What comes through clearly is the dedication of a group of people gathered in a family association to preserve the memory of their ancestors.

Although their effort to achieve bipartisan legislative support for a bill to prevent destruction of other family cemeteries in New Jersey has yet to achieve fruition, the family association managed to have their forefather’s burial place fully reconstructed through successful law suits and press.

Dutch and English influence on New York architecture and building customs has been much discussed, Stylegar notes in his essay, but “when it comes to influences from building traditions in the homelands of the colony’s substantial non-Dutch minorities, less work has been done.” This statement exemplifies current emotional debates in western societies over how to define historical narrative. As we have seen, both essays in this issue are about particular peoples wishing to retain the memory of their ancestors. Yet, as Stylegar notes, many continue to be denied their rightful place in the historical narrative. To become inclusive does not mean denigrating or replacing the traditional narrative but rather enriching it by including all its components. In doing so, we also must be careful not to create new mythologies. “For,” as French historian Marc Bloch wrote, “the only true history, which can advance only through mutual aid, is universal history.”

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David William Voorhees Editor

de Halve Maen

Sawmills in New Netherland: A Scandinavian Perspective

by Frans-Arne H. Stylegar

. . . the tallest pine, Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral.

Milton: Paradise Lost, I, v. 292-4.

HE DUTCH (and, later, English) influence on New York architecture and building customs have, for obvious reasons, been much researched and discussed.1 New Netherland, and New Amsterdam in particular, with its canals, gabled houses and windmills has been studied as a conscious reproduction of a specific Dutch landscape.2 When it comes to influences from building traditions in the homelands of the colony’s substantial nonDutch minorities, less work has been done, not counting the continuous debate about the origins of the American log cabin).3 The early water-powered sawmills both in New Netherland and the English colonies in New England and Virginia is an interesting case in this respect.

The European colonization was at its core an assault on forests. For more than three centuries, trees were chopped for different causes: opening land for farming, building

T

Frans-Arne Hedlund Stylegar is an archaeologist, historian, and writer based in Kristiansand, Norway. He has published widely on different matters, ranging from Vikings to historical archaeology. His 2016 book (in Norwegian) Nieuw Amsterdam takes the early Scandinavian settlers in New Netherland as its subject. He is currently employed as an urban planner and heritage advisor.

Manatus Map, 1639. Windmills were a characteristic feature of the early Manhattan cityscape. Mills marked C and D were for sawing lumber (The New York Public Library). and heating houses, building ships, extracting tar and turpentine, supplying charcoal, fueling engines, and so on.4 From the very first period of colonization, sawmills dotted the American landscape.

Several types of sawmills were employed in New Netherland—windmills, horse mills, and water-powered mills. For the former two it seems very reasonable to follow Jacobs’ suggestion that the technology was imported from patria.5 But the water mills? That technology was more likely acquired through the early Scandinavian immigrants. The technology used in the early water-powered sawmills in North America was identical to the one commonly used in Norway and Sweden, and different from the sawmill technology predominant in Holland’s German hinterlands. Dutch it was definitely not, although water-powered mills were known in some regions of the United Provinces, including the Veluwe, where Rensselaerswijk patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer hailed from, and still had some possessions.6 Dutch sawmilling technology, developed

by Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest in the 1590s and featured in windmills in the Zaan district and elsewhere, was in fact far superior to the one commonly used in

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Norway, with a much higher productivity, using several, thin saw blades, while Norwegian mills had only one, coarse blade.

But building a much simpler Norwegian water-powered sawmill was cheaper, it was easy to set up, and could be built using locally available material to a considerable Shirley W. Dunn, “Influences of New York’s early Dutch architecture,” Newsletter of the Dutch Barn Preservation Society 16 (2003):2; Jeroen van den Hurk, “Origins and Survival of Netherlandic Building Traditions in North America,” in Malcolm Dunkeld, et al., eds., Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Construction History 3 (2006), 3191–3209. Exeter.

1

2 Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World. The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (New York, 2005), 107.

3

Fred Kniffen and Henry Glassie, “Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: a Time-Place Perspective,” Geographical Review 56 (1966), 1: 40–66; C. A. Weslager, The Log Cabin in America: From Pioneer Days to the Present (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969); Terry G. Jordan, American Log Buildings: An Old World Heritage (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985).

4 Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (New York, 1989).

5 Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-century America (Leiden, 2005), 234.

6

Jan Folkerts, “Kiliaen van Rensselaer and Agricultural Productivity in His Domain: A New Look at the First Patroon and Rensselaerswijck Before 1664,” in Nancy Anne McClure Zeller, ed., A Beautiful and Fruitful Place: Selected Rensselaerswijck Seminar Papers (Albany, 1991), 295.

27

“A view of the saw-mill & block house upon Fort Anne Creek, the property of Genl. Skeene, which on Genl. Burgoyne’s army advancing, was set fire to, by the Americans,” 1789 (Library of Congress).

degree. Thus, it was also relatively cheap to move the necessary equipment to a different site, if the forest resources nearby got exhausted. Such a mill was usually manned by two workers only, while Dutch wind-powered sawmills of the Paltrok type were operated by five men. These factors must be taken into account when seeking to understand why the Norwegian type of mill became so frequent in the colonies.

The background: Dutch-Norwegian trade in timber. In 1609, the Mayflower (yes, that Mayflower) made her maiden

voyage to Norway, returning to London with a cargo of 3,000 “Norway deals” (i.e. boards).7 A pioneer in the early days of New Netherland, Adriaen Block, later of Tyger and then Onrust fame, appears in Norwegian sources in 1596; in that year, he bought a large timber cargo in the port of Langesund. Norway was a main supplier of timber, not only to the English, but also to the Dutch. The reason was obvious: both countries needed timber supplies for expanding cities and towns, as well as for shipbuilding, and the coastal forests of Norway were easily accessible—and large.

While only four percent of the Netherlands and six–seven percent of England consisted of wooded area at the end of the sixteenth century, Norway’s forests covered about 30 percent of the country.8 The Dutch-Norwegian timber trade was J. R. Hutchinson, “The ‘Mayflower,’ her identity and tonnage,” The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 70 (1916), 337–39; cf. R.G. Marsden, “The ‘Mayflower,’” The English Historical Review 19 (1904), 669–80.

7

8

P. Warde, “Fear of Wood Shortage and the Reality of the Woodland in Europe, c.1450–1850,” History Workshop Journal 62 (2006), 34; Alexander Bugge, Den norske trælasthandels historie 1 (Skien 1925), 9.

The cartouche of Jan Janszoon’s 1658 map of the southern part of Norway is a telling sign of what attracted foreign merchants the most: Timber (here sawn boards) and fish. Note also the names of many of the seaports visited by Dutch and other ships (National Library, Oslo).

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“A Watermill,” pen and brown ink on paper, c. 1644. Dutch artist Allart van Everdingen traveled extensively in coastal areas of Norway and Sweden. He made numerous sketches, many of them showing different kinds of watermills, during his trip. This meticulously drawn sawmill with an undershot shutter wheel is of the common Norwegian type, and similar to the ones built in New Netherland and other places in the North American colonies. Note the arrangement for hauling timbers to the mill at the right. Van Everdingen’s drawing is, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest depiction of a Norwegian up-down saw (Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture collections, David Laing Bequest on loan to the Scottish National Gallery). substantial. Holland could import timber from three different areas: Southern Norway, the Baltic region, and the districts along the Rhine.9 Until the 1650s, Norway was the largest timber supplier by far.10 Thereafter, the two other regions gradually took over, while the English came to dominate the Norwegian timber trade during the later seventeenth century.11 An old saying states that “Amsterdam stands on Norway,” meaning that houses in the metropolis mostly were built on supporting beams made from Norwegian timber, oak and pine.12 Delen na Norwegen schicken (sending planks to Norway) is a Low German proverb, with the same meaning as “bringing owls to Athens” or “carry coals to Newcastle.”

A 1647 survey of all Dutch Noordsvaarders or Houthaalders operating in the Norwegian timber trade found close to 400 ships. As one vessel could do the voyage two to four times a year, a suggested one thousand timber cargos left Norway for

Amsterdam, Edam, Hoorn and other ports each year.13 Every spring, Dutch shipmasters like Block and countless others came to ports and towns on the Skagerrack coast of South Norway for timber. When Henry Hudson set out from Amsterdam in the spring of 1609 in search of the Northwest Passage (and ended up “discovering” the Hudson River), the journal of his first mate, Robert Juet, typically lacks any entry for the long passage from Texel along the Norwegian coast all the way to the North Cape, “because it is a journey vsually knowne.”14 Widely read Dutch works, such as Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer’s Spieghel der zeevaerdt (1584) and Nicolaes Witsen’s Aeloude and hedendaegsche Scheepsbouw en Bestier (1671) reveal an intimate knowledge of waters, harbors, and the different kinds of timber available in the southern part of Norway. Ports like Langesund, Flekkeröy, Vester-Risör (Mandal), and Drammen were well known to both Dutch and

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English mariners. Indeed, Flekkeröy near present-day Kristiansand, “Vlecker” to the Dutch, played a particularly vital role for the merchant fleet of the United Provinces.

While Dutch towns like Amsterdam, Horn, Schiedam, and Zierikzee had been given freedom of trade in Norway already in the mid-fifteenth century, fear of piracy and 9

Jaap R. Bruijn, in Timber and trade: Articles on the timber export from the Ryfylke-area to Scotland and Holland in the 16th and 17th century, Lokalhistorisk sifelse 1 (Aksdal, 1999), 66.

10 Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (New York, 1997), 423–24.

11 Stein Tveite, Engelsk-norsk trelasthandel 1640–1710 (Bergen-Oslo, 1961).

Ludwig Daae, Nordmænds Udvandringer til Holland og England i nyere Tid: et Bidrag til vor Søfarts Historie (Christiania, 1880), 9–10.

12

13

Bruijn, 64.

14

Robert Juet, “The Third Voyage of Master Henrie Hudson, 1625,” in Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, contayining a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others, vol. 13 (Glasgow, 1906), 333–74.

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Sawmill in Voss, Norway. Drawing

by August Cappelen, 1847. There is not much separating this mill from the one Everdingen pictured 200 years before (National Museum, Oslo/D.A. Ivarsöy).

enemy ships eventually called for a centralized effort to organize the risky journey to and from Norway.15 Thus, in 1596, the States-General decreed that ships who took part in the Baltic and Norwegian trade were no longer allowed to leave Holland on their own. Instead, they must leave in groups of thirty or more ships, and being convoyed by two warships. When returning to Holland, all ships were to gather in Vlecker, and ordered not to leave until thirty ships could return in convoy. This turned Vlecker into a pivotal port for a fleet of numerous Dutch ships operating each year in both Baltic and Norwegian waters.16 Cultural exchange and migration. In the wake of the flourishing timber trade followed an exchange of material culture, ideas, customs, and language—and people.

For the southernmost part of Norway, the region around Vlecker, the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw a mass exodus of people leaving for Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, with many staying for good. As early as 1621, the explorer Jens Munk had to go to Amsterdam to find Norwegian and Danish sailors for his expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. Later on, the English envoy Robert Molesworth reported from Copenhagen that “the best Seamen belonging to the King of Denmark are the Norwegians, but most of these are in the service of the Dutch, and have their Families established in Holland, from whence it is scarce likely they will ever return home.”17

Looking at numbers, as many as 17,000 Norwegians were employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and half of these were recruited from Amsterdam. The Lutheran congregation in the metropolis counted 6,000 members born in Norway until the year 1800. The congregation in the smaller city of Hoorn had 500 Norwegian members in the period 1650–1700 alone.18 The Norwegians who migrated to the United Provinces came from the coastal districts between Gothenburg and Trondheim, but the point of gravity was the districts closest to Vlecker, with more than half of the church members in Amsterdam coming from the greater Kristiansand region. Here, the size of the exodus was considerable; the population growth in the region in the period 1650–1750 was only one sixth of the growth in Norway at large, first and foremost because of people leaving for Holland.19 “Norwegians can do anything, some are proficient loggers.” Turning to New Netherland, it is well-known that the people of the colony were multinational and multiethnic and counted a small, but significant number of Scandinavians among its early inhabitants, with people from a Norwegian background counting for perhaps as much as two percent of the colony’s total population.20 Many of the Norwegians settled in Rensselaerswijk.21 Although the Norwegian (and Scan-

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dinavian) presence in New Netherland was largely due to Norwegians forming a significant part of the general labor pool in Amsterdam and other cities and towns in Patria, it is worth pointing out that contemporary sources indicate that Norwegian colonists also were sought after in particular because of their knowledge and experience in forestry and timbering.

Henry Hudson in his diary had noted the abundance of “all kinds of timber suitable for ship-building, and for making large casks,” and the West India Company (WIC) authorities were eager to exploit this resource.22 As the WIC dispatched its 15 Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, Spieghel der zeevaerdt (Leiden, 1584); Nicolaas Witsen, Aaloude en hedendaagsche scheeps-bouw en bestier: waer in wijtloopigh wert verhandelt, de wijze van scheeps-timmeren, by Grieken en Romeynen: scheeps-oeffeningen . . . (Amsterdam, 1671); L. J. Vogt, “Om Norges Udførsel af Trælast i ældre Tider,” Historisk tidsskrift 5 (1886), 81–44, 273–384, see 99.

Frans-Arne H. Stylegar, Nieuw Amsterdam. Nordmenn i det hollandske Amerika, 1624–1674 (Stavanger, 2015), 13.

16

17

Stylegar, 17–18.

18

Ibid.

19

Ibid.

20

Oliver Rink, “The People of New Netherland. Notes on Non-English Immigration to New York in the Seventeenth Century,” New York History 62 (January 1982), 1: 5–42.

21

Stylegar op. cit; Frans-Arne H. Stylegar, “Byfolk, bønder og soldater i Nieuw Nederland: Utvandring fra Norge til det hollandske Amerika på 1600-tallet,” in B. E. Johnsen, ed., På vandring og på flukt. Migrasjon i historisk perspektiv (Oslo, 2017), 61–85.

22 Paul Otto, “Common Practices and Mutual Misunderstandings: Henry Hudson, Native Americans, and the Birth of New Netherland,” de Halve Maen 72 (Winter 1999), 4: 74–83, esp. 77.

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first settlers in 1625, it instructed Willem Verhulst to note “all falls or affluent streams whereby sawmills or other mills might be operated and select some of the best that are most suitable and nearest to the dwellings and the timber that is to be sawn in them.”23 In 1626 Isaack de Rasiere suggested to the Amsterdam chamber of the WIC that they should bring over “10 or 12 Norwegians” to exploit the forest resources in the colony by making tar and sawing beams and planks.24 Another letter from secretary Cornelis van Tienhoven in 1650 also emphasized Norwegian settlers for the colony: They are well experienced in chopping trees and clearing land, they work hard and are used to working in the forest.

Norwegians can do anything, some are proficient loggers.25

Scandinavian mill-wrights in the early colonies. The patroon of Rensselaerswijck, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, seems to have taken this advice at face value at the outset of his venture. Shortly before the departure of de Eendracht from Texel in July 1631, van Rensselaer made a contract with four men in Amsterdam to go to the colony “to erect a suitable sawmill, which can saw wood of 40 feet or at least 33 feet long.”26 The men were Norwegians, and from Vlecker. The Norwegians promised to have the sawmill ready within three months of their arrival, and furthermore specified how expenses and future profits from hewing “the largest, finest and best oak trees standing in the entire colony of the said Rensselaer and for seven leagues next adjoining” were to be divided between the five. Regarding boards, beams, or planks which van Rensselaer might need for his own purposes, he was to

be allowed to take these by the Vlecker men “one half of the price ordinarily paid by the skippers in Norway.”27 When the millwright, Andries Christensz, did not show up when de Eendracht sailed from Texel, van Renssealer was advised to postpone the building of the sawmill.28 Five years later, the patroon gave it another try, and contracted with a “mill company” consisting of Pieter Cornelisz, Claes Jansz and Albert Andriesz.29 The latter was Norwegian, from Fredrikstad on the Oslo fjord. While Pieter Cornelisz was a millwright, and the mill company also employed a number of timbermen of whom we know very little, although the Norwegian Carsten Carstensz from Vlecker probably was one of them, it is not very likely that the two Dutchmen had much experience with water-powered mills, at least not from their home towns of Monnickendam and Naerden. Albert, whose main object was to initiate tobacco planting in the colony on van Rensselaer’s behalf, was probably included in the mill company just because of his background. Indeed, after a few years in Rensselaerswijck it was sawmills and timber trade that kept Albert Andriesz occupied. Carsten Carstensz seems to have had his own sawmill at a somewhat later date, as did Laurens Laurensen from Vlecker, who was one of the four men who was contracted to build a sawmill in 1631, and Albert Andriesz’ brother Arent.

In New England it seems that English carpenters were employed; but Thomas Eyre’s 1631 letter to the Laconia Company’s agent in America, stating that he would be sending a “model” of a sawmill so that the colony might “have one going,” could be an indication that these English carpenters were not familiar with the conJason R. Sellers, “‘Lands fit for use’: Native Subsistence Patterns and European Agricultural Landscaping in the Colonial Hudson Valley,” New York History 97, no. 3/4 (Summer, Fall 2016), 293–318, see p. 309.

23

Arnold J. F. van Laer, ed., Documents relating to New Netherland 1624–1626 in the Henry E. Huntington Library (New York, 1924), 171–254.

24

Edmund B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, vol. 1 (Albany, 1856), 370.

25

Arnold J. F. van Laer, ed., Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts: Being the Letters of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, 1630–1643, and Other Documents Relating to the Colony of Rensselaerswyck (Albany, 1908), 186.

26

An up-down saw still in operation in Kvam, Norway (Svein Harkestad).

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27

Ibid., 187.

28

Ibid., 198.

29

Van Laer 1908, 811; cf. Shirley W. Dunn, “Settlement Patterns in Rensselaerswijck: Godyns Burg, the Tobacco Experiment, and the Mills of Albert Andriessen,” de Halve Maen 71 (Summer, 1998), 2: 37.

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struction of water-driven sawmills. Eyre’s “model” (sketch?) could have been based upon a Scandinavian mill.30 However, other sources seem to show that the English carpenters were assisted by “Danes” in building the first sawmills. In 1685, one Francis Small stated that he doth very well remember that Capt.

Mason sent into this country eight Danes to build mills, to saw timber, and tend them, and to make potashes; and that the first saw-mill and corn-mill in New-England was erected at Capt.

Mason’s Plantation, at Newichwannock, upwards of fifty years.31 From Jamestown, Virginia, contemporary sources document that four “Dutch” carpenters from Hamburg were sent to the settlement to set up the first “Sundry Sawinge Mills.”32 They are often assumed to have been of German origins.33 As for the “Danes” in New Hampshire, they were most likely Norwegians; Norway was a part of the Danish state at that point, and the king of Denmark was one of the main recipients of Norwegian timber.

Water-powered sawmills in early New York State. In New Amsterdam, the Walloon millwright Francois Vesaert built a

horse-powered sawmill for the WIC in 1626 and a letter from the Rev. Jonas Michaelius two years later tells that “they are making a windmill to saw lumber.”34 There was probably at least one other sawmill on Manhattan in its early days; a Norwegian sailor, Roelof Carstensz from Vlecker, stated in 1632 (in Amsterdam) that Vesaert’s sawmill was far more effective than the Company’s mills, and was better placed for hauling the timber.35 Vesaert’s windmill sawed timber for the ship Nieu Nederlant in 1630 and 1631.36 But when it comes to water-powered sawmills, we must look elsewhere in the colony. Adriaen van der Donck, when he decided to leave Van Rensselaer’s employment in 1646, did indeed build waterpowered sawmills at the Sawmill River at Yonkers, later on praising New Netherland for its “several falls, running streams, and brooks” which “provide sites for watermills of all sorts to serve mankind.”37

Perhaps it was not coincidental that van der Donck had served as schout in Rensselaerswijck before this, because the Hudson and its tributaries was the main area for the water-powered sawmills in New Netherland, and here there were many such mills. Pieter Cornelisz reported in 1638 that the first sawmill in the patroonship was up

and running at the Mill Creek, and several others followed soon after at Normanskill, Poestenkill, Beverkill, Patroon Creek, Muitzes Kill, Vloman Kill and elsewhere.38 Sawmills were built near the present town of Coeymans in 1651, and in 1661 another mill was ready at Kinderhook. Mill rights were retained by the patroon, meaning that a mill could be established on any suitable stream at any time if only one got a lease for it from the van Renssealers. Rent from the sawmills and other mills were an important source of income for the patroon.39 The sawed timber was brought down to New Amsterdam by boat, after having been floated to Fort Orange/Albany. Eldert Gerbertsz, who rented a sawmill at Betlehem in 1654, made a contract with Govert Loockermans, granting the latter all the products from the sawmill to be sold at Manhattan.40 Narrative sources point to water-powered sawmills being a common sight in the area.

Father Jogues wrote about Fort Orange in 1643: All their houses are merely of boards and thatched with no mason work except the chimneys. The forest furnishing many large pines, they make boards by means of their saw mills, which they 30 Richard M. Candee, “Merchant and Millwright. The Water Powered Sawmills of the Piscataqua,” Old Time New England 60 (1970), 131– 49.

31 N. Bouton, ed., The Provincial and State Papers of New Hampshire, vol. 1. 1623-1686. Early Documents & Records (Concord, NH, 1867), 45, Oliver Adams, The Young MillWright and Miller’s Guide (Philadelphia, 1825), 19; Zachary M. Bennett, “Flowing Power: Rivers, Energy, and the Remaking of Colonial New England” (Ph.D. Diss., Rutgers State University of New Jersey, 2019), 100.

32

Susan Kingsbury 1906, 353, 368, 372, 417, 428.

O. Lohr, The first Germans in North America and the German element of New Netherland (New York, 1912), 4; A. J. H. Richardson, “The Earliest Wood-Processing Industry in North America, 1607-23,” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology 5 (1973), 4: 81–84.

33

“The Saw-Mill of Henry Livingston Junr. near Poughkeepsie,” 1792. In the United States, simple up-down sawmills were still the norm at that time (Library of Congress).

Jacobs 2005, 234; I. N. P. Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, vol. 2 (New York, 1916), 205.

34

35

Stylegar 2016, 169.

36

Jacobs 2005, p. 234.

37

Charles T. Gehring and William Starna, eds., A Description of New Netherland, by Adriaen van der Donck (Lincoln, NE, 2008), 15–16.

Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652–1664 (Hilversum/Albany, 2003), 88; Oliver Rink, “1629: A Year of Decision for New Netherland,” de Halve Maen 72 (Winter, 1999), 4: 88; Dunn, “Settlement Patterns in Rensselaerswijck,” 35; S. Bielinski, “How A City Worked: Occupations in Colonial Albany,” in Nancy-Anne McClure Zeller, ed., A Beautiful and Fruitful Place: Selected Rensselaerswijck Seminar Papers (Albany, 1991), 125.

38

39

Dunn, “Settlement Patterns in Rensselaerswijck,” 43.

Charles T. Gehring and Janny Venema, eds., Fort Orange Records 1654–1679 (Syracuse, NY, 2009), 40.

40

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settlers . . . set up sawmills on every stream, for the purpose of turning to account the fine timber which they cleared in great quantities off the new lands.”44 Coote adds that some mills were furnished with several blades. These were probably wind mills, as he states that a recently arrived Dutch millwright, “who is an extraordinary artist at those mills,” had made a mill that “went with 12 saws.”45 Although some sawmills were driven by wind or animal power, most lay along the valley’s abundant streams and in woodlands and were powered by water.

When the Finnish naturalist Peter Kalm visited Albany in 1749, he also remarked that the if merchants’ estates have a little brook, they do not fail to erect a saw-mill upon it for sawing boards and planks, with which commodity many yachts go during the summer to New York, having scarce any other lading than boards.46 Always a keen observer, and familiar with water-powered mills from his native 41 Father Isaac Jogues, “Novum Belgium, 1646,” in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664 (New York, 1909), 262.

Bertolet sawmill, Pennsylvania, c. 1750 (reconstruction). The reconstruction draws heavily on Evans’ The Young Mill-Wright and Miller’s Guide (from Dickey 1973). have established for this purpose.41 Jasper Danckaerts in his diary also notes several sawmills in upstate New York.42 Later on, in a letter to the Lords of Trade in England in 1701, Richard Coote, the Earl of Bellomont, writes:

They have got about 40 sawmills up in this province which I hear rids more woods or destroys more timber than all the sawmills in New Hampshire.43

B. B. James and J. F. Jameson, eds., Journal of Jasper Danckaerts 1679–1680 (New York, 1913), 198, 215, 218.

42

Bellomont cited in William F. Fox, History of the lumber industry in the state of New York (Washington, D.C., 1902), 13.

43

Anne MacVicar Grant, Memoirs of an American Lady, with sketches of manners and scenery in America, as they existed previous to the revolution (New York, 1846), 258.

44

45

MacVicar Grant, reminiscing about rafting on the upper Hudson in 1768, tells that “the

Fox, History, 13.

Peter Kalm, Travels into North America, vol. 2 (London, 1773), 100.

46

“Elevation and perspective view of a saw-mill” (from Evans’ The Young MillWright and Miller’s Guide 1821, Plate XXIII).

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Scandinavia, Kalm at one point observed that the sawmills he saw, did not have more than one blade.47 As in Norway and Sweden, most mills were furnished with a flutter wheel, a relatively small diameter undershot wheel, on a horizontal axis, driving an up-and-down saw frame directly from a connecting rod known as a pitman arm (Norwegian: krumtapp) at the end of the shaft.48 The momentum of the water turned the wheel, rather than its static weight, as in the overshot wheel. Often it was necessary to build a dam, with headgates located where water entered the headrace (mentioned also by Kalm) adjacent to the dam. These gates allowed the mill owner to control how much water was in the race.

Typically, a flume or penstock carried the water from the race to the waterwheel. Such flumes were typically of timber construction.49 There is little doubt that relatively simple mills with flutter wheels were the normal type of water mills in the early colonies.

As late as 1795, Thomas Ellicott, writing in Oliver Evans’ Young Millwright’s and Miller’s Guide, states, “Of gearing Sawmills. Of this I shall say but little, they being expensive and but little used.”50 This influential handbook then continues to describe an undershot type of sawmill (an up-down or sash saw, Norwegian: oppgangssag) that would not have looked out of the ordinary in Vlecker or indeed most parts of Norway and Sweden at that time, or a hundred and fifty years earlier, for that matter.

The “Norway Engine” and the spread of sawmill technology. “Those engines are most useful which are rather moved by Inanimate things than by Animals; because that Inanimate things want not nourishment and are never tired or wearied,” J. Moxon and V. Mandey argued in their Mechanickpowers: Or, The Mistery of Nature and Art Unvail’d (1696).51 For centuries, and well into the nineteenth century, the vertical water wheel was the power source of choice in European sawmills, as in other types of heavy industry. Horizontal wheels were also used, mostly for grain milling, but it “remained largely an item of peasant culture,” as Reynolds points out.52 The earliest (post-Roman) evidence for water-powered sawmills are from the thirteenth century in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.53 In mainland Europe, sawmills grew in number from AD 1300, and particularly after c. 1400, followed by large scale destruction during the

The sawmill type suggested by Williams for the Virginia colony; the weights marked A and B are Williams’ proposed improvement for moving the logs forward after each cut; in the accompanying text the author notes that the sawmills in Norway did not have this solution, but instead used a gear (from Williams, Virginia, 1650).

Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), and then increasing in numbers again. The Pitman arm, which changed the circular motion of the waterwheel to the up-and-down motion of the sawblade, first appeared in the fifteenth century; in the wake of this invention, sometimes ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci, followed two slightly different types of sawmills, both which utilized the new Pitman arm: the “Venetian type” and the “Augsburg type.” The main difference between the two types is the waterwheel.

The Venetian type has an undershot (Dutch: onderslagmolen) flutter wheel usually with a diameter of less than 1 m, and runs without the use of gears. The Augsburg type has a large and heavy overshot wheel (Dutch: bovenslagmolen), often more than 2.5 m in diameter; because the wheel is relatively slow moving, it also has gears. The Venetian type of sawmill was particularly well suited for large amounts of water and little fall, while the Augsburg type also can be used with lesser amounts of water. Because of the larger wheel and the transmission mechanism needed, the Augsburg saw was more expensive to build than the Venetian type.54 The name “Venetian saw” is in itself not very old, but it is likely that this particular type of water-driven sawmill was indeed first built in areas controlled by the mighty Republic on the Adriatic, and Venetians built saws in places like Croatia, as well.55 The distribution of these two types in Europe is interesting. While the Venetian type (also called “Wallachian type”) dominated

34

the southeastern part of the continent, i.e. the Italian Alps, parts of Switzerland, most of Austria, the Moravian part of today’s Czech Republic, etc., the Augsburg type was as common in Germany and the northwestern regions.56 The very first Scandinavian sawmills might have been of a more primitive type, either being of the Klopfsäge type without a crank, or using a horizontal wheel otherwise known from small grist mills with a 47

Ibid., 5.

48

John M. Dickey 1973, “Restoration of the Bertolet sawmill,” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology 5 (1973), 2: 155; B. M. Forman, “Mill Sawing in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts,” Old Time New England 60 (1970), 115; Martha and Murray Zimiles, Early American Mills (New York, 1973), 58.

49 Charles Howell, “Colonial watermills in the wooden age,” in Brooke Hindle, ed., America's Wooden Age: Aspects of Its Early Technology (Tarrytown, NY, 1975), 135.

50 Oliver Evans, The Young Mill-Wright and Miller’s Guide, 4th ed. (Philadelphia, 1821), 353.

51 Venterus Mandey and James Moxon, Mechanick-powers, Or, The Mistery of Nature and Art Unvail’d, Shewing what Great Things May be Perform'd by Mechanick Engines (London, 1696), 70.

52 Terry S. Reynolds, Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel (Baltimore, 1983), 5, 7.

J. Gaebeler, Die Frühgeschichte der Sägemühlen (1200–1600) als Folge der Mühlendiversifikation (Kessel, 2006).

53

54 Op. cit.; cf. H. Jüttemann, Alte Bauernsägen im Schwarzwald und in den Alpenländern (Karlsruhe,1984).

55 Mauro Agnoletti, “Technology, Economics, and Forestry: Water-Powered Sawmills in Italy’s Cadore Region,” Forest & Conservation History 38 (January 1994),1: 24–32., esp. 25.

56 Op. cit., cf. Agnoletti; Jan Bomba, “Sawmilling in the Czech Republic,” Drvna Industrija 60 (2009), 3: 167–75; B. Moog, “Die Sägemühle,” Mühlenbrief 9 (April 2007), 3–9.

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wide distribution in the North, and dating back to the twelfth century or earlier; some such sawmills survived until recently in parts of Sweden.57 It was, however, the undershot type of sawmill that soon came to dominate, and sawmills of the Augsburg type remained few and far between until the Industrial Revolution.58 The first mentioning of a water-powered sawmill in Sweden dates from the mid-fifteenth century, and soon after the first sawmills were established at the Oslofjord and further west on the Skagerrack coast.59 There might be some truth to a late fifteenth-century tradition that sawmills (that is, mills rather similar to Venetian type mills) were introduced into Norway during the reign of Frederick I (king of Denmark and Norway 1524–1533). Two different authors in the 1590s make this claim, and, most interestingly, one of them adds that the millwright who built the first new sawmills in Norway had learnt his craft in Bohemia.60 Scandinavia’s topography was probably pivotal in the choice of sawmill type, as was the cheaper price of the “Venetian type” compared to the “Augsburg” type.

The latter also meant that a very substantial number of mills were built at an early date, and in the seventeenth century the up-down sawmill with an undershot (flutter) wheel came to be recognized as “typical Norwegian.”

John Evelyn, in Silva: Or, a Discourse of Forest-Trees, describes and pictures a “Norway Engine, or Saw-Mill . . . which they use

both in Norway and Switzerland.”61 And when a 1649 tract entitled A Perfect Description of Virginia said that “a sawing mill for Boards is much wanted” (Farrer 1649), Edward Williams came up with an answer to the colony’s problem the next year, with his “Explication of the Saw-mill, an Engine, wherewith by force of a wheele in the water, to cut Timber with great speed.” Williams pointed out that this Engine is very common in Norway and Mountaines of Sweden, wherewith they cut great quantity of Deal-bords.62 Williams’ drawing is obviously the model for Evelyn’s (the latter is basically a copy). Another author, the German architect and engineer Georg Andreas Böckler, discussed several types of water-powered sawmills, including a “Norwegian” type (he did not associate such mills with Norway in particular), stating that these are easy to build, and cheap, and can be arranged wherever there is a river or a waterfall.63 Watermills were used in the Dutch Republic, as well, and for different purposes for instance in the Veluwe, where most were used to produce paper.64 These mills had overshot wheels, while undershot wheels were common in some areas near the present-day German border (op. cit.). Still, Dutch laborers continued to saw timber by hand until the end of the sixteenth century, and into the early eighteenth. When sawmills were introduced, it was in the form of windmills. In 1630, already, fifty-three of the mills active in Amsterdam and on the

Zaan were devoted to timber-sawing.65 Dutch sawmills were equipped with up to three saw frames that each carried multiple blades. This technology, used in windmills in the Dutch Republic, was increasingly exported, primarily to the Baltic region, where the new technique of multiple fine-bladed saws was applied from the 1660s.66 Around the Gulf of Finland this technology was also applied to water-powered sawmills.67 It took much longer until it was used in Sweden proper.

Mainly because of the huge amounts of firewood needed by Sweden’s economically important iron works, large-scale use of sawmills for export of timber was banned.

In 1740 Sweden’s exports were about 18,000 standards, or only one-eighth of what Norway’s exports had been in the 1660s.68 Even so, multi-blade saws (Norwegian: silkesager, litterally “silk saws”) 57 Johan Schreiner, “Det nye sagbruk,” in Anders Bugge and Sverre Steen, eds., Norsk kulturhistorie 5 (Oslo, 1938), 118–19.

58 D. Monrad-Krohn, “Vanndrevne oppgangssager. En etnologisk undersøkelse” (Thesis, Bergen University, 1976), 54–56.

59

Schreiner, 123.

60

Vogt, “Om Norges Udførsel,” 105–106; Alexander Bugge, Den norske trælasthandels historie 1 (Skien, 1935), 347.

John Evelyn, Silva: Or, a Discourse of Forest-Trees, And the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty’s Dominions: As it was delivered in the Royal Society the 15th of October, 1662 (London, 1679), 213–14.

61

John Farrer, A Perfect Description of Virgina (London,1649); Edward Williams, Virginia, more especially the south part thereof, richly and truly valued viz. the fertile Carolana, and no lesse excellent Isle of Roanoak, of latitude from 31 to 37 degr. relating the meanes of raysing infinite profits to the adventurers and planters (London, 1650), 277.

62

63 Georg Andreas Böckler, Theatrum Machinarum Novum (Nuremberg, 1661), 24, fig. 64.

Door from the Müller family funeral chapel, near Oslo, 1691. The door is fashioned from saw blades coming from several up-down sawmills.

The chapel’s founder, Peder Pedersen Müller, was a rich timber merchant, and the owner of the large Ljan estate (Norsk Folkemuseum).

64 P. Nijhof, Watermolens in Nederland (Zwolle, 1982); Jaap Jacobs, “‘The Great North River of New Netherland’: The Hudson River and Dutch Colonization,” The Hudson River Valley Review 30 (2014), 2: 2–15, esp. 11.

65 Hentie Louw and Robert Crayford, “A Constructional History of the Sash-Window, c. 1670–c. 1725” (Part 2), Architectural History 42 (1999), 173–239, p. 193, note 88.

Christiaan van Bochove, The Economic Consequences of the Dutch: Economic Integration Around the North Sea, 1500–1800 (Amsterdam, 2008), 158.

66

67 Ibid., 216; Carel A. Davids, “The transfer of windmill technology from the Netherlands to north-eastern Europe from the 16th to the early 19th century,” in P. S. Lemmink and J. S. A. M. van Koningsbrugge, eds., Baltic affairs.

Relations between the Netherlands and North-Eastern Europe 1500–1800 (Nijmegen, 1990), 33–52.; Sven-Erik Åström, “Technology and Timber Exports from the Gulf of Finland, 1661–1740, Scandinavian Economic History Review 23 (1975), 1–14; Sven-Erik Åström, From Tar to Timber: Studies in Northeast European Forest Exploitation and Foreign Trade, 1660–1860 (Helsinki, 1988).

68

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J. K. Sandmo, Skogbrukshistorie (Oslo, 1951), 84.

35

were not introduced in Norway earlier than in Sweden, and not before the first decades of the eighteenth century. 69 The reason was simple: While Dutch sawmills had a great advantage vis-à-vis the simpler Norwegian when it came to productivity, the low Norwegian average production costs meant that windmills in Amsterdam and on the Zaan could only competitively saw timber of large dimensions, meaning that work on timber of lesser dimensions was left to the Norwegians with their cheaper water-driven sawmills.

England was a special case. The English largely sawed its timber by hand until the early nineteenth century, because of a combination of factors, such as resistance from hand-sawyers, a large supply of relatively cheap labor, and Dutch competition.70 Early sawmills in Norway: From farmer entrepreneurship to royal privilege. Pehr Kalm, the naturalist, happened to begin his travel to America in Norway, when his ship had to find port of refuge on the Nedenes coast, then a major timber-exporting district, as it had been for a very long time. But much had changed by the time of Kalm’s visit. He was shown a coastal landscape with no vegetation except grass and bushes, even where old people still remembered extensive oak forests full of big trees; “but each year they sent one cargo after another to Holland with boards and balks, and thus destroyed the forest.” But the timber trade went on, now exploiting the pine forests further inland, and Kalm asked, rhetorically, what

holding farmers were building sawmills in huge numbers. Around 1600 Norway had about 2,000 sawmills.72 Most were small and used only during the yearly flooding, and the majority of small mills were owned by farmers, and also some larger ones. A carpenter and a blacksmith could easily build a sawmill using local materials, and the costs were very limited.73 The investment could be covered by selling five to ten dozen finished boards, much less than one season’s total output. In 1688 the average output for the remaining sawmills was 67 dozen; even if productivity probably had improved in the course of the seventeenth century, the numbers illustrate the profits to be made by having a sawmill built.

The farmers’ dominance lasted until about 1620.74 Even before this, the Crown was the biggest timber merchant in Norway, and earnings from the sale of sawed timber was the number one source of income from the Norwegian part of the monarchy (Denmark and Norway had been under a single monarch since 1397). Regulations had begun already in 1545; from then on, anyone using a sawmill should pay tithes, i.e. handing every tenth board to the King.

In 1563 sawmills were increasingly taxed, and around the same time an export fee for timber had to be paid. More regulations followed, and from 1616 and on the so-called “saw verdicts” put an end to many of the

farmers’ sawmills; in one typical region, the sawmilling district of Eiker, near Drammen, more than half the mills were closed down.75 The worst was yet to come: In 1662, only burghers in towns and seaports were allowed to trade, and in 1688 half of the remaining mills in the southern part of the country were prohibited.

Vlecker in the 1620s and 1630s: The context of the migration to the Dutch Republic—and to New Netherland.

Vlecker (the Agder region) figures prominently in the early records of New Netherland. As we have seen, this is by and large a reflection of the important part played by people from this region in the exodus from Norway to the Dutch Republic. It seems, 69

Schreiner, 118–19.

70

E. W. Cooney, “Eighteenth Century Britain’s missing sawmills: A Blessing in Disguise?,” Construction History 7 (1991), 29–46, and “Eighteenth Century Britain's Missing Sawmills: A Return Visit,” Construction History 14 (1998), 83–87; Bochove, 191–93; Forman, 39.

71 Peter Kalm, Pehr Kalms resa til norra Amerika, vol. 1 (Helsingfors, 1904), 70–71, 95.

72 Øystein Rian, “Trelastnæringen under Christian 4,” Foreningen til Norske Fortidsninnesmerkers Bevaring Årbok (1988), 85–106, esp. 99.

73 S. Dyrvik, A.B. Fossen, T. Grønlie, E. Hovland, H. Nordvik and S. Tveite, Norsk økonomisk historie 1500–1970, vol. 1 (Oslo, 1979), 42–43.

74

Rian, 93.

Ole Georg Moseng, Sigden og sagbladet (Øvre Eiker, Norway, 1994), 229.

75

the situation in Norway might become in the 19th century, if the world lasts so long, and how Norway then will look, if the people are allowed to play with the forests, in the same way as they do now.71 While the sawmilling technology was very much the same as it had been two hundred years earlier, the industry had gone through great changes. Gone were the days when anybody could set up a sawmill at a convenient brook or waterfall.

That the coastal timber resources were long exhausted, was one reason for this. More importantly, however, was the conscious and gradual regulation by government intervention of an industry formerly run by freeholding farmers. Some of the very first sawmills on the Skagerrack coast and in the larger Oslofjord region were built on behalf of the king, or by noble royal servants, or by bishops and other clergy. But soon free-

Reconstructed sawmill at Ljan, near Oslo, with undershot flutter wheel (author’s photo).

36

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Reconstructed sawmill at Ljan, near Oslo, view of the sash saw (author’s photo). however, that it was first and foremost after 1630 that the great migration from the southernmost provinces of Norway began.

Although the member lists of the Lutheran church in Amsterdam, a congregation dominated by German-speaking Protestants, are incomplete, it did count a small number of Norwegian members in the 1620s. More than half of these came from Bergen, with Vlecker and the Oslofjord region counting for the rest.

Compare this to the situation later in the seventeenth century, when the Lutheran church on the Spui counted about 3,000 Norwegian members during the 1663–1699 period. 1600 of those Norwegians came from Agder, and 900 of these from VesterRisör alone. Another 300 came from the neighboring Stavanger region. During this period, 400 came from Bergen, 300 from the Oslofjord area, 300 from “Masterland” (the Bohuslän coast of present-day Sweden, which was ceded from Denmark-Norway in 1658), and 150 from Trondheim.76 Vlecker and Vester-Risör, together with Nedenes (known by the names “Osterrijsen” and “Merdoe” in Dutch sources), had been the foremost sawmill districts in Norway during the sixteenth century, closer to Europe and The British Isles than any other part of the country, with vast coastal forests and excellent harbors. In the early seventeenth century, the region still counted for more than a third of Norway’s timber export.77 But from the turn of the century, with the coastal forests exhausted, the area

of gravity moved eastward, to the Oslofjord area, with its extensive forests and big, navigable rivers like the Drammen and Glomma rivers; both these river systems run through rich forest districts, with the drainage basin of Glomma alone covering almost a quarter of the present productive forests in the country.

The Agder region was among the areas hit particularly hard by the regulatory efforts of the government. The small Torridal district, near Vlecker, had 25 sawmills in 1610, but only twelve by 1647. In VesterRisör, of the eighteen remaining sawmills in 1688 only five were allowed to continue;78 in the nearby Lister district, only a single mill was to remain.79 By then, most sawmills were no longer owned by farmers themselves, but by wealthy merchants, as the farmers had largely been ousted both from sawmilling and from the timber trade, partly because forests further inland were now exploited, and more capital was needed for, among other things, floating the timber down river.

Several court cases in the 1620s and 1630s in Vester-Risör document the farmers resistance to merchants encroaching upon what the former perceived to be their ancient right to trade in timber. In all cases, the farmers lost out.80 This was the beginning of a long-drawn-out conflict between farmers and established and emerging towns.81 The same period saw years with bad harvests and periodical economic recession as well as new taxes, conscriptions and other demands

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put on commoners from the Copenhagen government, and coupled with widespread discontent stemming from abuse from local government administrators.

Agder was not the only region in Norway that experienced this upheaval. In Telemark, further east, the number of farmer-owned sawmills declined from 100 to 20 between 1610 and 1652, and these mills produced less than five percent of the sawn boards in that region.82 In some communities in the Oslofjord area, people complained (after 1688) that their houses were falling into disrepair because all the sawmills serving local needs were gone.83 But the consequences were probably more drastic in Agder. The farms in the region were small, and most farmers were not selfsufficient in grain and other food products.

They had to rely on other resources to get money for buying grain and meat, as well as for paying taxes. The forest resources were thus of vital importance, and more so than in other regions. In other words, their livelihood depended on sawmills.

Norway’s central areas, i.e. towns, political-administrative centers, and main agricultural districts, were located in the Oslofjord area. The coastal regions further to the southwest and southeast—Agder (Vlecker, Vester-Risör etc) and Bohuslän (Masterland)—were relatively underdeveloped regions seen from the perspective of the central power, and with few centers for economic control. Partly for this reason farmers in Agder had been granted, by royal privilege, the right to go to Denmark on their own ships with timber cargos of lesser dimensions, and take grain and other food products in return. They were also allowed to trade with foreign skippers in harbors in Norway.

Bohuslän farmers had similar rights.

76 Numbers from database kindly supplied by E. Kuijpers, VU University, Amsterdam.

77

Tveite, Engelsk-norsk trelasthandel, 58.

Finn-Einar Eliassen, Mandal bys historie 2. Den førindustrielle byen, ca. 1500–1850 (Mandal, Norway, 1995), 81.

78

Sverre Steen, Kristiansands historie, 1641–1814 (Oslo, 1941), 177.

79

80

Eliassen, 53–54.

Nils Pedersen Vigeland, Danmarksfarten fra Sørlandet (Oslo, 1936); Gustav Saetra, “Skutehandelen i Nedenes.

Kampen om liggedagsordningen og Nedenesprivilegiene 1723–1756” in K. Bäck, H. Gustafsson, J. Herstad, J. Holmgaard, M. Kuisma, M. Molander, I. Mäntylä, Ö. Rian and G. Saetra, Skog och brannvin. Studier i näringspolitiskt beslutsfattande i Norden på 1700-talet (Oslo, 1984), 303344; P. Holm, Kystfolk. Kontakter og sammenhænger over Kattegat og Skagerrak ca. 1550–1914 (Esbjerg, 1991).

81

82

Rian, 101.

83

Sandmo, Skogbrukshistorie, 105.

37

Wooden model of a simple, old-fashioned Norwegian sawmill, c. 1890 (Telemark Museum).

These so-called “Nedenes-privileges” had been cancelled in 1582, only to be given back a few years later, amid massive popular resistance. These rights were a constant source of conflict between merchants and farmers in Agder in the years to come, but they survived, and the trade continued, well into the nineteenth century. When the farmers in the course of the seventeenth century were no longer allowed to saw timber on their own sawmills, they turned to manual processing instead; in this way, hand-sawing became a typical feature in the very same region that had once been among those pioneering the new mill technology.84 There is little doubt that the special situation in the Agder region, and to a certain degree also in Bohuslän, from the early 1600s and on, was a significant “push” factor for the migration to Amsterdam and other Dutch cities and towns. Relocating to the flourishing Dutch Republic must have seemed a preferable option to many, facilitated by their acquaintance with the Dutch through the then age-old timber trade, the lack of available farms and farmlands at home, and the farmers’ increasing alienation from sawmilling and the trade in timber.

As for New Netherland, one “pull” factor for these uprooted people was surely the opportunity to make a living “the old way,” farming, logging, sawing, transporting timber, and trading in a way reminiscent of their traditional way of life, with fewer restrictions and less control from the authorities, and seemingly limitless primeval forests. For Kiliaen van Rensselaer and other early colonial entrepreneurs, those Norwegians also came with another advantage: their intimate knowledge of the cost-effective “Norway Engine.”

Conclusion. Hitherto the Scandinavian influence on the early lumber industry in North America has barely been noted, and

not studied. During the nineteenth century, the American lumber industry grew into one of the world’s largest, and several technological advances within the processing of timber were made in the United States. It was not always so. In the early colonial period sawmilling technology had to be imported from Europe, and different types of sawmills were introduced, both wind-, animal-, and water-powered, with the latter being in clear majority.

Traditional water-driven sawmills in New York and other eastern states were relatively simple, furnished with an undershot flutter wheel and a sash-type saw with one blade. The same type of sawmill was widespread in Norway and Sweden from the early sixteenth century until the Industrial Revolution. The Dutch Republic had some watermills during the early colonial period, but mills for sawing were generally wind-powered. In England, on the other hand, timbers were usually hand-sawn well into the eighteenth century.

Through the extensive timber trade with Norway, both the Dutch and the English were well acquainted with the simple and cheap mills in that country. These facts, together with different contemporary sources, first and foremost from Rensselaerswijck in New Netherland, suggesting that millwrights from Scandinavia were active in building sawmills in the colonies during the 1620s to 1640s, points to a direct link between Scandinavian technology on the one hand, and the early American sawmills and the later predominance of flutter wheel mills in the United States on the other.

The situation in New Netherland and elsewhere on the eastern seaboard was very different from the United Provinces and England, in some important ways it was the opposite: lack of labor power, soaring labor costs, and seemingly limitless forests.

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Building a simple sawmill utilizing Norwegian technology and Norwegian knowledge must have been an obvious choice for colonial entrepreneurs. Such mills were cheap, easy to set up, and could be built using locally available material.

Through the large number of Norwegians having settled in Amsterdam and other Dutch towns in the course of the seventeenth century, entrepreneurs like Kiliaen van Rensselaer had easy access to Scandinavian labor power. This partly explains the small, but significant number of Norwegian-born inhabitants in New Netherland in general, and Renssealerswijck in particular.

These migrants came to the Dutch Republic and then to New Netherland as part of a real exodus of people from the southernmost part of Norway (Agder) from the 1620s onwards. Social unrest, little or no available farmland or farms, bad harvests, decreasing forest resources and, especially, increasing government intervention in the timber trade and the resulting dramatic decrease in the number of farmer-owned sawmills and the freeholders’ alienation from the flourishing trade, were important factors behind the mass migration.

In New Netherland, with “limitless” forests, fewer regulations and lack of mercantilist policies, such people and their knowledge were valuable. Here, the Norwegians’ well-tried, cheap and easy-to-use sawmilling technology could be put to use and become widespread.

The sawmill technology used in many parts of Sweden was of the same type as in Norway, and Sweden of course had a significant presence in early colonial America, not least through the colony of New Sweden on the Delaware. But many, perhaps most, of the colonists in New Sweden were Forest Finns—specialized forest farmers with generally little experience from sawmilling at that time. The Swedish colony lacked skilled workmen. In 1640, its commander complained that he did not have one man who could build a common farmer’s house, or saw a board of lumber, and asked for “carpenters and other workmen be sent over.”85 In 1643 three large iron blades for a sawmill arrived from Sweden, suggesting that the intention was to build a Dutch-type mill with several saw blades.86 84 G. Öidne, “Stavindustrien i Vest-Agder,” Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 13 (1951), 141–69.

A. Johnson, The Swedish settlements on the Delaware.

Their history and relation to the Indians, Dutch and English, 1638–1664 (New York, 1911), 198.

85

86

Ibid., 316.

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DESTRUCTION and RESTORATION OF THE HENDRICKSON BURIAL GROUND

by Andrew A. Hendricks, MD HE HENDRICKSON BURIAL Ground, also known as the Hendrickson Cemetery, is located in Holmdel, Monmouth County, New Jersey.

The burial ground was created in the late seventeenth century by brothers Daniel, Willem, and Hendrick Hendricks(on).

The Hendricks brothers moved from Albany, New York, after the death of their parents, Hendrick Willemsz and Gisselje Bradt, in 1677. They first settled in Flatbush, Long Island, New York, and then moved to Holmdel about 1692. Daniel and Willem established large farms on what are now Holland Road and Laurel Avenue, Holmdel, New Jersey. Their brother, Hendrick, later purchased a farm nearby, today part of Holmdel Park.

These large prosperous Dutch farms were sold off over the next three hundred years leaving the one-acre Hendrickson Burial Ground surrounded by the Beau Ridge condominium development. A Hendrickson family descendant owned the adjoining Daniel Hendrickson house and farm at the corner of Holland Road and Laurel Avenue from the 1690s until its sale outside the family in 1927.

A reporter from The Asbury Park Press called my medical office in North Carolina on September 7, 2010, after the Labor Day weekend. He wanted to know how I felt about the destruction of the Hendrickson Cemetery? I was surprised by the question as who would want to destroy a family cemetery? The reporter gave me the details. The Beau Ridge Con-

T

Andrew A. Hendricks, MD founded the Hendricks(on) Family Association of Monmouth County, New Jersey, in 1999. He is also the founder in 1986 of the New Netherland Museum. This museum sponsors the full-size replica of de Halve Maen (Half Moon), constructed in 1989 in Albany, New York. The Half Moon is presently in the City of Volendam in the Netherlands.

Daniel Hendrickson House in 1996. The first section on the left was built as early as 1692.

dominium Association of Holmdel, New Jersey, had arranged to have my family cemetery headstones hauled away over that Labor Day weekend.

The question was what to do now? I

live in North Carolina and the cemetery was in Holmdel, Monmouth County, New Jersey. I called the Monmouth County Historical Association. The curator, Glenn May, gave me further information

Before the Destruction: the Hendricks Family Cemetery in 2007.

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After Destruction: the Hendrickson family grave site on September 24, 2010.

about the cemetery. Georgette, an elevenyear-old girl and her parents Terence and Jean Wall, had noticed suspicious activity around the Hendrickson Burial Ground over Labor Day weekend and notified the Holmdel Police Department and The Asbury Park Press. The Asbury Park Press ran a scathing editorial condemning the destruction of the cemetery and calling for its restoration. The good news was that some of the cemetery stones had not been hauled off and there was hope that the removed headstones could be

recovered. I sent a cease and desist order by certified mail to Beau Ridge Condominium Company and the New Jersey Monument Company.

Since this editorial was written in 2010, the entire Board of Directors of the Beau Ridge Homeowners Association has been removed. None of these former board members live any longer at Beau Ridge.

As discussed in this article, New Jersey laws were broken as Beau Ridge had no legal right to remove headstones from the Hendrickson Cemetery. Our Hendricks

and Hendrickson Family Association recommends government legislation and registration of cemeteries as historic landmarks to protect cemeteries. Our nonprofit organization is willing to assist individuals or organizations in this effort.

Glenn May at the Monmouth County Historical Association gave me contacts who were interested in doing something about the cemetery destruction. I also called my first cousin Art Rittenhouse, who lived near the cemetery in Sayreville, New Jersey. Art offered to help, and we organized a weekend meeting at the Molly Pitcher Inn in Red Bank, New Jersey. We sought an attorney to advise us while we waited to hear whether the removed headstones could be returned to the cemetery.

Sadly, we learned that the New Jersey Monument Company, who was paid by the Beau Ridge Board of Directors to remove the headstones, had already ground them up. Headstones dating from the 1700s, many by well-known stone carvers, were all destroyed.

I talked with the Holmdel Police Department regarding the criminal prosecution of the Beau Ridge Condominium

Since this editorial was written in 2010, the entire Board of Directors of the Beau Ridge Homeowners Association has been removed. None of these former board members live any longer at Beau Ridge. As discussed in this article, New Jersey laws were broken as Beau Ridge had no legal right to remove headstones from the Hendrickson Cemetery.

Our Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Association recommends government legislation and registration of cemeteries as historic landmarks to protect cemeteries. Our non-profit organization is willing assist individuals or organizations in this effort.

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de Halve Maen

This rare headstone, one of the few saved from destruction, was carved by prominent stone carver, William Valentine, for Daniel Hendrickson who died on March 2, 1776..

Association and the New Jersey Monument Company for their destruction of the Hendrickson Burial Ground. Meanwhile, Art Rittenhouse was able to persuade the nationally known Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer law firm in Woodbridge, New Jersey, to represent our group on a contingency basis.

We then organized our second national Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Reunion on November 13–14, 2010, to decide what to do next. The meeting was well attended and the group elected a Board of Trustees consisting of myself (president), Arthur J. Rittenhouse (vice president), LeAnn Hord (secretary), Debra Slaugh (treasurer), and my second cousin, Charles Hendricks (member). We faced the daunting task of gathering early photos and transcriptions of headstones of the Hendrickson Burial Ground for its restoration as well as surveying the cemetery. Since there were only eleven surviving headstones, it was unclear whether we could even recreate the cemetery. We also needed to work with John Anzalone, Esq., at the Wilentz law firm to create a nonprofit organization to support the Hendrickson Burial Ground and to begin litigation on behalf of the cemetery. Moreover, we wanted the bipartisan support of New Jersey legislators for a bill to prevent destruction of other family cemeteries in New Jersey.

The Hendrickson Burial Ground or Hendrickson Cemetery was officially created by the Last Will and Testament of Hendrick Hendrickson of Holmdel, Monmouth County, New Jersey, written on December 9, 1834. “I do hereby reserve

1 acre of land on the farm where I now live, to be used as a burying ground for the Hendrickson family and their connections, which said graveyard is to include the present graveyard and as much land on each side of it as shall make an acre.”

(Monmouth County Surrogate’s Office, Will Book D, page 310; listed on Township of Holmdel, Monmouth County, NJ Tax Map Block 50.13 Lot 3.01).

Hendrick (1758–1840) was a grandson of the original settler, Daniel Hendrickson (1672–1728), whose house and farm were passed down from 1692 to many generations of the Hendrickson family.

Hendrick Hendrickson was a private in

the American Revolutionary War, but with further military service he is listed on his headstone as Capt. Hendrick Hendrickson.

The Hendrickson Burial Ground was active from the late 1600s until the last burial of Henry Hendrickson on December 25, 1950. Six American Revolutionary War soldiers are buried here as well as William Henry Hendrickson (1813–1899), three times state senator of New Jersey, and his family. Unfortunately, over the years, the Hendrickson farms were gradually sold off and the cemetery fell into disrepair.

The author organized the first Hen-

Silhouette of Captain Hendrick Hendrickson (1758-1840) given to him by his granddaughter, Sarah Anna Hendrickson (18161843) after her marriage on October 21, 1834, to Reverend Garrett C. Schanck (18061888). (Personal collection of Andrew A. Hendricks, MD)

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Dutch Reformed Church of the Navesink founded in 1699 now known as Old Brick Reformed Church, Marlboro, New Jersey.

dricks and Hendrickson Family Reunion over the weekend of June 11–13, 1999, in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Old Brick Reformed Church (also known as the Dutch Reformed Church of the Navesink) in Marlboro, New Jersey. Daniel and his brother, Willem Hendricks(on), were among the founders of this church in 1699.

The first Hendricks(on) reunion in 1999 consisted of family lectures and a bus tour of Hendricks(on) related sites in Monmouth County, New Jersey, including the Daniel Hendrickson house, the adjacent Hendrickson Burial Ground, the Holmes-Hendrickson House, the Longstreet Farm, Tennent Church, and the Covenhoven House. At that time, the Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Association was organized by the author as a way of sharing family information.

This organization is also known by its shorter name, Hendricks(on) Family Association.

Eugene L. Hendrickson, who attended the reunion, volunteered to clean up and do transcriptions of the Hendrickson Burial Ground. Eugene’s photos and transcriptions were later very helpful in our reconstruction of the cemetery. This first reunion also established the involvement of the Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Association with the Hendrickson Burial Ground.

The author had considered organizing a second Hendricks(on) family reunion in 2009 as a ten-year follow-up to our first family reunion. Unfortunately, this reunion plan was prevented by my involvement in arranging the 400th Anniversary of the State of New York Celebration in

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2009. This delay provided the Beau Ridge Board of Directors with the opportunity to remove two truckloads of Hendrickson family headstones over Labor Day weekend 2010. Even though the Beau Ridge Board of Directors did not own the Hendrickson Cemetery, they illegally removed Hendrickson family headstones.

The Beau Ridge Board of Directors acted without written approval or consultation with any Hendricks(on) family descendant, without approval from Holmdel Township, without consultation with any historical society, and without approval from Monmouth County authorities. The Board of Directors claimed that they were removing unsafe headstones and were

going to replace these headstones with small, flat cemetery markers. However, the Beau Ridge Board of Directors did not take individual photographs of the cemetery headstones and did not mark headstone locations. The Holmdel Police learned that condo owners around the Hendrickson Cemetery had been given a large discount on their initial condo purchases because of their cemetery view.

With the help of the Wilentz law firm, the Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Association of Monmouth County filed for recognition as a nonprofit organization. Debra Slaugh, treasurer, set up a bank account and helped with the tax filings. Art Rittenhouse, vice president,

Dedication on March 13, 2011. Crosses mark gravesites. de Halve Maen

arranged for a cemetery survey on January 3, 2011, by Kenny L. Kennon, PLS, of Kenyon Surveying Services. This survey showed that Beau Ridge Condominiums buildings and walkways infringed on the one-acre property lines of the Hendrickson Cemetery.

Our board is grateful to the many people who submitted cemetery photos and even a cemetery video which were helpful in its reconstruction. The Holmdel Boy Scouts of America’s Transcription Survey and Map in 2000 and reviews by George Joynson and Joseph W. Hammond of previous headstone transcriptions were very useful. See Appendix for photos of the Hendrickson Burial Ground, sources for transcriptions of the Hendrickson Burial Ground, and friends and supporters of the Hendrickson Burial Ground.

On March 13, 2011, a dedication of the Hendrickson Burial Ground was held. Pastor Tamas Devecseri, an interim minister of Old Brick Reformed Church, in Marlboro, New Jersey, gave the dedicatory prayer. The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2179 and the American Legion and

Auxiliary Posts 515 served as an honor guard at this ceremony and many other ceremonies at the Hendrickson Burial Ground.

A subsurface radar survey was performed over the weekend of June 19–22, 2012 by Ron LaBarca and technicians from US Radar, Inc. of Matawan, New Jersey. Some members of the Association for Gravestone Studies observed this radar survey as part of their annual meeting.

The radar survey revealed a total of 99 burials in the Hendrickson Burial Ground.

Of these, we could identify sixty-three persons. Most of the burials without headstones were in the older, central part of the cemetery. The burial markers on these older graves did not survive as seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century burials were simple ceremonies with wood or stone grave markers. We believe that the original settlers Daniel Hendricks(on) (1672–1728) and his wife, Catalyntje Jansz van Dyke (1674–1744) along with his brother, Willem Hendricks(on) (1670–1711) and his wife, Wilhelmptje Laen van Pelt (1677–1711), are buried in

the oldest part of the Hendrickson Burial Ground.

The Hendricks(on) Family Association continued its outreach to the community with annual Wreaths Across America ceremonies at the cemetery and participation in annual New Jersey State History Fairs. The author wrote a regular e-mail called the Hendrickson Cemetery Update to individuals interested in seeing the Hendrickson Burial Ground restored. We also advocated for bipartisan legislation to protect other family cemeteries in New Jersey. In most states, it is a felony to destroy cemetery property. We tried to negotiate a settlement with Beau Ridge Condominiums and the New Jersey Monument Company. Meanwhile, we filed a complaint with the New Jersey prosecutor’s office on July 20, 2012, in order to preserve our legal claim. There is a three-year statute of limitations for this type of claim.

On July 29, 2015, we reached a settlement with the insurance companies representing the Beau Ridge Condominium Association and the New Jersey Monu-

Left: The Hendrickson Burial Ground reconstructed and restored, July 8, 2017.

Right: Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Association Officers from left to right Charles B. Hendricks, Arthur J. Rittenhouse, Jr., Andrew A. Hendricks, MD, LeAnn Hord, and Debra Slaugh.

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ment Company. The New Jersey Monument Company agreed to reconstruct the cemetery as part of their share of the settlement agreement. We appreciate the legal counsel of John Anzalone, Esq., and that of the Wilentz law firm in achieving this settlement.

After a board meeting about the final transcriptions and shape of the headstones for the Hendrickson Burial Ground, LeAnn Hord and Art Rittenhouse agreed to work with David Servetah of the New Jersey Monument Company for the cemetery restoration. Missing cemetery stones were replaced by thicker granite stones to insure the longevity of the headstones. Charlie Hendricks researched the Hendricks(on) cemetery and the Daniel Hendrickson house. On December 21, 2016, the final headstones were set in the Hendrickson Cemetery under LeAnn Hord’s direction.

Our board then began preparation for a large rededication ceremony at the Hendrickson Burial Ground on July 8, 2017.

Our third Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Reunion was scheduled over that same weekend. LeAnn Hord prepared a comprehensive review booklet on the reconstruction of the Hendricks(on) Burial Ground for meeting attendees.

The Hendrickson Burial Ground Rededication ceremony was a special occasion. The cemetery was finally restored and some original headstones were preserved. The new Board of Directors of Beau Ridge hosted a breakfast reception at their clubhouse before the ceremony.

The Hendricks(on) Family Association gifted Beau Ridge board members and associates with Hendrickson Cemetery shirts. LeAnn Hord’s cemetery reconstruction booklet was well received as it documented the relationship between Hendrickson family members buried in the cemetery. Georgette Wall, the elevenyear-old who had reported the cemetery’s destruction in 2010, sang America’s National Anthem at the ceremony.

Our only disappointment was that, after ten years, we, along with other historic organizations, are still waiting on the New Jersey legislature to pass a bill to protect family cemeteries in New Jersey. Legislative Bill Sl93 introduced

by Senator Joseph M. Kyrillos Jr. and Legislative Bill A3688 by Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski are still under study. In order to prevent the destruction of cemeteries by land developers,

the Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Association recommends registration of cemeteries as “historic landmarks” at local historical societies and local tax offices. They should also be registered with state and national landmark commissions.

Our nonprofit organization is willing to assist individuals and organizations in this effort.

On June 23, 2018, the Association for Gravestone Studies held its annual meeting at Western Connecticut State University. They honored our organization with their Oakley Award for our preservation of the Hendrickson Burial Ground.

John Zielenski (2008) photographed many of the headstones in the Hendrickson Cemetery, 2008.

George Joynson (2010), website http:// www.gjoynson.com/hendrickson.htm, derived from Eugene L. Hendrickson’s research, updated 2011.

Joseph W. Hammond (2010), The Hendrickson Family Cemetery, Holmdel, New Jersey; Comparison of Five Different Sets of Tombstone Transcriptions, compiled September 17, 2010; updated October 20, 2010.

APPENDIX

Friends and Supporters of the Hendrickson Burial Ground

Photographs of the Hendrickson Burial Ground were provided by the following:

Present Board of Directors, Beau Ridge Condominium Association

Susan Clausen and Alice Wikoff (1978– 1989), Hendrickson farm before Beau Ridge development Monmouth County Historical Association, photos of several Hendrickson headstones Nicholas and Barbara Feurerbacher (1999), photos from the first Hendricks(on) family reunion Eugene L. Hendrickson (1999), photos of the Hendrickson Cemetery after clearing overgrowth Terence, Jean, and Georgette Wall (2007), 2007 video of Hendrickson Cemetery.

Bob and Joan Donnelly (2008), photos of the Hendrickson Cemetery.

John Zielenski (2008), extensive photographs of the intact cemetery and individual headstones.

Sources for transcriptions of the Hendrickson Burial Ground

Judy Bretzger, editor, The Monmouth Connections; president of the Monmouth County Genealogy Society Charles T. Gehring, Ph.D., director, New Netherland Research Center Joseph W. Hammond, former director, Monmouth County Historical Association Caywood G. Hendricks, William M. Hendricks Family Foundation Hendricks and Hendrickson Family Association Henry Hendricks Family Organization Eugene L. Hendrickson, photographed and transcribed the Hendrickson Cemetery headstones, 1999 George Joynson, president, Holmdel Historical Society DelLynn Leavitt, research director, Henry Hendricks Family Organization Monmouth County Genealogy Society

Dr. John E. Stillwell (1906), Historical and Genealogical Miscellany, vol. 2, (New York: privately printed,1906), 339–40.

George C. Beekman (1915), Early Dutch Settlers of Monmouth County, New Jersey, second edition, (Freehold: Moreau Brothers, Publishers, 1915).

Henry C. McLean (1946), Hendrickson Cemetery Transcriptions, typescript, May 2, 1946.

Eugene L. Hendrickson (1999), Hendrickson Family Cemetery; Eugene visited the cemetery in September 1999.

Boy Scouts of America Troop (2000), Cemetery Transcription Survey and Map.

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Paul Sniffen, resident of Beau Ridge Condominiums Edward van Breen, Board of Directors, New Netherland Museum Richard Veit, PhD , Professor of Anthropology, Monmouth University Terence and Jean Wall and their daughter, Georgette, residents of Beau Ridge Condominiums Phil and Lorna Wooldridge; Lorna is a former board member of the Hendricks(on) Family Association John Zielenski photographed many of the headstones in the Hendrickson Cemetery, 2008.

de Halve Maen

Book Reviews David Ormrod and Gijs Rommelse, eds., War, Trade and the State: Anglo-Dutch Conflict, 1652–89 (Woodbridge, U.K. and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell & Brewer, 2020).

T

HIS VOLUME OF essays arises from two conferences held in 2017 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Raid on the Medway.

During this raid, Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter’s force struck an embarrassing blow against the English fleet mothballed at its anchorage due to lack of funds. The battle hastened the end of the second of three Anglo-Dutch Wars (1664–1667) that these rivals fought during the third quarter of the seventeenth century. By definition, then, this book provides a useful reminder of the importance of these conflicts so often neglected, at least in English terms, in favor of the celebrated struggles against the Spanish and French that sandwiched them chronologically. As can happen in this sort of scholarly enterprise, though, the value of the individual contributions— which examine topics ranging from naval construction to public memory—exceeds that of the collective enterprise.

In particular, we have a gentle, but careful, reconsideration of the importance of “Anglican Royalism” to the outbreak of the second war by Paul Seaward, as well as informative essays by John B. Hattendorf,

by Richard Blakemore and Pepijn Brandon, and by Ann Coats and Alan Lemmers that track the maritime military buildup that accompanied rising Anglo-Dutch tensions. We also have discussions by Gijs Rommelse and Roger Downing, Elizabeth Edwards, Nuala Zahedieh, Jaap Jacobs, Erik Odegard, and Martine van Ittersum that consider Anglo-Dutch animosity in European, American, and Asian contexts thereby reminding the reader that the Dutch and English competed on a worldwide basis. Then, Remmelt Daalder and David Ormrod reflect on the uses to which the Anglo-Dutch wars have been put over the centuries including the bizarre employment of the image of De Ruyter as an “antiBritish” figure by the Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands and their collaborators during World War II. For readers of this journal, Jacobs’s essay will probably hold the greatest interest.

He provides a nice sketch of the competing

claims made on the territory between the Connecticut (Fresh) and Delaware (South) Rivers by the West India Company and the English neighbors of New Netherland from 1620. His discussion of ultimately fruitless efforts by Petrus Stuyvesant, the Dutch colony’s director-general from 1647 until 1664, to keep English intruders at bay in the face of an overwhelming demographic difference provides a nice case study of the conduct of diplomacy in a seventeenthcentury North American setting. The other essays will encourage those interested in New Netherland to view the colony within a wider frame.

War, Trade and the State, though, is actually about modernity and “state formation”; according to the editors, the Anglo-Dutch Wars made the states that formed in England and in the United Provinces during the latter half of the seventeenth century, in conformance with Charles Tilly’s classic characterization.1 They did so by generating a “naval revolution” using “heavily-armed standing navies in place of armed merchant vessels,” which required “[i]mproved protection for seaborne trade in home and distant waters [that] accelerated the drive to imperial expansion, which in turn led to greater interstate rivalry. Above all, this new high-tech, capital-intensive, type of warfare required sustained investment by the state with appropriate fiscal provision” (p. xviii). The combatants thus became uniquely “fiscal-naval states” (p. 23), the concept devised by Blakemore and Brandon as a variation on John Brewer’s theme of a “fiscal-military state,” in order to meet the administrative and fiscal “challenges” entailed in this “revolution”; success in naval war necessitated state investment in and direct administration of dockyards, foundries, and other logistical facilities (p. xix).2 In a similar vein, by 1650, “England had begun, quite self-consciously, to catch up with the Dutch in a process often described as constituting a ‘commercial revolution,’” (p. 10) after the latter had achieved commercial success on an unprecedented scale following the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621) that brought a hiatus to the Dutch Revolt. “The navigation system,” as manifested by the Navigation Act of 1651 that was reenacted and revamped after the Restoration, lay at the heart of this: it

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“introduced a new and ambitious model for conducting trade in the new political environment of the interregnum, and one which was explicitly designed to challenge Dutch commercial hegemony” by which the practice of extending great privileges to the likes of the East India Company “would be replaced with an overarching national monopoly, open to all English subjects and authorised by Parliament.”

This mercantilist approach “remained in place for almost two centuries and, in short, laid the foundations for the British imperial state” (p. 11).

Unfortunately, the history of seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch relations neither really fits the schema of “war, trade, and state” nor does it readily jibe with a historiographical view that focuses on the origins of “modernity” in the form of, for instance, “state formation.” Ironically, several of the contributions to this volume underscore this reality.

In the first instance, the conflict that developed between these frenemies originated in Asia, as Van Ittersum has also discussed elsewhere, where the determination of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to corner the spice trade of the East Indies and the efforts of the VOC’s feeble English counterpart to resist that effort inter alia brought devastation to the inhabitants of the Banda Islands, the world’s source of nutmeg, and the convening of the first European conference to resolve issues outside of Europe by 1613. As her essay here details, the VOC used law, obfuscation, delay, and force to repulse repeated English attempts to claim the Moluccan island of Pulau Run over the ensuing sixty years.3 Then, it has become fashionable to regard institutions such as the VOC and the English East India Company as “company-states” that acted as governments in their own right: acquiring and governing overseas territories, conducting diplomacy, raising armies and fleets, and Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” ed. idem, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ, 1975), 3–83 at 42.

1

John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War and the English State, 1688–1783 (London, 1989).

2

3

Martine Julia van Ittersum, “Debating Natural Law in the Banda Islands: A Case Study in Anglo-Dutch Imperial Competition in the Banda Islands,” History of European Ideas 42 no. 4 (2016): 459–501; G. N. Clark and W. J. M. Eysinga, The Colonial Conferences between England and the Netherlands in 1613 and 1615, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1940–1951).

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fighting wars with those armies and fleets (p. 234). But these entities were not loose cannons, as this comprehension implies: seventeenth-century corporations (like their twenty-first-century counterparts) received charters from the government to serve as extensions of governments to pursue initiatives that lacked the capacity—and usually the interest—to undertake, including overseas trade and colonization. In exchange for employing mariners, extending domains, and improving trade, the likes of the VOC and EIC received special privileges— “monopolies”—that would benefit their shareholders. But just as governments could grant charters, so they could and did revoke them if and when corporations abused their powers; companies were and are, by definition, not sovereign entities.4 This scenario reflects the nature of seventeenth-century imperial pattern whereby private interests, as we would call them today, took the lead and “the state” generally occupied the van even after the dynastic intervention by William of Orange in England in 1688–1689; in the Anglo-Dutch scenario, the grievances of the competitors only mounted after 1613, and, in the English case, those who had suffered a stream of Dutch “insolencies” insisted that government pursue redress from the Estates-General as the decades passed. Outbreak of the English Civil Wars (1642–1651) and the execution of Charles I in 1649 gave those interests control of the English State and they used that control to press their anti-Dutch agenda more vigorously in the form, first, of the enactment of the Navigation Act to curb Dutch smuggling and then to prosecute the first war.5 Then, Oliver Cromwell granted the Dutch remarkably lenient terms to secure peace in 1654. Through the collapse of Cromwell’s Protectorate and the return of the monarchy in 1660, opponents of the Dutch, including notably the ex-New Englander George Downing who served both Cromwell and Charles II as ambassador to The Hague, remained in key places.

These holdovers were joined by the Duke of York and other ex-Royalists after the Restoration in pressing for resumption of 4 For “company-states,” Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (New York, 2011).

5

J. E. Farnell, “The Navigation Act of 1651, the First Dutch War, and the London Merchant Community,” The Economic History Review, n.s., 16, no. 3 (April 1964): 439-454.

6 L. H. Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland and SeventeenthCentury Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654-1676”, The New England Quarterly 87, no. 4 (December 2014): 666-708.

hostilities especially since the Dutch presence in “Guinea” interfered with English operations in Africa—the trans-Atlantic slave trade constituted a vital aspect of the Anglo-Dutch Wars but receives remarkably scant attention in the book under review (pp. 65–70). Here, then, private ambitions made the state, and the state then made war to further those ambitions.6

—Lou H. Roper SUNY-New Paltz

Peter G. Rose, History on Our Plate: Recipes from America’s Dutch Past for Today’s Cook (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 2019).

H

istory on Our Plate is the culmination of Peter Rose’s work on the legacy of Dutch cooking in New Netherland since beginning her research in the mid-1980s.

A prolific award-winning author, Rose’s works include, among others: The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and New World (Syracuse University Press, 1989), Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch (The History Press, 2009), Delicious December: How the Dutch Brought Us Santa, Presents, and Treats: A Holiday Cookbook (2014), and, with Donna R. Barnes, Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life (Syracuse University Press, 2002), and Childhood Pleasures: Dutch Children in the Seventeenth Century (Syracuse University Press, 2012).

In order to make a proper English translation of the only seventeenth-century cookbook printed in Dutch, De Verstandige Kok (Amsterdam 1667), Rose not only cooked the recipes but cooked them on an open hearth. Fortunately at that time, hearth cooking lessons were readily available and more fortunately she had a large fireplace in her house to experiment with. The result was her highly popular The Sensible Cook.

Over the years, Rose tells us, she continued to frequently cook the recipes in The Sensible Cook in her fireplace, which is why she now includes some pointers for the readers to try cooking them that way at home. For anyone who has enjoyed the pleasure of Peter Rose’s hearth cooking, as I can attest, it is a heavenly culinary treat that one will never forget.

The recipes in History on Our Plate are in part from the 1683 edition of De Verstandige Kok. Others are recipes handed down

46

through the generations in the early Dutch settlers’ families preserved in the archives of various historic houses, while some are from other sources as seemed necessary to round out the picture. The result is an engaging overview of Dutch culinary history from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, providing readers a delightful tour of the foodways of the Netherlands and New Netherland. Included is a chapter on cooking with children. Ever since her daughter was in kindergarten, she tells us, she has cooked with children. “When they were in the higher grades,” she writes from Westchester County, “I used some of the historical recipes to reinforce lessons on the early history of our area, which had been settled by the Dutch.” A technique she most successfully employs in this cookbook.

History on Our Plate is a portrait of people who ate well, which one will truly discover when following these easy-to-use recipes in recreating the tastes of the past.

From savory dishes and salads to cookies and custards, Rose demonstrates that historical cooking—whether done over an openhearth fire or on a modern stove—need not be a thing of the past. This delightful cookbook and culinary history will make the perfect Christmas stocking stuffer, or indeed a gift at any time of the year.

—David William Voorhees

de Halve Maen

Here and There in New Netherland Studies New Netherland Institute Announces Awards

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HE NEW NETHERLAND Institute (NNI) has announced the recipients for two of its prestigious awards, the Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize and the Annual Hendricks Award. Normally, these awards are presented at the Annual Meeting and the Annual Conference respectively, but due to Covid-19 restrictions, the ceremonies have been delayed.

The 2020 Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize has been awarded to Dr. Danny Noorlander for his article “The Lost Poems of Jacob Steendam.” Dr. Noorlander is an associate professor of history at SUNY Oneonta. The prize committee commended the article’s vivid description of life in New Netherland and its insightful analysis of Steendam’s poetry, through which Noorlander uncovered contemporary notions about New Netherland family life, women, marriage, and parenting.

Dr. Noorlander’s article appears in New York History 100:1 (Summer 2019), 75–88. The Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize consists of a $1,000 award.

Winner of the 2020 Annual Hendricks Award is Dr. Andrea C. Mosterman for her manuscript “Spaces of Enslavement and Resistance in Dutch New York.” Dr. Mosterman is an associate professor of history at the University of New Orleans.

Her manuscript will be the second title published in the New Netherland Institute Studies series—the first being Danny Noorlander’s Heaven’s Wrath. The series is a partnership between the New Netherland Institute and Cornell University Press that is dedicated to publishing the best scholarship on the seventeenth-century Dutch midAtlantic settlement of New Netherland, its colonial context, and its legacy.

The New Netherland Institute’s Hendricks Award is given to the best book or book-length manuscript relating to any aspect of New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience in North America up to 1776 and its legacy. The award carries a prize of $5,000, as well as a framed print of a painting by Len Tantillo entitled “Fort Orange and the Patroon’s House.” It is sup-

ported by a grant from Holland Society of New York Trustee Dr. Andrew Hendricks, who also financed a full-scale replica of Henry Hudson’s ship Halve Maen, and has an essay on his family burial ground in the current issue of de Halve Maen.

New York History Special Issue

T

HE NEW NETHERLAND Institute is pleased to announce that it will partner with Cornell University Press on a special issue of New York History in 2021.

The issue’s theme will be race and slavery in North America’s Dutch communities.

Article submissions are due by December 1, 2020, and should address, in an original fashion, some aspect of race and slavery in seventeenth-century New Netherland and the colonial Mid-Atlantic colonies as well as other regions as New Netherland families moved elsewhere.

Articles must have some new, previously unexplored material to offer or will present new insights or interpretations. The suggested length of submission is 20–30 double-spaced pages (or between 6,000 and 9,000 words), including footnotes. Although the due date is not until December 1, 2020, the New Netherland Institute would love to hear from those considering on submitting about the topic they are working on. Queries and article submissions should be addressed to nni@newnetherlandinstitute.org.

Julie van den Hout Talk Announced.

J

OIN THE New Netherland Institute on November 17, 2020, for the launch of the new online database “Voyages of New Netherland,” a searchable, evidence-based source of information on more than 300 voyages to New Netherland (1609–1664).

The session will feature an introduction by project developer, Julie van den Hout, followed by a discussion with Charles Gehring of the New Netherland Research Center and Stephen McErleane of the New Netherland

Summer 2020

Institute. Learn how the database will facilitate future research on New Netherland and how viewing New Netherland through the stories of these ships adds a new dimension to our understanding of the colony. A question-and-answer period will follow the talk. For further information go to www. newnetherlandinstitute.org.

Jacob Leisler Institute Lecture

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HE JACOB LEISLER INSTITUTE in partnership with the Hudson Area Library is presenting “‘Imagination Aided by the Painter’s Brush’: The Creation of the Purchase of Manhattan, 1844–1909”

by Stephen McErleane on Thursday, October 22, 6-7:30 pm via Zoom. Although the purchase of Manhattan by the Dutch from the Indians in 1626 for twenty-four dollars is now known as a fundamental piece of the early history of the city, it was not until 217 years after the event that New Yorkers first learned of the now infamous event. This talk follows the construction of that story from its first appearance in the 1840s and focuses on an important and overlooked piece: an 1853 painting of the purchase by the American artist William Ranney. Ranney has been dubbed a mythmaker for his influential depictions of the American Revolution and of life in the American West. His role in the creation of the Manhattan purchase myth, however, has been largely ignored.

Stephen McErleane is director of the New Netherland Institute and a doctoral candidate in history at the State University of New York at Albany, where he is currently writing a dissertation on the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland in history and memory. He also holds a master’s degree in information science (archives) from SUNY Albany. He is from Stony Point, New York, and currently lives in Troy, New York.

To register and receive the Zoom link email brenda.shufelt@hudsonarealibrary. org or call 518-828-1792 x101. A questionand-answer period will follow the talk.

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Society Activities Potomac Branch Meeting

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HE ANNUAL MEETING of the Potomac Branch of the Holland Society of New York took place on Saturday, June 20, 2020, at 5:00 p.m. Due to the safety measures caused by COVID-19, over a dozen branch members attended a virtual meeting via Zoom. Prior to the meeting the agenda had been sent to the members along with the link to join. Following a short business meeting, Branch President Christopher Cortright introduced new Holland Society of New York national President Colonel Adrian T. Bogart III. President Bogart is a colonel in the United States Army and has been an active Holland Society member for forty-two years. He has served as a Society Trustee and was most recently the Society Vice President. He has also served as president of both the Rocky Mountain and Army branches. President Bogart graduated from Virginia Military Institute in 1981 and has a master’s degree in diplomacy from Norwich University. He recently finished twenty months of combat duty in Afghanistan where he was the Deputy Commander of NATO Forces in Northern Afghanistan.

He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia, and

Slide from Vaughan Scribner’s Potomac Branch PowerPoint presentation. has three children, all of whom are members of the Holland Society.

Following Colonel Bogart’s introduction, guest speaker Professor Vaughan Scribner shared his insights on Dutch-American colonial history drawn from his research into the American colonies. Dr. Scribner is an assistant professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas. His book Inn Civility: Urban Taverns and the Negotiation of Civil Society (NYU Press, 2019) demonstrates how taverns were crucial to early American political and social life, while his forthcom-

ing book Merpeople: A Human History (Reaktion Books, 2020) uses merpeople to understand the most mysterious, dangerous, and capricious beings on Earth: humans. He has also published numerous articles and book chapters which investigate everything from colonial American pleasure gardens and mineral spring spas to West Indian chattel slavery and southern taverns to the rise of professional theater in North America. His lively PowerPoint presentation “Founders, Foils, and Fuelers: The Dutch in Colonial New York” was well received.

LL MALES AND FEMALES descendant in the direct MEMBERSHIP A male line of an ancestor who lived in New Netherland prior to or during 1675 are invited to join The Holland Society of New York. New Netherland was a diverse place IN THE including many nationalities, religions, and ethnicities, descendants of all who lived under New Netherland’s HOLLAND SOCIETY and government are eligible for membership. An application for membership will be sent upon request. Our Genealogy OF Committee can often provide assistance and will respond to any reasonable inquiry.

NEW YORK Others interested in New Netherland history and traditions are invited to associate with The Holland Society by becoming “Friends of The Holland Society.”

Please write or call for further information.

The Holland Society of New York 1345 6th Ave 33rd floor New York, NY 10105 (212) 758-1675 email: info@hollandsociety.org www.hollandsociety.org

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de Halve Maen

Records of The Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Flatbush, Kings County, New York Volume I 1677-1720 Volume II Deacons' Accounts 1654–1709 Translated by David William Voorhees Published under the auspices of The Holland Society of New York, these two volumes translate the records of the consistory minutes, baptismal and marriage records, and membership lists of the Dutch Reformed congregations located in the present-day New York City borough of Brooklyn. Special features include transliterated Dutch text and English line-for-line translation.

— Hard cover — Illustrated — $60.00 per volume

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