de Halve Maen, Spring 2018

de Halve Maen

Journal of The Holland Society of New York Spring 2018

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de Halve Maen

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Magazine of the Dutch Colonial Period in America

President Andrew S. Terhune Vice President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III Treasurer R. Dean Vanderwarker III

Secretary James J. Middaugh Domine Rev. Paul D. Lent

Advisory Council of Past Presidents Roland H. Bogardus W. Wells Van Pelt Jr Kenneth L. Demarest Jr. Walton Van Winkle III Robert Schenck William Van Winkle Peter Van Dyke Charles Zabriskie Jr. Trustees Laurie Bogart Bradley D. Cole D. David Conklin Christopher M. Cortright Eric E. DeLamarter David W. Ditmars Philips Correll Durling

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VOL. XCI

Connecticut-Westchester R. Dean Vanderwarker III Dutchess and Ulster County 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 Col. Adrian T. Bogart III 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 Editor David William Voorhees Production Manager

Odette Fodor-Gernaert

Copy Editor Sarah Bogart

Editorial Committee Peter Van Dyke, Chair Christopher Cortright John Lansing

David M. Riker Rudy VanVeghten

NUMBER 1

IN THIS ISSUE: 2

Editor’s Corner

3

Sugar, Spices, and Furs: Uncovering the Trade Network of Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen

9

The Governor, the Militiaman, and the Domine

19

Book Review: Julie Van Den Hout, Adriaen Van Der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-century America

Vice-Presidents

Spring 2018

by David William Voorhees

by Rudy VanVeghten

by Laurie Bogart Wiles

20

Here and There in New Netherland Studies

21

Society Activities

23

In Memoriam

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, 708 Third Ave., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10017. Telephone: (212) 758-1675. Fax: (212) 758-2232.

E-mail: info@hollandsociety.org Website: www.hollandsociety.org Copyright © 2018 The Holland Society of New York. All rights reserved.

Cover: Reijnier Nooms, “Caulking ships at the Bothuisje (flounder shed) on the IJ at Amsterdam” (1650–1658), Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Spring 2018

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Editor’s Corner

S

IX DEGREES OF separation is a concept originally formulated by Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularized by Irish-American playwright John Guare in a 1990 award-winning play of the same name.

The idea is that everyone in the world is connected by a chain of no more than six acquaintances. “How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds,” a leading character states in a memorable monologue from the play. “Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet. But to find the right six people.” Karinthy’s theory intrigued me as I began to put this issue together. Can six degrees be applied to the Dutch Republic’s trade networks?

Can the theory help us understand New Netherland and colonial New York’s development? Can the right six people be found? The idea stuck.

In the pre-industrial economy, the individual merchant was the primary instrument in trade. Christian Marx, professor of Economic History at the University of Trier, wrote in 2012 of the early modern merchant, “he was able to cope with the unpredictable risks and costs involved in communication and transportation over long distances by means of trust-based networks.” Familial relations formed the basis for trustbased networks, which, during the explosive expansion of European trade in the late middle ages grew to global proportions. In my essay opening this issue, I suggest that Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen offers a case study to explore the role of familial chains in New Netherland’s development.

Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen arrived in New Amsterdam at age twenty in 1649. For the next twenty-two years he played a prominent role in New Netherland’s mercantile, civic, and ecclesiastical affairs. He is best known to history, however, as the first husband of Elsie Thymens, who, after Pieter’s sudden death, wed Jacob Leisler in 1663, leader of a popular 1689 New York uprising. Historians often state that Leisler’s successful mercantile career was the result of this marriage. Trade and genealogical records, however, reveal trust-based networks already tied them together. If Elsie united them, as I show here, she was also vulnerable to the unpredictable risks of early modern trade. Marriage in the early modern era was not based on a whim but a practicable matter of survival.

The theory of six degrees can also be applied to Rudy VanVeghten’s essay. In this issue, VanVeghten continues to explore how his ancestor, Gerrit Teunisse, who he introduced in the Winter 2017–2018 issue, fits into the milieu of seventeenth-century New York. In order to do so he focuses the four-year relationship between the erratic Albany minister and Rensselaerwijck patroon Nicholas Van Rensselaer and New York English governor Edmund Andros. From 1674 to 1678, VanVeghten informs us, “Nicholas struggled through his dual responsibilities, often running into controversies stemming from his sometimes unusual theological views, in addition to disagreements over administering the family’s estate and its feudal-like population of tenant farmers.”

Here we are again introduced to the same familial network as that of Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen, a network to which both men were linked through marriage. Van Rensselaer arrived in New Netherland shortly after the Dutch relinquished it to the English for the second time. In addition to administering the family estate of Rensselaerswijck, the Duke of York had appointed him assistant minister to the Albany Reformed Church. His “reception as a religious and moral leader in the North Hudson area,” VanVeghten writes, “was not a smooth one,” particularly in 1676 in well-known suit with Jacob Leisler over Van Rensselaer’s sermon on original sin. This division over religious matters “evolved into a division over government authority in the 1689–1691 Leisler Rebellion, and thereafter into political factions, giving rise to partisan politics that are as polarizing today as Van Rensselaer’s sermon was back in 1676.”

Religious theology, VanVeghten notes, was not the only source for Van Rensselaer’s contentions. His duties as Rensselaerwijck director included “negotiating and collecting rents from tenant farmers.” This included rent from militiaman Gerrit Teunisse van Vechten, who had received a separate patent from Andros. At this point, VanVeghten finds a rift developed between the Albany clergyman and the English governor. “There is no known explanation for what caused the rift between the governor and the domine,” he writes, “but a recapitulation and collation of the events during their four years together points to a general cause that sparked the eruption,” and in VanVeghten’s fast-paced narrative he suggests that the “prime candidate for this rift is the gift of land presented to Lt. Gerrit Teunisse.” Moreover, VanVeghten posits a new theory for Van Rensselaer’s death less than a month later.

Uncovering these relationship chains tell us is that events in Dutch New Netherland and colonial New York can not be viewed separate from events occurring elsewhere. In the past, as in the present day, men and women throughout the globe are tied together and dependent on each other by a fragile chain of at the most six degrees of separation.

During the preparation of this issue we received the sad news that Ralph DeGroff Jr. passed away on April 19. Ralph had continued his father’s legacy as a great patron of New Netherland scholarship. Ralph DeGroff Sr. provided the initial funding for the New Netherland Project and found Peter Christoph and Charly Gerhing to do the transcription and translation work. Ralph Jr. continued his father’s legacy with the Marion DeGroff scholarship. His death is a tremendous loss for New Netherland studies in general.

2

David William Voorhees Editor

de Halve Maen

Sugar, Spices, and Furs: Uncovering the Trade Network of Pieter Cornelissen VanderVeen

by David William Voorhees

T

HE EXPLOITATION OF Baltic’s timber and other natural resources and the discovery of direct sea routes to Asia and the Americas in the late middle ages opened up rich trade potentials for northwestern Europe. The resulting rise of increasingly influential northern European mercantile communities, and an attendant shift away from Europe’s traditional Mediterranean-centric economy, upended centuries-old social and political structures. The Dutch Republic’s meteoric rise was part of this seismic change.1 We need to know, however, more about how individuals operated within the Dutch Republic’s trading empire, and, particularly, in New Netherland following the West India Company’s opening of trade to free agents after 1640. Historian Dennis Maika in a 1995 doctoral dissertation on seventeenthcentury Manhattan merchants provides an excellent introduction. In his work, Maika focused on the connection between Amsterdam capital and the emergence of an independent New Amsterdam mercantile community.2 The career of Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen offers a case study.

Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen arrived in New Netherland at the age of twenty in 1649.3 For the next twenty-two years he played a prominent role in New Amsterdam as a merchant and burgher. He is best known to history, however, as the first husband of Elsie Thymens. Elsie, eighteen David William Voorhees is director of the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, as well as editor of this journal. He thanks Antonia Kolb and Dr. Jaap Jacobs for their guidance in producing this essay.

months after Pieter’s sudden death in early September 1661, married twenty-threeyear-old Jacob Leisler. Leisler is known for his leadership of a 1689 New York uprising against the government of English King James II; an action that resulted in a longlasting bitter factionalism in the region.

Historians often state that Leisler’s successful mercantile career was the result of his marriage to Vander Veen’s widow.4 For this reason, uncovering Vander Veen’s network has import not only for understanding New Netherland’s economic development after 1640 but for English New York’s political development as well.5 Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen was born in Amsterdam in 1629, son of Cornelis Albertsz vander Veen and Grietje Pieters.

He was baptized in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk on April 8, 1629, with Aechie Cornelis as witness.6 The baptismal record provides clues to the family’s identity. According to Amsterdam records, Pieter’s parents’ marriage banns were published in the Amsterdam Reformed churches on October 11, 1614. The banns state that Cornelis Albertsz, a house carpenter (huis timmerman), twenty-six years old, living in Heiloo, with his mother’s consent and assisted by Pieter Jansz of Heiloo, and Grietje Pietersdr, age twenty-four, living outside Amsterdam’s Regulierspoort on the Visschers’ Path, assisted by her mother, Aef Symons, declared their intent to marry. A marginal notation states that the wedding took place in Heiloo on November 1.7 Heiloo is a small village adjacent to the town of Alkmaar in Kennemerland, a coastal region of the northwestern Netherlands in the present-day province of North Holland. Historically the region was a part

of West Friesland. In the early modern era, the village of Heiloo was famous for a mineral spring and religious shrine, Onze Lieve Vrouwe ter Runxputte (Our Lady of Runxputte), which contained alleged miraculous healing properties. Due to the mineral spring’s reputation, Heiloo was a prosperous community. It was the site 1 Jonathan L. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806 (Oxford, 1995), 9–154; Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in SeventeenthCentury America (Leiden and Boston, 2005); Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Ithaca, N.Y., 2016).

Dennis J. Maika, “Commerce and Community: Manhattan Merchants in the Seventeenth Century” (UMI, Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1995). See also, Oliver Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca, NY, 1986), 172–213.

2

Van der Veen first appears in New Netherland documents in August 1649 as a witness to several notarial acts at the office of the secretary in New Amsterdam. See Arnold J. F. Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts Dutch, vol. III Register of the Provincial Secretary 1648–1660, Kenneth Scott and Kenn Strykker-Rodda (Baltimore, 1974), 138-41.

3

See, for example, Thomas Archdeacon, New York City, 1664–1710: Conquest and Change (Ithaca and London, 1976), 110; Robert C. Ritchie, The Duke’s Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664–1691 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1977), 145.

4

5 Antonia Kolb touches upon this topic in a seminal article, “Hanau and America: Some Unknown Aspects of Old World and New World Networks,” de Halve Maen (Winter 2006), 63–68.

DTB 41, p. 17, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; “Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1553-1909,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/ TH-1971-31148-6621-80?cc=2037985&wc=M5P3-7MW:382016901,382015502,382127501 : accessed 31 Mar 2014), Nederlands Hervormd > Amsterdam > Dopen 1628-1646 > image 12 of 492.

6

DTB 418, p. 215, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; “Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1553-1909,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/ TH-1951-31148-37097-56?cc=2037985&wc=MCGY-BZ S:382016901,382015502,382295001 : accessed 25 Mar 2014), Nederlands Hervormd > Amsterdam > Huwelijksaangiften, Trouwen 1614-1617 > image 112 of 624.

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were being made in that industry.14 Cornelis Aldertsz vander Veen and Grietje Pieters had twelve children, all baptized in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk between 1616 and 1639.15 Pieter Cornelisz was their eighth child. The marriages and

The Chapel of Our Lady at Runxputte (Antwerp, 1637) British Library

8 Elissa Auerbach, “Pilgrimage and the Liminal Landscape in Early Modern Netherlandish Art,” in Floyd Martin and Eileen Yanoviak, eds., Formations of Identity: Society, Politics and Landscape (Cambridge, 2016), 19–37.

For Coninck’s appointment with Johannes Depeyster as guardians and administrators of Vander Veen’s estate on December 15, 1663, see, Berthold Fernow, The Minutes of the Orphanmasters of New Amsterdam, 1655 to 1663 (New York, 1907), 1: 195–96 [hereafter Orphanmasters].

9

10 See, for example, Teunis G. Bergen, Register in Alphabetical Order, of the Early Settlers of Kings County, Long Island, N.Y., from Its First Settlement by Europeans to 1700 (New York, 1881), 68.

The marriage banns were declared on April 27, 1619.

DTB 423, p. 240, Huwelijksintekeningen van de Kerk, Stadsarchief Amsterdam.

11

for the country homes of such notables as Pieter van Foreest (1521–1597), physician to William the Silent, Prince of Orange.

The village also remained largely Roman Catholic in religion despite the official imposition of the Reformed church in 1581.8 Pieter Cornelissen’s father, Cornelis Aldertsz, or Albertsz, was born about 1588, presumably in Heiloo. According to the patronymic, he was a son of one Aldert, or Albert, vander Veen. Patronymics, however, do not offer much help. Moreover, the surname Vander Veen [meaning of the peat-moor or fen] is common. According to the 1614 marriage banns Aldert died prior to 1614 but Cornelis’s mother was still alive and living in Heiloo. Unfortunately, the records for Heiloo and Alkmaar are lost for the years 1611–1617. Thus, it is difficult to identify Aldert vander Veen with certainty.

In December 1663, Aldert Coninck in New Amsterdam was deemed the “closest blood relation” to Pieter Cornelissen in New Netherland.9 This is undoubtedly “Aldert Coninck, tailor,” who appears in Manhattan records. But his exact relationship to Pieter Cornelissen is also unclear due to the confusion between several men bearing the same name.10 The witness to Pieter Cornelissen’s baptism in Amsterdam in 1629 was Aechie Cornelis. This is possibly Aachje Cornelis, who in 1619 at age twenty-eight married, twenty-seven-year-old Jan Albertsz living on the Keysersgracht in Amsterdam.11 Whatever the family’s origins, Cornelis Aldertsz was more prosperous than his identification as a house carpenter suggests.

By 1615, he had moved to Amsterdam where he was living on the Prinsenstraet between the Prinsengracht and the Keizersgracht in the city’s elegant new district.

Most likely he was a building contractor with a team of servants and services much in demand in the rapidly expanding city. In the half century between 1600 and 1670, Amsterdam’s population exploded from 60,000 to 200,000 inhabitants.12 Indeed, in May 1657 Cornelis Aldertsz was able to purchase from the administrators of the estate of the bankrupt Hendrick [Hans] Dircksz van den Berg a property on the Egelantiersgracht, where he operated a sugar refinery named the “Three Sugarloafs” [de dry suycker brooden].13 In the mid-seventeenth century, Amsterdam along with Hamburg, Germany, were the centers for European sugar processing and fortunes

12 A. M. Van der Woude, “Population developments in the Northern Netherlands (1500–1800) and the validity of the ‘urban graveyard’ effect,” Annales de démographie historique (January 1982), 56.

Kwijtscheldingsregisters Transportakten voor 1811: JPEG/94 3,9Mb 300dpi 40x29cm, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; J. J. Reesse, De suikerhandel van Amsterdam, van het begin der 17de eeuw tot 1813, Volume 1 (Haarlem, 1908), 274.

13

14 Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London, 1949–1950), 2: 449–70.

15 Albert Cornelissen (1616), Maritje (1618, died young), Aefje (1620), Maritje (1622), Pietertje (1624), Pieter (1626, died young), Aechtje [Wyberich] (1627), Pieter Cornelissen (1629), Abraham (1632), Catrijntje [Catharina] (1634), Jacomijntje [Jacomina] (1637), and Lijsbet (1639).

“Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1553–1909,” DTB 39, p. 424, DTB 40, pp 5, 90, 177, 260, 357 402, DTB 41, pp. 17, 199, DTB 7, p. 18, DTB 42, pp.

5, 142, Stadsarchief Amsterdam.

Jan Collaert I after Jan van der Straet, “The Sugar Refinery, Processing sugarcane into solid sugar loaves.” Philips Galle, Nova Reperta (New Inventions of Modern Times) (Antwerp, 1600), plate 13.

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de Halve Maen

Frans Hals, portrait of Pieter van den Broecke (1585–1640), painted in 1633. Currently located in Kenwood House, London. From Wikimedia Commons.

Pieter Cornelissen’s Atlantic trade. Anthony (1620–1685) arrived in New Netherland as an agent for Cornelis Melijn, patroon of Staten Island.26 New Netherland DirectorGeneral Petrus Stuyvesant appointed Anthony to the Council of Nine Men in 1652 and the newly-established New Amsterdam office of schepen in 1653, New Amsterdam burgomaster, or mayor, in 1654, 1655, and 1663, treasurer in 1656, and an orphan master in 1658. Anthony married Henrica Wessels, daughter of Warnear Wessels, from Utrecht on April 12, 1656.27 Matthijs 16 DTB 466, p. 389, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; “Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1523-1948,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS799QV-494B-M?cc=2037985&wc=SM9S-827%3A12931932 04%2C382015502%2C382357001 : 21 August 2014), Nederlands Hervormde >Amsterdam > Huwelijksaangiften, Trouwen 1647-1649 > image 492 of 574; Nederlands Rijksarchiefdienst, Den Haag (Netherlands National Archives, The Hague).

17 128 Archive, Stadsarchief Amsterdam, 2410,omslag 22, fol. 67–83. For an inventory of the paintings see http://research.frick.org/montias/browserecord.php?action=browse&-recid=1318.

connections of his brothers and sisters who reached maturity reveal an economic and social standing that placed the family among Amsterdam’s prosperous classes.

On March 11, 1649, for example, Pieter’s sister Wijberich, “assisted by her parents Cornelis Allertsz and Grietie Peeters, living on the Prinsenstraat,” declared marriage banns with thirty-year-old Cornelis van Dyck from Cuylenburg [Culemborg], a surgeon living on the Prinsengracht.16 A detailed inventory of Wijberich’s estate made at the time of her death in 1675 survives in the Amsterdam Gemeentearchief, which includes an extensive art collection.17 Pieter’s sister Catrijntje [Catharina] married in Amsterdam at age eighteen Balthasar van Eijndhoven, son of Balthasar Eijndhoven and Sara Vredenberg, by banns made on September 13, 1652.18 Balthasar’s family was involved in the Dutch East India Company (VOC). His father served as the assistant in Banda Islands in 1613 and sailed with Gaspar van Zurck on a mission to the court of Mataram in Indonesia in May 1614. By 1615 he was heavily involved in the East Indies pepper trade.19 The elder Van Eijndhoven, widower of Willempje Pieters van Aerden, who he had wed in 1625, married Sara Vredenberg in Amsterdam on May 25, 1629. Following Balthasar’s death in 1638/39, Sara Vredenberg married Guillaume van den Broecke, father-in-law of Catrintje and Pieter Cornelissen’s sister Aeltije, in 1640.20 Aeltije’s marriage cemented the family’s ties with Amsterdam’s international

mercantile community. At age twenty-five she signed marriage banns on May 4, 1656, with twenty-nine-year-old Paulus van den Broecke, assisted by his above-mentioned father Guillaume.21 Guillaume, a Hamburg sugar refiner, was a son of Pieter van den Broecke the Elder and Maria de Marimont. The family had fled from Antwerp to Alkmaar, where they established a sugar refinery. Guilliaume’s brother Pieter (1585–1640) was a noted explorer, whose exploits included the introduction of coffee to western Europe in 1614. In 1619 he became VOC director of the Banda Islands, which were so important to the company’s nutmeg, mace, and spice trade. 22 Guilliaume became a prominent Amsterdam sugar manufacturer after his marriage in 1623 to Sara van den Berg. A year after the marriage, however, Sara’s father Hans van den Berg went bankrupt,“rumored to be the result of corruption and leading an immoral lifestyle.” It was Van den Berg’s estate that Cornelis Aldertsz vander Veen purchased in 1657.23 Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen first appears in New Netherland documents on August 14, 1649, as a witness to several notarial records before Jacob Kip in the New Amsterdam office of secretary Cornelis van Tienhoven.24 Considering Pieter’s debts amounting to ƒ 5,095.4 to his father in 1661, it appears that Cornelis Aldertsz advanced the initial capital to finance his son’s entrance into the New Netherland fur trade.25 From the beginning, Allard Anthony is found as the main conduit in

18 DTB 470, p.169, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; “Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1523-1948,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7L9QV-Z798?cc=2037985&wc=SM9S-L2S%3A1293193204 %2C382015502%2C382369401 : 21August 2014), Nederlands Hervormde >Amsterdam > Huwelijksaangiften,Trouwen 16511653 > image 397 of 485; Nederlands Rijksarchiefdienst, Den Haag (Netherlands National Archives, The Hague).

19 See, Peter de Bode, De Linschoten-Vereeniging Tresoor der Zee- en Landreizen (Zutphin, 2007), 216, and J. K. J. De Jong, De opkomst van het Nederlandsch gezag Oost Indie (‘S Gravenhage and Amsterdam, 1869), Volume 1: 96–97; P. J. van Houten, Handleiding voor de pepercultuur (Amsterdam, 1890), 161.

DTB 434, p.177. “Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1523-1948,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99QVV6G3?cc=2037985&wc=SM9S-GPD%3A1293193204%2 C382015502%2C382309701 : 21 August 2014), Nederlands Hervormde > Amsterdam > Huwelijksaangiften, Trouwen 1628-1630 > image 320 of 582; Nederlands Rijksarchiefdienst, Den Haag (Netherlands National Archives, The Hague). See also, Eijndhoven genealogy, https://www.nikhef.nl/~louk/LKW/ generation15.html#IVb).

20

21 DTB 476, p.35. “Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1523-1948,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89QV-4Q2N?cc=2037985&wc=SM9S-DPD%3A1293193204%2C 382015502%2C382381701 : 21 August 2014), Nederlands Hervormde >Amsterdam > Huwelijksaangiften,Trouwen 16551657 > image 302 of 593; Nederlands Rijksarchiefdienst, Den Haag (Netherlands National Archives, The Hague).

22 https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/bran038biog01_01/ bran038biog01_01_0632.php; James D. La Fleur, Pieter van den Broecke’s Journal of Voyages to Cape Verde, Guinea and Angola (1605–1612) (Hakluyt Society, 2000).

23 Benjamin Roberts, Sex and Drugs Before Rock ‘n’ Roll: Youth Culture and Masculinity During Holland’s Golden Age (Amsterdam, 2012), 39–40.

24 Arnold J. F. Van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts Dutch, vol. III Register of the Provincial Secretary 1648–1660, Kenneth Scott and Kenn Strykker-Rodda, eds.

(Baltimore, 1974), 138–41.

25

Orphanmasters, 436.

Correspondence 1647–1653, Charles T. Gehring, ed. and trans. (Syracuse, 2000), 139.

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Averts, surgeon, gave Pieter Cornelissen power of attorney on April 8, 1652.28 Pieter Cornelissen van der Veen married Elsie Thymens (Thymens), daughter of Thymen Jansz and Marritje Jans, in New Amsterdam on January 7, 1652.29 Elsie was at the center of New Amsterdam’s emerging elite. Her mother at the time was married to a third husband, Govert Loockermans, New Amsterdam’s wealthiest merchant.

This marriage connected Elsie to such rising New Netherland merchants as Oloff Stephensz van Cortlandt, whose wife, Anneke, was Loockerman’s sister, and Jacob Wolfertse van Couwenhoven, who had married a sister of Loockerman’s first wife, and, through Loockerman’s previous marriage to the widowed niece of Gillis Verbrugge, to the prominent Amsterdam firm of Verbrugge.30 Loockermans’s first wife, Adriantje, was a niece of Gillis Verbrugge, and the widow of Jan van de Water. Van de Water had been active with his brothers Isaack and Jacob in the Arctic trade. More important for American developments, the Van de Waters and Gillis Verbrugge were in 1637 among the financial backers to a Swedish colony on the Delaware River promoted by disillu-

sioned Dutch West India Company director Samuel Bloomart and led by former New Netherland director Peter Minuit. Elsie’s aunt, Anneke Jans, meanwhile, had married New Amsterdam Reformed domine Everardus Bogardus. Elsie’s cousins—Anneke’s daughters—Sara wed New Amsterdam surgeon Hans Kierstede, and Catrintje, widow of both wealthy merchant Willem de Kay and late Curaçao vice-director Lucas Rodenburg, was married to a third husband, Johannes Pietersz Verbrugge, a nephew of Gillis Verbrugge.31 The marriage undoubtedly elevated Pieter Cornelissen’s status within New Amsterdam’s mercantile community. On November 22, 1653, he was a signatory to a remonstrance by the merchants of New Amsterdam against an ordinance fixing the rates of import duties, and three days later appointed to a committee to represent the grievances of the merchants.32 That year, Allard Anthony was sent to Holland to request aid to defend the colony against the English then threatening to invade the Dutch colony. At his departure for Holland Anthony made Vander Veen administrator of the goods in Manhattan.33 This may not have been a wise decision.

6

In 1653 Vander Veen became a partner in company with Johannes Nevius and his for his father-in-law Cornelius de Potter to build and outfit a three-masted ship 27 J. G. B. Bulloch and Arthur Adams, “Genealogical Notes Relating to Warnaer Wessels and His Descendants,” NYGB Record, 44 (Oct. 1913), 323–26.

28 N. 146 Not. Arch. 2279 IV, fol. 53, Nots. Jac de Winter, Stadsarchief Amsterdam.

29 Marriages from 1639 to 1801 in the Reformed Dutch Church, New Amsterdam—New York City (New York, 1940), 16.

30 David M. Riker, “Govert Loockermans Free Merchant of New Amsterdam,” de Halve Maen 54 (June 1989): 4–10; Rosalie Fellows Bailey, “Jan Hendricksz van de Water, Skipper of Minuit’s ship founding the New Sweden Company, and His Family in the Netherlands,” NYGB Record 100 (July 1969): 129–40, (October 1969): 225–34.

Jacob Wolfertsz van Couwenhoven (1612–1670), born at Amersfoort, Utrecht, the son of Wolfert Gerritsz van Couwenhoven and Neeltje Jans, married Hester Jansen, sister of Govert Loockermans’s first wife, Ariantje Jans, on December 1, 1637.

31 William Brower Bogardus, Dear “Cousin”: A Chartered Genealogy of the Descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus (1605–1663) to the 5th Generation—and of her sister, Marritje Jans (Wilmington, Ohio, 1996).

32 Berthold Fernow and John Romeyn Brodhead, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, 1853–1887), 14: 222, 225–26, 277, 281 [hereafter DRCHNY].

33 Berthold Fernow, Edmund Bailey O’Callighan, eds., The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674, 7 vols.

(New York, 1897), 3: 79 [hereafter RNA].

de Halve Maen

Elsie Thymens vander Veen Leisler.

Photo of miniature from Anne H. Wharton, Heirlooms in Miniature (Philadelphia, 1898), 2.

Nieuwe Liefde [New Love]. On September 29, 1653, Pieter Cornelissen sued De Potter for payment of his portion of the fitting out of the ship. This began an action that lasted nearly two years. On November 30, 1654, Govert Loockermans, acting as attorney for Pieter Cornelissen, sued Nevius for his share in the construction of the New Love that De Potter had not paid. On September 13, 1655, Pieter Cornelissen appeared with Paulus Leenderts vande Grift to sue Nevius as De Potter’s attorney for the balance of ƒ 580 for his share of two twenty-fifth parts in the New Love. Nevius denied that his fatherin-law held a two twenty-fifth share in the ship but was a partner for only ƒ 300.34 The breach with Anthony appears to have healed by January 26, 1655, when Amsterdam merchant Walewijn van der Veen settled diverse accounts with Pieter Cornelissen following a memorandum of Anthony’s.35 Walewijn had married Elisabeth de Meersman, widow of Benjamin van de Water.36 Although no evidence has been found to connect the Deventer-born Waleijn vander Veen to the family of Pieter Cornelissen, their business relationship is interesting.

Family connections, however, did play a role in Vander Veen’s relations with his father-in-law, Govert Loockermans.

On November 18, 1659, Olof Stevenzen Cortlant and Johannes Van Brugh recused themselves from a court matter between Allard Anthony and Pieter Cornelissen over the 1653 accounts. Their reason their being related to Vander Veen by marriage.37 On October 15, 1653, Loockermans conveyed to Pieter Cornelissen a house and lot on Pearl Street granted to Elsie’s mother Marritje Jans on May 17, 1648. This transfer of his wife’s property from a previous mar-

riage would lead to later strife.

Pieter Cornelissen and Elsie had four children. Cornelis, baptized in New Amsterdam on October 27,1652, with Govert Loockermans, Allard Anthony, and Marritie Thymens as witnesses.39 A second son, Timotheus, was born in Amsterdam and baptized in Amsterdam’s Noorderkerk on December 30, 1654, with his grandfather Cornelis Albertsz as witness.40 And two daughters, Margarita, baptized in New Amsterdam on February 18, 1657, with Olof Stephenszen Van Courtlandt and Annetje Loockermans as witnesses, and Catharyn, baptized in New Amsterdam on June 29, 1659, with Govert Loockermans and Cornelia de Peyster as witnesses.41 Pieter Cornelissen’s New World network was enhanced when his sister Jacomina married Jacques Couturier on October 15, 1658, in the Walloon Church in Amsterdam. Couturier, a son of Henri Couturier the Elder and Ann Digan, was born in Leiden in 1635.42 Jacques was an Amsterdam merchant and, with his brothers, Henri, Isaac, and David, heavily involved in New Netherland trade.

Possibly through the agency of Augustine Heermans, they also became involved early in the Chesapeake tobacco trade.43 Pieter Cornelissen’s advanced status in the community is evident by the number of offices he held. In October 1655 he was selected and confirmed as an overseer of orphans.44 He was admitted to the rights of a small burgher on April 11, 1657.45 He served as a schepen in 1656, 1657, and 1658.46 He was granted New Amsterdam’s great burgher right on January 28, 1658.47 In February of that year he was made a church warden.48 In 1658 he was appointed one of the commissioners to treat with the Esopus Indians.49 Apparently in 1660 Pieter Cornelissen returned to Amsterdam. In 1661 Amsterdam merchant Adriaan Heermans gave Pieter Cornelissen, ready to sail to New Netherland, power of attorney to order from Allard Anthony, now New Amsterdam burgemeester, to receive all goods and claims belonging to Heermans and to arrange his affairs there and further to claim from Samuel Goedenhyse’s account.50 Pieter Cornelissen vander Veen died suddenly in New Amsterdam in early Sep-

tember 1661. The cause of death remains a mystery. There is no indication that the thirty-two-year-old suffered poor health and the silence of the circumstances surrounding his sudden passing is unusual. What is known is that Pieter Cornelissen was in substantial debt. Adolf Pietersen declared that on the day before Pieter died he had said to him: “I hope that Geleyn [sic]shall soon come down . . . to settle with him.”51 Scarcely two weeks after Pieter Cornelis34

RNA 1: 121, 126, 270, 273, 355, 359, 386.

1655 January 21, Not. Arch. 1353/4 Nots. H. Schaef; Not. Arch. 1756/51 Nots J. Q. Spithoff; 1656 December 20, Not Arch. 2422c/247 Nots. Pieter van Toll, Stadsarchief Amsterdam.

35

36 DTB 473, p.161, Amsterdam Stadsarchief; https:// familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-31144-1749260?cc=2037985&wc=M5PS-N36:382016901,382015502, 382376801 : accessed 31 Mar 2014), Nederlands Hervormd > Amsterdam > Huwelijksaangiften, Trouwen 1654-1655 > image 87 of 581. Elisabeth de Meersman married Benjamin van de Water, son of Jacob van de Water and Nellitie Jans van Drillenburgh of Rotterdam, in Amsterdam by banns proclaimed on October 1, 1642. DTB 458, p. 261, Stadsarchief Amsterdam. See also, Wilson V. Ledley, “The Van De Waters of NewYork: The First Five Generations,” NYGB Record 98 (January 1967) 1: 23-33, 3: 153-158.

37

RNA 2: 28, 285, 321.

New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch Volumes GG, HH, & II, Land Papers, Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed. (Baltimore, 1980), II 52. See, Firth Haring Fabend, “‘According to Holland Custome’: Jacob Leisler and the Loockermans Estate Feud,” de Halve Maen, 67:1 (1994), 1–8.

38

39 Thomas Grier Evans, Baptisms from 1639 to 1730 in the Reformed Dutch Church, New York (New York, 1901), 1:33 [hereafter RDC baptisms].

DTB 76, p. 21, Amsterdam Stadsarchief; “Netherlands, Noord-Holland Province, Church Records, 1553-1909,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/ TH-1942-31188-3492-94?cc=2037985&wc=M5PN-HZS :382016901,382015502,382186001 : accessed 31 Mar 2014), Nederlands Hervormd > Amsterdam > Dopen 1641-1672 > image 199 of 502.

40

41

RDC baptisms 1:44, 53.

DTB 479, p.122, Amsterdam Stadsarchief; https:// familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-31149-2357735?cc=2037985&wc=MCGB-VZ9:382016901,382015502 ,382394501 : accessed 24 Mar 2014), Nederlands Hervormd > Amsterdam > Huwelijksaangiften, Trouwen 1658-1660 > image 70 of 602. Nr. 1004: 271, Leiden Stadsarchief.

42

See, Dennis Maika, “Jacob Leisler’s Tobacco Trade,” de Halve Maen, 67:1 (1994), 9–10.

43

44

Orphanmasters, 2.

45

RNA 7: 150.

46

RNA 2: 28, 285, 321.

47

RNA 2: 315.

48

RNA 2: 336, 341.

Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, The Register of New Netherland, 1626 to 1674 (Albany, 1865), 156; DRCHNY 13: 93.

49

1661 April 27 , Not. Arch. 1137/116 116v, N. 1280 Nots.

J. V. D. Ven, Stadsarchief Amsterdam. It is unclear if this is an account of late West India Company director Samuel Godijn, who had been involved in trade with Samuel Blommaert. Godijn had died in 1633.

50

51

RNA 3: 383.

Spring 2018

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sen’s death, Govert Loockermans brought suit against Gulian Verplanck on attachment on an account of Pieter Cornelissen’s.Verplanck claimed he had furnished the account eight years previously.52 Verplanck then requested Allard Anthony to furnish Loockermans with proof of his administration of Anthony’s and Pieter Cornelissen’s property eight years earlier. Anthony responded he knew that Verplanck had furnished the account but did not know what Loockermans wants an account of.53 The issue was brought to arbitration but the arbitrators were unable to get Verplanck and Loockermans to agree.

Subsequently, Verplanck brought the case to court. The court decreed that Verplanck had given Pieter Cornelissen all balances to the amount of ƒ 1,429.13, and had posted the same in his ledger though not signed. The balance, however, was found ƒ 946.17 short.

The court condemned Verplanck to pay by default the ƒ 946.17 in beavers to Pieter Cornelisen’s widow or her attorney, Govert Loockermans.54 In an appeal against Loockermans, Verplanck requested that Anthony be reexamined under oath that in the year 1655, on his return from Amsterdam, if Pieter Cornelissen had rendered him the account.

Timotheus Gabry and Jacob Backer were also questioned whether in 1660 they were present at the house of Jan de Jongh when Anthony asked Pieter Cornelissen whose beavers were the 294 pieces for which he was charged freight. Gabry and Backer were also questioned if Anthony had shown a letter that there was found in the memo of Pieter Cornelissen that noted 233 more beavers taken away by Loockermans.55 Govert Loockermans’ actions as his stepdaughter’s attorney in her late husband’s affairs was raising eyebrows. When Elsie’s mother, Marritje Jans, learned that the Orphanmasters had appointed her husband along with Aldert Coninck to settle Pieter Cornelissen’s estate, she requested that her husband “be excused and somebody else appointed in his place, to avoid all suspicion against him among the friends in Holland.”56 (Why Aldert Coninck was appointed rather than a member of the Couturier family, who were closely related by marriage to Pieter Cornelissen, is unknown). On March 14, 1663, the Orphanmasters appointed Johannes De Peyster to act with Coninck as the guardians of Van der Veen’s three surviving children, Catharyn having died in infancy. After reviewing Pieter Cornelissen’s papers they found that the estate owed the considerable sum of ƒ 6,890.12 to Vander

Veen’s father, Cornelis Aldertsz, and his brother-in-law, Balthasar van Eijndhoven.57 Vander Veen was also in debt to his father-inlaw, Govert Loockermans, for ƒ163.16½ in beavers and ƒ 733.2 in sewant.58 Meanwhile, Elsie promised to give each of her children when of age or about to marry the sum of ƒ 200 in wampum, provided the debts in Holland were paid out of the property inherited from Vander Veen’s parents.59 Four days after the Orphanmasters notified Elsie that her late husband’s debts in Holland must be paid off or her children would lose their inheritance, she and twenty-two-year-old Jacob Leisler announced their marriage banns in the New Amsterdam Dutch Reformed church. The couple married on April 11, 1663, and Leisler moved into the former house of Pieter Cornelissen on Pearl Street.60 One month later, Guy Jacobsen presented to the Orphanmasters his deposition relating to Leisler’s shipment of furs aboard the Vos (Fox) on January 1.61 Jacob Leisler was not unknown to Pieter Cornelissen’s network. Johannes Nevius, partner with Pieter Cornelissen in the New Love, had two uncles, Abraham and Peter Neff, who appear in the Rev. Jacob Victorian Leisler’s papers.62 Another family was that of Johannes Reepmaker, brother of West India Company director Jacob Reepmaker (1599–1651), patron of Cornelis Melyen.

The Reverend Leisler married Johannes and Catherine Walpurge in Frankfurt in 1639.63 Their son, Johan, born in Frankfurt the same year as Jacob Leisler, also entered military service for the Dutch Republic at about the same time as Jacob.64 Moreover, Leisler’s friendship with Cornelis Melyen’s sons is known. In a curious footnote, the Vergulded Otter, the ship that brought Leisler to New Netherland in 1660, carried Melyen letters that Leisler’s son had in his possession in the 1690s.65 Most obvious, however, is Leisler’s relations with the Couturier family. In 1662 he appears as a witness to he baptism of one of Henri Couturier’s daughters.66 Leisler’s relations with his wife’s Vander Veen in-laws did not end with the marriage.

On May 12, 1663, he gave power of attorney to Cornelis Aldertsz, Elsie’s former father-in-law, or Jacob Couturier, Elsie’s brother-in-law, to receive all West India Company debts owed him for his military service as well as all funds derived from his January first shipment toward paying off his wife’s debts.67 Jacques Couturier served as a baptismal sponsor for Leisler’s daughter Catharina, on November 8, 1665.68 Balthasar van Eijndhoven died in Febru-

8

ary 1667 and was buried on March 4 in Amsterdam’s Noorder Kerk cemetery.71 Jacob Couturier died in 1668. His widow, Jacomina vander Veen, married Gerrit Alphuijsen, widower of Margaretha Bergervis, on October 3, 1670.70 Cornelis Aldertsz van der Veen died in Amsterdam in January 1670 and was buried on January 10, 1670, in Amsterdam’s Noorder Kerk cemetery.69 The financial issues Pieter Cornelissen left, however, lasted long after his death.

They resulted in a long-lasting enmity between his wife and her Loockermans’ steprelations, continued with Jacob Leisler, and ended only in the eighteenth century.

52

RNA 3: 284.

53

RNA 3: 312–13.

The register of Salomon Lachaire, notary public of New Amsterdam, 1661–1662, Kenneth Scott; Kenn StrykerRodda, eds. (Baltimore, 1978), 54

55

Ibid.

56

Orphanmasters, 233.

57

Ibid. 1: 234–37.

“The Case of Miles Foster,” February 3, 1700, Stuyvesant-Rutherford Papers, Loockermans Box 23, folder 12, New-York Historical Society, New York.

58

59

Orphanmasters, 236.

Marriages, 28; I. N. Phelps Stokes, The iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909, 6 vols. (New York, 1915-1928) 2: 283–84. Vander Veen died without a will.

A prenuptial agreement was also usual involving minor children and joint estates, although no prenuptial agreement has been found. See David E. Narrett, Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City (Ithaca, N.Y., and London , 1992), 41–82, 115–22.

60

61

Orphanmasters, 47–50.

John Blythe Dobson, “Notes on the Nevius Family,” NYGB Record 136 (January 2005), 1: 35, 37; Jacob Victorian Leisler’s Journal, February 10, 1647, FrM FRG 38: 173, Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main.

62

Kolb,“Hanau and America,” de Halve Maen, 67; “Jean Repmaker, son of Jacob Repmaker, a merchant from Amsterdam, has asked that his banns be announced with Catharina, daughter of the sieur Jacob de Walbourg, merchant of this city,” March 27, 1639, Rev. Jacob Victorian Leisler’s Journal, FrM FRG 38: 143.

63

64 Jacob Reepmaker A. Azn, Genealogie der Familie Reepmaker (Rotterdam,1905), 63.

Evan Haefeli, “Dutch New and the Salem Witch Trials: Some New Evidence,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 110, part 2 (October 2003), 277–308; List of Letters and Papers sent to New Netherland aboard the Vergulde Otter, April 27, 1660, NY Col. Mss. 13: 99, New York State Archives, Albany; “The Melyn Papers, 1640–1699,” in Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1913 (New York, 1914): 109–123.

65

66 Baptismal Record of Rebecca Couturier, daughter of Henri Couturier, November 22, 1662, RDC baptisms, 67.

67 68 69

Orphanmasters, 48–49 RDC Baptisms, 81.

DTB 1074, p.50vo en p.51, Amsterdam Stadsarchief.

DTB 1056, p. 74 and p. 75, DTB 495, p. 413, Amsterdam Stadsarchief.

70

DTB 1074, p. 30vo en p.31, Begraafregisters voor 1811, Amsterdam Stadsarchief.

71

de Halve Maen

The Governor, the Militiaman, and the Domine

N

by Rudy VanVeghten

ICHOLAS VAN RENSSELAER was insane.

That was the conclusion of his own family at least twice during his forty-two-year life.1 They finally found gainful employment for him in the wilderness of America, where a sympathetic Prince James, the Duke of York, instructed his newly appointed governor Edmund Andros to find him a position as a provincial New York clergyman. Crossing the Atlantic together, the governor and the minister landed at Manhattan in October 1674. They were greeted by sad news. Nicholas’s brother Jeremias, director of the family’s Rensselaerswijck patroonship, had died only a couple of weeks earlier. As a result, Nicholas quickly found himself with family obligations in addition to ministerial duties.

From 1674 to 1678, Nicholas struggled through his dual responsibilities, often running into controversies stemming from his sometimes-unusual theological views, in addition to disagreements over administering the family’s estate and its feudal-like population of tenant farmers. During these years, Governor Andros frequently followed his Duke’s instructions in supporting Nicholas.

One of his family’s expectations was that Nicholas lobby the New York governor to recognize their former Dutch patroonship under English law, a matter pending since the British takeover of the province in 1664. In 1678, Prince James and the English courts finally ruled in favor of the Van Rensselaer patent request, granting the family legal ownership to the large patroonship, including the village of Albany. Upon learning of the patent, Nicholas journeyed down the Hudson River that October to discuss the patent with Andros.

Rudy VanVeghten’s essay is the second installment of a series on Gerrit Teunisse van Vechten and his family. The first installment appeared in the Winter 2017–2018 issue of de Halve Maen.

THE ENGLISH GOVERNOR—Best known for his later role as governor of the Dominion of New England in the late 1680s, Edmund Andros served as governor of New York from 1674–1683.

During that time, Andros defended his province against hostile Indian incursions from Chief Metacom (King Philip) from New England and from French-aligned Algonquin tribes from Canada. At the same time, he made valuable Indian alliances with the Iroquois Nation and Native refugees from western New England.

Unlike his late brother Jeremias and his sister-in-law Maria, Jeremias’s widow, Nicholas left little in the way of records pertaining to his management of Rensselaerswijck. One of the few extant letters from his hand is included in a compilation of Maria’s correspondence. It was written in October 1678 while he was still in New York visiting Governor Andros, and it details what appears to be Nicholas’s failure to even broach the topic of the land patent. It also shows a mysterious coldness between Andros and Nicholas that is an apparent reversal of the governor’s previous backing of the controversial domine.

Even more mysterious, a few weeks following his visit, Nicholas van Rensselaer died.

Nicholas’s Last Recorded Words. Van Rensselaer’s remarkable letter, posted October 16, 1678, and addressed to his brother “Monsr. Jan Baptista van Rensselaer, Merchant, at Amsterdam,” offers us a fascinating look into the state of mind of a very complex individual. He indicates he first learned England had granted the Rensselaerswijck patent not from Governor Andros, who had returned from England in August, but from a letter written by Jan Baptist dated June 10 that arrived in Albany in early October. “I therefore immediately went with my dear wife to N. Yorck to see the honorable general, so as to make everything turn out for the best,” he explained

to his Amsterdam brother in the rambling, jumbled response. “We arrived here last Tuesday, the 14th,” he wrote. “I went to pay my respects to his honor the governor, who received me very politely, as did also my Lady, who immediately sent me to get my dear wife to have dinner with them in the fort.”2 Despite the apparent hospitality, Nicholas was unable to muster the courage to bring up the matter of the patent. “[A]t that time I said nothing about the papers or about our affairs,” Nicholas admits. Stephanus van Cortlandt, Rensselaerswijck bookkeeper as well as a member of Andros’ inner council, was also present at the dinner and had better success than Nicholas. “[I]n the evening his honor said to my brother-in-law, Sr Stephanus van Cortlandt, that he would give me a brief abstract. I, on my part, shall not fail to use my utmost endeavor to secure it,” reported Nicholas.3 Two days later, continuing his letter to Jan Baptist, Nicholas admitted continued disappointment. “I have not yet had a conference with his honor, as there was A. J. F. Van Laer, trans. and ed., Correspondence of Jeremias Van Rensselaer, 1651–1674.(Albany, 1932), 116–17; A. J. F. Van Laer, trans. and ed., Correspondence of Maria Van Rensselaer (Albany, 1936), 11, 11n [hereafter CMVR]; A. J. F. Van Laer, trans. and ed., “Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts, Series 2,” abstracts in Report of the Director 1909, 92nd Annual Report on the New York State Library (Albany, 1910), 21.

1

2

CMVR, 24–25.

3

Ibid., 25.

Spring 2018

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no opportunity for it on account of the departure of the Blossom, which is about to drop down the river and with which this letter goes. I still hope to meet the honorable general today and to show him the authentic warrant and in case this happens I shall advise you of my visit. This afternoon I again called at the fort, but could find no opportunity to see the general, as his honor was still very busy getting his letter ready.”4 In a final postscript, Nicholas once again reports failure. “In the afternoon I had no opportunity to speak to the honorable governor,” he admitted.

Throughout his letter, Nicholas seems on one hand to be painting himself as a champion of the family’s colony, while on the other trying to gloss over his personal inability to discuss the patent directly with Governor Andros. The letter, containing the last words written by Nicholas van Rensselaer before his death a few weeks later, indicates an apparent gulf had formed between the domine and the governor.

If this chill in their relationship contributed to Andros’s refusal to finalize the patent, it certainly wasn’t the only reason.

Both men were aware of the impact it would have on the residents of Albany. “The rumor of such a remarkable change immediately alarmed the Albanians,” Nicholas reported to Jan Baptist. “I have by kind and consoling words quieted the feelings of the good people as much as possible and everybody is awaiting my return to know how everything will be taken by the honorable general and be worked out.”5 Residents of the province’s trading capital also feared for their economic well-being, based as it was on their control over the beaver trade. They worried that their neighboring community of Schenectady would elbow in on their monopoly if the Van Rensselaers gained control over Albany. “[B]ut through a letter from our secretary [Robert Livingston] to my father-in-law [Phillip Schuyler], on the report of the honorable general, that heavy stone has been lifted from their hearts, the council having assured them that they would not tolerate it and that it would ruin Albany,” he wrote.6 Nicholas believed that, unlike the burghers of Albany, Rensselaerswijck tenants already renting from the patroon applauded news of the patent. “Meanwhile, our farmers are very happy about the good news,” he informed Jan Baptist. Despite his claim, there is no indication in the record that Marten Gerritsen van Bergen or Peter Winne or any of the colony’s other farmers cared

ELUSIVE PATENT—Although Nicholas van Rensselaer was unable to secure a patent for the former patroonship Rensselaerswijck from Governor Andros in 1678, his family ultimately succeeded in obtaining the rights to their large manor from Governor Richard Dongan in 1686. much either way.

Albany residents, through a joint letter by their court commissaries on October 25, 1678, showed that Nicholas’s reassurances did not have their desired effect: [W]e are moved to make known to your honor that the citizens of Albany find themselves in the highest degree concerned about the rumors that Albany is to be granted and conveyed to the patroon of the colony of Renselaerswyck and to be subjected to a tax on the houses and lots that it will be unbearable, with the further provision that after the expiration of 31 years the houses and lots are to belong to the patroon. The burghers intend, in the form of a petition, to oppose this and if possible on the next court day to appear before the court to pray that if possible they may themselves retain such title as they possess and have lawfully obtained according to the patents granted to them in the name of his royal highness. We expect the decision in this matter upon the arrival of Domine van Renselaer [sic]. If the rumor is true, as we hope it is not, we shall be forced to turn to your honor to defend and maintain our rights which have been graciously granted to us.7 Governor Andros’ answer, drafted on October 31, 1678, was not particularly reassuring to the Albany folks, at least in regards to the fate of their homes and property.

“The Duke intends the family of Renselaers [sic] there just Rights formerly Enjoyed, to

10

be Confirmd to them,” he responded, “but without wronging any others of which all Care & Regard shall be had and therefore ye Court and officers are to take Care, there be no disturbance, or needlesse Expenses made by ye Inhabitants upon Reports or Rumors to ther Prejudice.”8 Despite his discouraging message to Albanians, Andros delayed deployment of the Duke’s order throughout his (first) tenure as governor. It was left to his successor Thomas Dongan six years later to put it in force. “For some unknown reason,” ponders the late New York archivist Arnold Van Laer, “no action was taken by Governor Andros.”9 Dongan also wondered about the seeming disregard for the prince’s decision. “[T] here was an order sent over to Sr Edmund Andros that the Ranslaers [sic] should be put in possession of Albany, & that every house should pay some two beavers, some more some less according to their dimensions per annum, for thirty years, & afterwards the Ranslaers [sic] to put what rent upon them they could agree for,” wrote Dongan in a 1687 report on the condition of New York Province. “What reason Sr Edmond Andros has given for not putting 4

Ibid, 24–25.

5

Ibid.

6

Ibid.

A. J. F.Van Laer, trans. and ed., Minutes of the Court of Albany, Rensselaerswyck and Schenectady, 3 vols. (Albany, 1928), 2:362 [hereafter MCARS].

7

8

Ibid., 363.

9

CMVR, 6.

de Halve Maen

these orders in execution I know not.”10 On the matter of retaining their monopoly on the beaver trade, however, Andros in 1678 was quite clear: “[A]ll Indian Trade is strictly Prohibited at Schaenhectady as in all other Out Places, as pr order.” He also wrote to the commissaries of Schenectady advising them not to interfere with the Albany sheriff’s enforcement of the “former Practice and orders Relateing to Indian Trade.”11 So it was that, when Nicholas van Rensselaer finally finished his long, rambling letter to his brother Jan Baptist and sent it off to Europe aboard the ship Blossom, there was still much unresolved in regards to the patent. By the time that letter reached its destination on December 17, both Nicholas and Jan Baptist were dead.12

situation.”14 Not long after his arrival in Albany, Nicholas married Alida, daughter of Philip Pieterse and Margarita (van Slichtenhorst) Schuyler. This February 1675 union further linked two of the province’s wealthiest and most powerful families. It also helped complicate the relationship between Nicholas and his late brother’s widow, Maria van Rensselaer. A few years earlier, Maria’s brother Stephanus had a married Alida’s sister Gertruy Schulyer.

Nicholas’s first priority and the stated reason for his journey from Europe to Albany was to obtain a ministerial position somewhere in provincial New York. One likely job opening was at the Albany Dutch Reformed Church, where Domine Gideon

Schaets at sixty-six was beginning to wind down.15 His tenure had occasionally been tainted by controversy, and his congrega10 E. B. O’Callaghan, trans., Documentary History of the State of New York, 4 vols. (Albany, 1865), 1:179–80 [hereafter, DHNY]. Dongan, ironically, followed Andros’ strategy in exempting the town of Albany from the patent he issued to the Van Rensselaers in 1686.

11

MCARS, 2:363–364.

12

CMVR, 26, 35, 35n.

E. B. O’Callaghan and Berthold Fernow, trans. Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, 1856–1887), 3:225 [hereafter DRCHNY].

13

CMVR, 11. A. J. F. Van Laer postulates that the “condition and situation” refers to Nicholas’s suspected insanity.

14

15 E. T. Corwin, ed., Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, 7 vols. (Albany, 1901–1916), 1:676–77. Although his September 7, 1675, letter was difficult to transcribe, Corwin notes that Schaets asked “that the brethren would remember him in their prayers, being now sixty-seven years old.”

The Governor as Babysitter. In order to understand the context in which Nicholas composed his letter, we need to look at the relationship between the governor and the domine over their four-year acquaintance.

Their first introduction likely came with the Duke of York’s instructions to Andros shortly before he sailed to America in 1674.

Major Andros Nichalaus Van Renseslaer having made his humble request unto me, that I would recommend him to be Minister of one of the Dutch churches in New York or New Albany when a vacancy shall happen; whereunto I have consented. I do hereby desire you to signify the same unto the Parishioners at yt [place] wherein I shall looke upon their compliance as a mark of their respect and good inclinations towards me. I am &c.

23 July 1674.13 A peculiar incident upon their arrival that October possibly clued in Andros that his oversight of Van Rensselaer would not be easy. Before leaving the Netherlands, Jan Baptist had asked Andros to deliver a packet of letters to his brother Jeremias.

When they arrived and learned Jeremias had recently died, Andros instead directed that the packet be delivered to his widow’s brother or father, Stephanus or Olaf van Cortlandt. Instead, Nicholas somehow intercepted them. “His honor was very much surprised that I did not have them,” said Stephanus in a letter to his sister, adding that the New York governor “had also been informed by Sr Jan Bapt van Rensselaer of Do Rensselaer’s condition and

This portrait of Prince James, Duke of York, dates from 1672–1673, a year or two prior to his appointment of Edmund Andros as governor of New York. Prior to his departure to the New World, Andros received orders from his prince to assist Nicholas van Rensselaer in obtaining a clerical position within the province.

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BROTHER NICHOLAS’S “CONDITION”—Early in 1675, Stephanus van Cortlandt wrote to his sister Maria that Nicholas van Rensselaer had intercepted a packet of letters addressed to him.

Stephanus advised Maria that Governor Andros was aware of Nicholas’s “condition and situation,’ presumably referring to the domine’s erratic behavior that sometimes bordered on insanity.

tion called his personal life into question on more than one occasion.16 Sometime in the winter or spring of 1675, Nicholas van Rensselaer became assistant minister at the Albany Reformed Church serving under Domine Schaets.

Nicholas’s reception as a religious and moral leader in the North Hudson area was not a smooth one. His reputation as an eccentric religious mystic and prophet, developed in Amsterdam and England in the 1650s and 1660s, was clearly also well known in New York province. With some Albany-area residents already avoiding services because of Schaets’s damaged reputation, they didn’t see much improvement with the addition of Domine Nicholas van Rensselaer.

In the summer of 1675, some worshipers accused both Schaets and van Rensselaer of being “false prophets,” resulting in an action filed by the two ministers in the Albany court. According to testimony, Jan Gerritson had pointed at Nicholas, yelling, “You are a devil.” After giving him time to cool off, court officials asked Gerritson some days later if he had repented. Instead, Gerritson redoubled his accusation “that Do. Renselaer was a false prophet and a lying preacher and that he had the devil in him.” Gerritson, interestingly, was the servant of Frederick Philipse, who along with Stephanus van Cortlandt became one

of Governor Andros’s inner circle of loyal supporters.

As the Albany court rehashed this testimony on August 24, 1675, there was a special guest sitting with the appointed magistrates. Governor Andros, in his first trip to Albany since his arrival ten months previous, presided over the session. In deference to his honor, the court “ordered that the defendant [Jan Gerritson] shall be taken to New York as a prisoner to defend himself there before the general Court of Assizes.”17 Andros, already skeptical about Nicholas van Rensselaer’s mental soundness after the letter episode from late 1674, now had further reason to wonder about the supposed mystic, keeping in mind all the while that Prince James expected compliance with his request to support the misfit minister.

As for Gideon Schaets, he saw an opportunity through his new assistant to deflect some of the complaints aimed at himself over the years. Just two weeks after the August 24 court session, Schaets wrote a letter to the Amsterdam Classis complaining of the “disorderly preaching of another minister.” E. T. Corwin, in his abstract of the largely illegible letter, explains, “This was the Rev. Nicholas Van Rensselaer.”18 Differences continued to wedge the two Albany domines and their supporters further and further apart. In November

12

1675, Maria van Rensselaer prayed, “May the Lord preserve and soon settle the sad dissentions which prevail here in God’s church and which have arisen between our brother and Domine Schaets and other friends, so that one person is turned against the other.”19 Meanwhile, Nicholas had begun stirring up more religious controversy downriver.

It appears that, following the Jan Gerritson affair, Nicholas accompanied Governor Andros to New York in September 1675. Here, Nicholas found himself up against the Rev. William van Nieuwenhuysen, filling the Manhattan Dutch Reformed Church pulpit previously held by Domines Everardus Bogardus and Johannes Megapolensis.

During Nicholas’s stay in the provincial capital, someone apparently requested he officiate at one or more baptisms at the New York church. Van Nieuwenhuysen quickly forbade Van Rensselaer from performing any such sacraments and sent a church elder with orders for him to desist. Complying with the request, Nicholas sought out Van Nieuwenhuysen, and the two got into a very public discourse over the matter. Nicholas asked him to explain his order, “[t]o whom ye said Domine replyed aloude in ye street, that it was because he did not looke upon him [Nicholas] to be a lawful Minister, nor his admittance at Albany to be Lawfull.”20 Later on, when Van Nieuwenhuysen explained himself to his superiors in Amsterdam, he wrote that he felt Domine van Rensselaer “has been palmed off upon the pulpit here, rather than called to it in a legal way.” When Nicholas showed up in New York, Van Nieuwenhuysen continued, “I accordingly warned him by an elder that he could not administer baptism in our church, which he would otherwise have performed, unsolicited, until he should present evidence that he had passed his final examination and had been ordained to the office of the ministry.”21 In order to diffuse the argument in the streets of New York, Van Rensselaer offered to pay a visit to Van Nieuwenhuysen and show him his ministry credentials.

After Van Nieuwenhausen and one of the church elders examined these credentials, 16 Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652–1664 (Hilversum, 2003), 143.

17

MCARS, 2:9–12.

18

Ecclesiastical Records 1:677.

19

CMVR, 16.

20

Ecclesiastical Records 1:678.

21

Ibid., 684–685.

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the Manhattan domine persisted that “one ordained in England had nothing to do with their [i.e. the Dutch Reformed] Church, without a Certificate from their Classis.”22 Tempers simmered. Nicholas sought relief for the affront on his reputation through the New York court and his patron Governor Andros, complaining that Van Nieuwenhausen had “openly and with words of contempt said that Domine Renselaer was no Minister, and his ordinacon not good.”23 Van Nieuwenhausen later reported that Nicholas “immediately went to the Governor and laid slanderous charges (against me). He said I had denied that the Church of England was a true church, that I had treated the authority and letters of the King and of the Duke of York with contempt.”24 Governor Andros and his Council held hearings on the matter in late September 1675.25 In the end, the court negotiated a settlement between the two ministers in which Van Nieuwenhausen conceded, “A minister according to the order of the Church of England, lawfully called, is sufficiently qualified to be admitted to the serving and administering of the sacraments in a Dutch Church belonging under his Majesty’s dominion, when he has promised to conduct himself in his service according to the Constitution of the Reformed Church of Holland.”26 Although this seemingly resolved the matter, it continued to weigh on the mind and conscience of Van Nieuwenhausen over the winter and into the spring. When he reported on the controversy to the Classis of Amsterdam in May 1676, he noted, “The church here does not now increase on account of the unprecedented proceedings against the inhabitants in connection with the change of government. This has excited the hatred and contempt of the rulers against the subjects.”27 His animosity was clearly directed at Governor Andros as much as against Van Rensselaer.

Another Religious Controversy. Some of that Dutch resentment against the ruling Anglicans again boiled over in Albany later in 1676 in the most well-known controversy involving Nicholas van Rensselaer. It all started on a Sunday in mid-August 1676 when he used his turn in the Albany pulpit to deliver a sermon on original sin.28 There were many varying theories and debates over the topic, not only on a macro level between Catholicism and Protestantism, but at a more minute depth within Dutch Reformed theology. Even with so many

TROUBLE FROM THE PULPIT— Albany’s first Dutch Reformed Church building was a blockhouse located at the intersection of what today are State Street and Broadway. Nicholas van Rensselaer preached his controversial 1676 sermon from the pulpit of this church, depicted here in James Eights’ watercolor reproduction of John Miller’s 1695 map of Albany.

competing theological interpretations, Nicholas van Rensselaer apparently thought it was safe enough for a sermon topic at the Albany Dutch Reformed Church in the summer of 1676.

He was wrong. What he wasn’t counting on was the presence of two merchants from Manhattan sitting in the congregation.

One of them was Jacob Leisler, son of a Calvinist minister and a deacon of Domine Van Nieuwenhuysen’s Reformed Church in New York. Along with him was New Englander Jacob Milborne, son of a radical Presbyterian London dissenter.29 It is unclear why they were in Albany. Leisler was a New York merchant and Milborne was an agent representing a London mercantile concern, so it might have been a business trip. Or, it is possible that Leisler was visiting relatives. His wife, Elsie, was Maria van Rensselaer’s maternal first cousin.30 David Voorhees, director of the Papers of Jacob Leisler Project, certainly has one of the best insights into the mind of the New York merchant and rebel. Voorhees suggests that Leisler might have sailed up to Albany specifically to investigate the ministry of Domine Van Rensselaer. If this is the case, then perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that Leisler and Milborne would find something objectionable in the minister’s sermon.31 Whatever the reason, it didn’t take them long to verbally criticize Van Rensselaer’s preaching, and within a few days they extended that criticism in written form by distributing a “gloss,” or memorandum.

What form this “gloss” took isn’t clear.

Lacking a printing press, it must have been hand copied and, perhaps as with other notices for public consumption, tacked to the doors of public gathering spots.

Humiliated by Leisler’s and Milborne’s libels and slanders that he was “heterodox” in his preaching, Van Rensselaer brought

a complaint against them to the Albany Court.32 Battle lines were drawn. Both sides made attempts to manipulate the legal system, with various Albanians choosing sides in the argument.33 After numerous sessions before a local court seemingly more sympathetic toward the defendants than to plaintiff Van Rensselaer, the latter once again looked to his protector Governor Andros to rescue him.

22

Ibid., 678.

23

Ibid.

24

Ibid., 685.

25

DHNY 3:526–7.

26

Ecclesiastical Records, 3:681.

27

Ibid., 3:686.

Although some researchers place the sermon in July, Governor Andros gives the firmest indication of the exact date in his September 16 letter that notes the sermon was delivered on “the 13th past.”

28

29 David William Voorhees, “’Fanatiks’ and ‘Fifth Monarchists’: The Milborne Family in the Seventeenth Century Atlantic World,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 129, vol. 2 (April 1998), vol. 3 (July 1998), 2:68–70.

30

CMVR, 20, 20n.

David William Voorhees, “The ‘Fervant Zeale’ of Jacob Leisler,” in William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 51 (1994), 463; Voorhees, “The Ideological Origins of Leislerian Political Thought,” in Jaap Jacobs, et. al., Jacob Leisler’s Atlantic World in the Later Seventeenth Century (Berlin, 2009), 104.

31

MCARS, 2:147. It is important to understand the difference between orthodox (correct thinking), heterodox (other thinking) and heresy (unorthodox or wrong thinking).

32

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Meeting on September 8, 1676, the governor and his Council began their discussion of the Van Rensselaer affair.

“Upon Inform acon that Do Renselaer (one of the Ministers att Albany) is confined by the Magistrates there, upon matter of some dubious words spoken by said Do in his Sermon or Doctrine, It is Ordered, That the said Do bee releast from his Imprisonment, and any matter concerning the same to bee heard here.”34 Stephanus van Cortlandt, Maria van Rensselaer’s brother and bookkeeper of Rensselaerswijck, represented Van Rensselaer’s interests in the matter.35 During a second meeting on September 15, Andros ruled “That as Do Renselaer hath putt in Security of fifteene hundred Guildrs hollands money for to prosecute, so ye said Leysler and Milburne are to putt in ye like Security to make good their charge.” He ordered Leisler, who had returned to New York, to find one or two individuals to back his security requirement of 5,000 pounds “by to morrow before noone.” He also levied a bond of £1,000 against Milborne, still in Albany.36 It seems clear Andros favored a different side in the dispute than did the majority of Albany magistrates.

As Van Rensselaer had done previously in Albany, Jacob Leisler refused to post the required security bond. After a couple days’ grace period, Andros on September 18 ordered Leisler’s arrest and imprisonment.37 Subsequently, Jacob Milborne in Albany also found himself in jail after refusing to produce his surety bond.38 On September 23, the Governor’s Council resolved “That if all parties are willing to stand to the friendly and amicable determinacon made by the Church Officers or Kerken Raat at Albany, and referr ye matter of Charges, (which was ye only obstruction then) to ye Governor and Councell and persons above. That then they will proceed to a finall Determinacon therein.” Both sides agreed to this arrangement.39 In his analysis of the dispute, Lawrence Leder points out the conservative Calvinists had little choice. “If Leisler and Milborne had rejected the Council’s proposal of September 23, they would have placed themselves in even greater jeopardy, for then Andros would have reopened van Rensselaer’s original charges. Those charges, in Andros’ hands, could have meant a very dangerous situation for Leisler and Milborne.”40 Instead, they acquiesced to the governor’s decision and waited for another day to get their revenge.

Four times in the space of two years from

RELIGIOUS OBJECTOR— Striking a stern pose, the statue of Jacob Leisler in New Rochelle, New York, memorializes his role in that community’s Huguenot-based founding. More than a decade before his blustery leadership of New York during Leisler’s Rebellion, the strict Calvinist leveled charges of heterodoxy against Domine Nicholas van Rensselaer. The protracted and very public legal action between the two required the eventual involvement of Governor Edmund Andros to resolve.

November 1674 to October 1676 Governor Andros, following the Duke of York’s express wishes, had backed the bewildering antics of Nicholas van Rensselaer: 1. Help obtaining his ministerial position in Albany 2. Involvement in the Jan Gerritsen affair 3. Involvement in the Van Rensselaer versus Van Nieuwenhuysen argument 4. Involvement in the Van Rensselaer versus Leisler/Milborne argument It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that in the summer of 1677, Andros withdrew his support of the controversial domine.

Specifics are not spelled out in the available primary sources, but a general statement is included in a letter from Long Island minister Casparus van Zueren to the Classis of Amsterdam dated September 30, 1677. “Nothing more of importance has occurred in the churches of this country,” he writes, “except that Domine (Nicholas) Rensselaer who officiated in the Colony of Rensselaerswyck, has been deposed by the Governor on account of his bad and offensive life.” Van Zueren indicates that Van Nieuwenhuysen “who knows all about this man, will probably write more details.”

Such a letter is unfortunately absent from the records.41 A possible reason for Nicholas van Rensselaer running afoul of his primary benefactor is offered later in this essay. For now, it is interesting to point out that the years-long effort of the New York Reformed Church establishment to defrock van Rensselaer was seemingly successful, according to Van Zueren’s letter. References in the Albany records, however, indicate Nicholas con-

14

tinued to minister at the Albany Reformed Church up until the time of his death.42 It is perhaps somewhat difficult in the twenty-first century to understand why Nicholas van Rensselaer’s sermon on original sin stirred up such a hornet’s nest of controversy. It might have gone unnoticed to history had it not been for Leisler and Milborne’s presence that day and their subsequent attacks. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by two centuries of historians, however, that the residents of Albany and New York divided into two camps: the wealthy burghers with names like Schuyler, Livingston and Ten Broeck on one side, and less well-heeled residents on the other.

This division over religious matters evolved into a division over government authority in the 1689–1691 Leisler Rebellion, and thereafter into political factions, giving rise to partisan politics that are as polarizing today as Van Rensselaer’s sermon was back in 1676.

“One Piece After Another.” Nicholas van Rensselaer’s clerical misadventures composed only part of his experience in the New World. He also ran into difficulties 33

Ibid.

34

DHNY 3:527.

Lawrence H. Leder, “The Unorthodox Domine: Nicholas Van Rensselaer,” in New York History 35 (1954), 171.

35

36

DHNY 3:527–8.

37

Ibid., 528–9.

38

MCARS 2:162–163.

39

DHNY 3:528.

40

Leder, 172.

41

Ecclesiastical Records 1:702.

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managing his family’s large Rensselaerswijck estate and its many tenant farmers.

His sister-in-law Maria, in particular, was highly critical of his attempts at administering the old patroonship. When she first learned Nicholas was to replace her late husband Jeremias as colony director, she quickly sent off a letter of disagreement to Jan Baptist van Rensselaer over in Amsterdam begging the family to reconsider.

“If brother Rygart, or some one else who understands the rights of the colony, does not come over,” she wrote, “the colony is doomed.”43 In a separate letter to Richard a month later, she was still skeptical of the decision. “I had expected more from him [Nicholas],” she wrote. “That I should have liked to see you come over, is true, as you know the situation better than a stranger.”44 Among Nicholas’s duties as director was negotiating and collecting rents from tenant farmers. Unfamiliar with his late brother’s relationship with the farmers, Nicholas quickly encountered disputes with lease agreements previously smoothed over

by Jeremias. “As to agriculture,” Maria explained to brother-in-law Richard in December 1675, “it has during the last two years become so much worse on account of high water and the increase of weeds that the farmers demand a reduction [in the rent].”45 One such rent dispute involved militiaman Lt. Gerrit Teunisse van Vechten in the early spring of 1676, only a couple of weeks after returning from a mission for Governor Andros related to King Philip’s War. Gerrit, as noted in Part 1 of this series, managed the lower end of his father’s farm, directly across the creek separating Papscanee Island from the mainland. A notarized deposition given by his father, Teunis Dirckse, on April 12, 1676, gives some of the details: Deposition of Teunis Dircksen van Vechten about a reduction in the rent of his farm agreed to by the late Jeremias van Rensselaer Teunis Dircksz van Vechten, at present lying sick abed, but of sound mind and memory, testifies and declares in the presence of his sons, Gerrit Teunisz, Dirck Teunisz, and Cornells Teunisz, and of Maerten Gerritsz and Meyndert Fredericsz, that it is true and truthful that the late director of the colony of Renselaerswyck, Jeremias van Renselaer, deceased, promised him that for two bad years, as rent for the farm

GERRIT TEUNISSE FARM—Artist Len Tantillo’s painting Homeport depicts the farm of Teunis Dirckse van Vechten as it might have appeared in 1652. This Rensselaerswijck pioneer first developed the farm along the banks of Papscanee Creek in 1638. In 1640, he greatly expanded his farm by winning the lease of a larger farm abutting his to the north, which reached all the way to the pine woods located below the village of Greenbush, named after the small greynen bosch forest. By the 1670s, the original farm site was occupied by Teunis Dirckse’s youngest son, Lt. Gerrit Teunisse, and in 1677 Governor Edmund Andros awarded the militiaman a patent of land lying just south of his farm. where Gerrit Teunisz now dwells, he, Teunis Dircksz, would not [have to] pay more than fifty beavers, to wit, for the years 1666 and 1667; also that said late director requested him to build the barn ten feet longer and to raise it one foot and he would pay him for it, which Teunis Dircksz did. The foregoing, Teunis Dircksz says, took place in presence of Mr Andries Teller.46 Teunis Dirckse, and later Gerrit Teunisse, had taken advantage of a tacit gentlemen’s agreement with Jeremias van Rensselaer over a rent reduction a decade earlier.

Nicholas in April 1676 apparently called that agreement into question, demanding payment of the back rent, necessitating the notarized deposition.

Another criticism against Nicholas’s administration of Rensselaerswijck involved actions taken by his supposed benefactor Governor Andros. When it came to matters involving the colony of Rensselaerswijck, the governor’s level of support to van Rensselaer seems greatly reduced, if not altogether absent. One clear example of this, as introduced at the beginning of this essay, was the governor’s lack of assistance to Nicholas and his family in finalizing the grant of a new English manorial patent for their large patroonship.

Additionally Andros, on more than one occasion, re-appropriated pieces of the colony to present as gifts to select individuals. One such present dates from the spring of 1678, when Dirck Wessels ten Broeck

and physician Cornelis van Dyke teamed up to petition for the purchase of a piece of land near the upper border of Rensselaerswijck along the Hudson’s east bank.

In the deed, recorded by Robert Livingston, the tract is described as running from the river about five miles inland and included a swale, or wetland. Also specified in the deed is “consent to solicit a patent of the right honorable, the governor general.”47 Maria was alarmed. “I received a letter from brother Nicklaes, stating that one Dirck Wesselse, and Mr. Cornelis had bought a piece of land with a swale (vley), situated on the east side, directly opposite the land of Broer Cornelis, although they were told and it was proved to them that it was purchased land,” Maria wrote to her brother-in-law Richard in Holland in June 1678. “Nevertheless they go ahead, so that we do not understand how it is with the colony.”48 Maria also complained to Richard about the loss of some of their Claverack patent, located some twenry miles south of the southern Rensselaerswijck border, 42

MCARS, 2:291, 355.

CMVR, 14. Richard van Rensselaer, the youngest of the original five Van Rensselaer brothers, had spent several years in New York assisting Maria’s late husband, Jeremias.

43

44

Ibid., 16–17.

45

Ibid., 17.

Jonathan Pearson, trans., and A.J.F. van Laer, rev. and ed.

Early Records of the City and County of Albany, 1654–1678, 4 vols. (Albany, 1916–1919), 3:340 [hereafter ERA]. Marten Gerritsen van Bergen and Myndert Frederickse van Yveren were husbands of Teunis Dirckse’s daughters Jannetje and Pieterje, respectively.

46

47

Ibid., 1:182–183.

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also in 1678. Gerrit van Slichtenhorst, a distant cousin of the Van Rensselaers, purchased from the Indians a piece of land near the Claverack home of Major Abraham Staats.49 Both of these patents occurred after Andros had reportedly “deposed” Domine Nicholas van Rensselaer. Maria also complained that Andros had approved a patent to Barent Myndertsen in September 1677 for a seventy-five-acre parcel near Schodack Island, opposite Bear Island. “Barent, the shoemaker, has 38 morgens of land, lying near Bere island,” reported Maria.

This one, unlike the other two, occurred about the time of the deposing.

Obviously concerned with this trend and with Nicholas’s inability to address it, she complained to Richard, “So it goes, one piece after another.”50 During this time Maria also continued to find fault with Nicholas’s colony administration, which resulted in a lack of cooperation between the two. Stephanus, in June 1677, attempted to play peacemaker.

“Should he at times talk somewhat extravagantly,” wrote Stephanus, “let it pass.”

He suggested Nicholas’s tenure as Rensselaerswijck director might be nearing an end, noting that his appointment was made only “provisionally and will apparently not last long.”51 When Maria complained about Nicholas to Richard van Rensselaer the following year about the erosion of colony properties, it was at least somewhat part of her overarching strategy to eventually replace Nicholas as director with her own son Kiliaen.52 Maria does not mention in her June 1678 letter another parcel given personally by Governor Andros as a reward for service during King Philip’s War. Not long after Gerrit Teunisse’s return from his third expedition into New England related to the war, Governor Andros presented him the gift patent “in consideracon of his severall Services with ye Indians, & p’ticularly being Imployed and sent out During ye late troubles.” It was recorded in New York on September 29, 1677.53 Andros, in the grant, describes the parcel as “A piece of upland and Swamp lying to ye Southward of Albany, which by my order hath beene layd out for Lieutent Garritt Tunniss.” Additionally, the patent states that the land lies “to ye Southward of ye Plantacon ye said Garrit Tunnisse now lives upon.” Explaining that “Southward of Albany” is also used in references to Kinderhook and Claverack, Pearson/Van Lear note, “[I]n this case the patent may

refer to land to the south of Gerrit Teunissen’s farm near the Mill creek, in the present town of East Greenbush, Rensselaer county, N.Y.”54 Estimating the size and location from later leases of the property, the parcel was about 150 to 200 acres located on the Hudson’s east bank, stretching from Papscanee Island inland up the “Hoogebergh” Ridge now followed by Routes 9 and 20, south of a present-day powerline swath between Routes 9J and 9/20 and west of the current village of East Greenbush.

There were no immediate objections to this particular patent recorded by Maria, Nicholas or others of the Van Rensselaer family in any of the available primary sources. It appears from later correspondence that Gerrit Teunisse’s patent somehow went unnoticed by the Van Rensselaer family for a full decade. Maria’s son Killian claimed in 1687 he was previously unaware of the grant. “[I]t is not worth much,” he wrote to his Uncle Richard, “and I never knew that he [Gerrit Teunisse] had a patent for it.”55 But because young Kiliaen and probably his mother, Maria, were in the dark about the patent doesn’t mean Nicholas was as well.

In fact, as director, it seems likely he knew about the patent but failed to mention it to his sister-in-law. His reticence in the matter

was fully in character for the clergyman, demonstrating a similar lack of backbone to his later inability to broach the colony patent with Andros in October 1678.

Tenant Becomes Landlord. With this new property, Gerrit Teunisse had options beyond what most tenant farm scions could dream of. Like his brother Dirck Teunisse, his brother-in-law Marten Gerritsen van Bergen, his father-in-law Jan Thomasse, and his superior officer Volkert Jansen Douw, he was now in a position to become a landlord and move up to a more secure social status. He had both property purchased earlier in Catskill outside the boundaries of the patroonship,56 plus now 48

CMVR, 22.

49

ERA 1:173.

50

CMVR, 22.

51

CMVR, 18.

52

Ibid., 13.

53

ERA, 2:79–80, 80n.

ERA, 3:516n. Van Laer errantly placed Gerrit Teunisse’s farm a couple miles north of its actual location opposite Papscanee Island.

54

55 CMVR, 181. Killiaen and Gerrit Teunisse were fellow officers in the Albany County militia.

56 Peter R. Christoph and Florence A. Christoph, eds., The Andros Papers, 3 vols. (Syracuse, N.Y., 1989–1991), 1:58–59; Col. Docs., 13:481.

COLONY DIRECTOR’S SECRET—Approximate locations superimposed over a detail of the 1767 Bleeker map show how Lieut. Gerrit Teunisse’s 1677 patent from Governor Edmund Andros fell within the borders of Rensselaerswijck colony. Nicholas van Rensselaer was apparently so intimidated by his sister-in-law’s complaints over chunks of the colony granted to others that he never informed anyone of this particular patent.

16

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the undeveloped colonie land given him by Andros, both in addition to the established farm he continued to rent from the Van Rensselaers.

Judging from his later movements, his plan in the mid- to late 1670s included eventually developing his new farm in Catskill, where he would move his family and live rent free outside the reach of Rensselaerswijck. Now, however, he owned land in the heart of the patroonship itself. So, beginning in September 1678, he became a landlord.

In his first lease, recorded on September 28, 1678, Gerrit Teunisse engaged Jan Roost to establish a twenty-two-morgen farm. Gerrit as the landlord agreed to supply Roose with two cows with calves, two mares and a breeding stallion, a wagon, a plow, 100 milled boards for fencing, and assistance in building a house and farm buildings. He also promised to build a “proper wagon road” from his own homestead to Roose’s house, including a bridge. This indicates the main north-south wagon road up to that time (the present Route 9J) extended down only to Gerrit’s farm, although there was likely a horse path passing through to Claverack and Kinderhook.57 Cornelis Dyckman, son of former Fort Orange commissary Johannes Dyckman, was recipient of the second lease negotiated

by Gerrit Teunisse on his patent. This one was for eighteen morgens, and unlike the land leased to Jan Roose, eight morgens of this second tract were already cleared.58 In the third lease recorded on September 28, 1678, Gerrit Teunisse leased to Harmen Jansen a much smaller parcel of only three morgens of land “lying close by the house where the lessor now dwells.” It appears this was previously used as part of Gerrit’s own farm as a calf pasture, but apparently it was part of the Andros patent and not part of the land Gerrit Teunisse leased from the Van Rensselaers. Otherwise it would have required the permission of the colony director to sublet it out to another individual.

As indicated in the lease, Harmen Jansen intended to convert this pasture into cropland.59 There were also a couple of later land use developments involving Gerrit Teunisse’s own farm, which he subleased to Claes van Petten in November 1679, and his patent, from which he carved out an additional farm leased to his childhood housemate Marten Cornelisse van Buren in 1681. Both of these came following the death of Nicholas van Rensselaer and are not germane to

ARCHEOLOGICAL TREASURE—During a surface survey of the seventeenth-century Van Vechten farm site in 2004, archeologists Paul Huey and James Bradley, along with artist Len Tantillo, discovered this relic in the recently plowed field. Former State Archeologist Huey described it as a “handwrought iron adze” in a winter 2004 de Halve Maen essay. Adzes were used for various woodworking tasks such as furniture making by the early settlers. this study.

visional director of Rensselaerswijck.

Chronology Tells the Story. So, in midOctober 1678, as Nicholas van Rensselaer sailed down the Hudson to discuss the Rensselaerswijck patent with Governor Andros, he had much to think about regarding his tenuous hold on both his clerical and family responsibilities and the weight of criticisms leveled against him regarding both. In particular, there had been no reconciliation between him and Governor Andros since the latter’s return in August from his brief visit to England. Nicholas found himself caught between the urgency of his family to bring the Rensselaerswijck patent issue to a conclusion and his own timidity at confronting Andros for the first time since their falling out.

There is no known explanation for what caused the rift between the governor and the domine, but a recapitulation and collation of the events during their four years together points to a general cause, and to a possible specific event that sparked the eruption.

• Summer 1675 through early fall 1676, Andros rules in Nicholas’s favor in three separate court matters involving his ministry, including the prolonged disagreement with Leisler and Milborne.

• October 1674, Andros and Van Rensselaer arrive in New York, and Andros subsequently helps secure a ministerial position for Van Rensselaer at the Albany Dutch Reformed Church.

• Summer 1675, Jan Baptist van Rensselaer appoints his brother Nicholas as pro-

• Summer 1675 through early fall 1678, Maria van Rensselaer voices concerns over Nicholas’s administration of Rensselaerswijck, particularly over the loss of several patents granted for land within the patroonship.

• March 1676 through April 1677, Andros sends militiaman Lt. Gerrit Teunisse on three missions into New England for matters related to King Philip’s War. • August 1677, Andros visits Albany for an Indian conference. During this visit, he rewards Lt. Gerrit Teunisse with a patent of land lying within the bounds of Rensselaerswijck.

• September 30, 1677, Long Island minister Casparus van Zueren writes 57 ERA, 3:457–459. It was only a couple of years earlier that the Albany court commissioned to have a “path commenced between Kinderhook and the Greene Bosch” (MCARS 2:69).

Not much is known about Jan or Johannes Roose; he was apparently the son of Gerrit Jansen Roos of Manhattan.

58

ERA 3:459–460.

Ibid., 460–461. The identity of this Harmen Jansen is unclear, but it seems a low probability he was the individual who later assumed the surname Knickerbacker.

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that “Domine (Nicholas) Rensselaer who officiated in the Colony of Rensselaerswyck, has been deposed by the Governor on account of his bad and offensive life.”

• November 1677 through August 1678, Andros was away in England, during which time Prince James, the Duke of York, granted a patent to the van Rensselaer family approving their old patroonship as an English manor.

• Late September or early October 1678, Nicholas learns about the Rensselaerswijck patent, not from Governor Andros, but in a letter from his brother Jan Baptist.

• October 16, 1678, Nicholas writes back to his brother that he has met with Governor Andros but failed to discuss or settle the matter of the patent. He heads back to Albany empty handed.

• November 12, 1678, estimated date of Nicholas van Rensselaer’s death.

Andros made his second excursion of the year up to Albany in late August 1677 to attend to business related to King Philip’s War and undoubtedly other business as well.60 It was apparently during this visit that he made arrangements to present Lt. Gerrit Teunisse with the patent of land abutting the south edge of his existing rented farm. It was also during this trip that Andros apparently became disillusioned with Domine Nicholas van Rensselaer. Shortly after the governor returned to New York, the patent to the militiaman was entered into the provincial records on September 29, 1677.

It was just one day later that Long Island minister Casparus van Zueren wrote to the Classis of Amsterdam of Van Rensselaer’s supposed removal as Albany minister.

If Nicholas had (justifiably) objected to the grant of land that was rightfully within the bounds of his family’s colony—and to one of his own rent-paying tenant farmers at that—and if he insulted his former benefactor Andros in the process, that might explain why the governor’s response, according to Van Zueren, referred to Van Rensselaer’s “bad and offensive life” and why, after expending so much energy to place and keep him in the Albany pulpit, Andros summarily “deposed” him.

Whatever the source of Van Zeuren’s information about Van Rensselaer’s removal, it is clear that Domine Nicholas continued to practice ministerial functions

in Albany, including preaching and baptizing. But equally clear—not only from Van Zeuren’s letter but more especially from Van Rensselaer’s own October 16, 1678, letter—something caused a rift between Andros and Nicholas van Rensselaer. Judging from the timing and the family’s previous concern over the governor’s patents, the prime candidate for this rift is the gift of land presented to Lt. Gerrit Teunisse.

What happened between his October 16 letter and Nicholas’s death less than a month later presents one final mystery resulting from the sequence of events. There are no primary source accounts of the minister’s death, only some fabulous apocryphal stories of him prophesying the remarriage of his widow, Alida (Schuyler), to his clerk Robert Livingston.61 In reality, he died intestate. He didn’t have enough time to dictate a will, and his widow had to petition to administer his estate in late November 1678.62 There are numerous possibilities for how Domine van Rensselaer died. Disease and accidents were by far the leading causes of deaths in seventeenth-century New York.

There were no documented Indian uprisings during those months that can be blamed.

Considering the course of his strange life— thought mentally unstable by his family, his eventual rejection from the court of Charles II, his troubles with other New York clergy

and his falling out with Governor Andros—it has to be considered that his October 1678 failure to settle the patent matter with Andros might well have driven Nicholas van Rensselaer into a deep despondency.

Suicide during that era was considered a mortal sin resulting in eternal damnation.

But as we know from various Shakespeare plays (some of which Nicholas might have seen staged while in England), suicide was a very present element of the seventeenthcentury Reformation sociology.63 Given the sum of the domine’s documented mental instability, in addition his failures in both religious and administrative matters, plus his inability to discuss the Rensselaerswijck patent with Governor Andros, suicide cannot entirely be ruled out as the cause of the disturbed minister’s death.

James Hammond Trumbull and C. J. Hoadly, The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut 1636–1676, 15 vols.

(Hartford, 1852–1890), 2:502. Oddly, there are no recorded Albany Court sessions during late August.

60

Lawrence H. Leder, Robert Livingston 1654–1728 and the Politics of Colonial New York (Chapel Hill, NC, 1961), 21.

Leder and Maunsell Van Rensselaer both cite a letter from Janet Livingston Montgomery, widow of Revolutionary War General Richard Montgomery, to General Horatio Gates, written about a century after van Rensselaer’s death.

61

62

MCARS, 2:379.

Michael Best, “Suicide,” from the “Life and Times” section of the Internet Shakespeare Editions website, University of Virginia, 2011, http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/ SLT/ideas/religion/suicide1.html, retrieved 1-13-2018.

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COLONY SECRETARY— Robert Livingston arrived in Albany shortly after Nicholas van Rensselaer and soon landed a job with the Rensselaerswijck director as his secretary. Following Van Rensselaer’s death in November 1678, Livingston married the director’s widow, Alida Schuyler. Their union founded one of the more prominent American dynasties of the colonial and revolutionary periods.

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de Halve Maen

Book Review Julie van den Hout, Adriaen Van Der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenthcentury America (Albany: SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions, 2018)

J

ULIE VAN DEN HOUT chose to tackle a mighty big subject for her first book, a biography of the Renaissance man of the Dutch Golden Age, Adriaen van der Donck. He is arguably the most prominent, colorful, compassionate, controversial, critically pivotal political activist/translator/landowner/chronicler/ naturalist/first ethnographer of the Mohegans and Mohawks/perpetual thorn-inthe-side of the management of the Dutch West India Company to set foot in New Amsterdam.

Born in Breda, North Brabant, in the southern part of the Netherlands in 1618, Adriaen van der Donck set sail for New Netherland aboard Den Eyckenboom (The Oak Tree) from Amsterdam on May 17, 1641, twenty years after the formation of the Dutch West India Company. He arrived in New Amsterdam on August 20, 1641, after a voyage of three months. In Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeeth-Century America, Van den Hout provides a scholarly profile of Van der Donck. Her forty pages of notes and bibliography support a 149-page account of a man with whom the author clearly is smitten—indeed, who wouldn’t be?

By all accounts—most particularly, as portrayed by Russell Shorto in Island in the Center of the World (which the Laurie Bogart Wiles, reviewer of this book, is the daughter of former Holland Society Trustee Adrian Bogart Jr., sister of Col. Adrian Bogart III, US Army, and Clinton Bogart, granddaughter of Adrian Bogart, and aunt of Sarah Bogart Cooney, Catherine Bogart, and Adrian Bogart IV. She lives with her husband, John, in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Hardscrabble Chronicles (Penguin Putnam) The Woman Angler (St. Martin’s Press) and The Giant Book of Dog Names (Simon and Schuster). Laurie was the first female member inducted into the Holland Society of New York and serves as the Society’s first female trustee.

author lists as a “secondary source” in her bibliography)—Van der Donck was a magnetic, independent-minded, deeply committed, and temperamental man. For the scholar who is well versed on the subject, Ms. Van den Hout’s book will provide a challenging and interesting read. Her bibliography in particular is a terrific compilation of source material that will prove valuable to the armchair historian.

For those of us with little or no knowledge of the colonial Dutch settlement of New Netherland, however, the construct of the times, and the inspirations and aspirations that motivated the first Dutch Americans; for those of us who have little or no knowledge of Willem Kieft and the Council of Twelve Men, or the Council of Eight Men, or the Council of Nine Men, Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeeth-Century America may prove a daunting read.

The first lawyer to set foot in New Amsterdam, Adriaen van der Donck was held in esteem as a Jonkheer, or “young lord,”—from which the City of Yonkers derived it name—and likewise served as schout (sheriff-administrator) of the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck. This dichotomy made him both keeper and maker of the law in New Netherland, a vast region that covered over 71,000 square miles, at a time when governing rule was hardly established and local law was barely written, let alone administered.

I make this point because Van den Hout, as an historical chronicler, succeeds in detailing a chronological account of Adriaen van der Donck’s life but, in my opinion, falls short of bringing the man and his times to life—something Shorto achieved with great panache in his book. To describe Van der Donck as “selfish and greedy” by way of a quote the author cites from Arent van Curler or, in her own words, describe Van der Donck as “a hothead” or “would take his [Van Renssalaer’s] tough-love lessons to heart,” begs you to ask the author, “Why?” and “What happened?” to lead up to her observations. She scratches the surface without revealing what lies beneath.

Moreover, such statements regarding Van der Donck, Van Curler, and Anthony

de Hooges as “the men were at an age of peak testosterone production and a developing prefrontal cortex that we now know is important for thinking through the consequences of our actions” [page 56] makes this reader, for one, question the validity and substance of the author’s conclusions. And when a reader begins to question even one such statement by an author of an authoritative account of any sort, then the reader becomes alert to the legitimacy of other remarks or statements that may come into question.

Any first-time author must be commended for even attempting to write a book. I have known many great writers of short stories and journalists who were stymied by the enormity of the task and never managed to write one. So, I commend J. van den Hout for her accomplishment. If I were to make just one suggestion to her, I would say this: Relax. Close your eyes and envision yourself present in the day, alongside your hero; be there, in the moment. Capture something of the unbridled enthusiasm you revealed in your own preface, where you opened your heart more freely than anywhere else in your book.

Charles Gehring, Director of the New Netherland Institute, called Van der Donck’s A Description of New Netherland ‟the fullest account of the province, its geography, the Indians who inhabited it, and its prospects . . . ” and further stated, “It has been said that had it not been written in Dutch, it would have gone down as one of the great works of American colonial literature.”

I believe the early Dutch settlement of the New World remains one of the most sparsely written chapters in American history. Anyone who ventures to put pen to paper, such as Ms. Van den Hout, to celebrate our ancestors and their achievements, must thoroughly be commended and, no matter what their “take” may be, deserve our support and appreciation. So, my recommendation is, buy the book.

Available on Amazon, in hardcover and on Kindle.

Spring 2018

—Laurie Bogart Wiles author and Holland Society Trustee.

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Here and There in New Netherland Studies

Fort Orange Exhibit New York State Museum

O

N MAY FIFTH, the New York State Museum opens an ongoing exhibition highlighting never-before-displayed artifacts from Fort Orange, the seventeenthcentury precursor of the New York’s capital city, Albany. The exhibition, entitled “a small fort, which our people call Fort Orange,” examines the momentous archaeological discovery of the fort in 1970, as well as the lasting impact of the Dutch settlement of the Hudson River Valley four-hundred years ago. The exhibit’s title is taken from The New World by Johannes De Laet, a director of the Dutch West India Company, recorded in 1625.

“This exhibition is just the beginning of our work in telling the story of New York’s colonial history and how our settlement by the Dutch has shaped not only our local character but aspects of state and even national character that we think will surprise and delight our visitors,” said New York Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Education and State Museum Director Mark Schaming. “The Fort Orange collection, together with so many in the Museum’s world-class holdings, serves as an unrivaled research and educational resource in telling the unique history of New York State.”

The exhibition is supported as part of the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York and in partnership with Historic Albany Foundation. “We at the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York are delighted with the rich artifactual evidence of Dutch heritage found here,” said Consul General Dolph Hogewoning. “We follow with great interest and eagerness the advances made in understanding the essential role that the Dutch people had in shaping colonial-era New York.”

In addition to select artifacts from the 36,000-object Fort Orange archeology collection, the exhibition includes film footage from the 1970 excavation and information gleaned from four decades of historical and archeological research, including renderings of the fort by historical artist Len Tantillo. Dutch ceramics on loan from the

Albany Institute of History and Art bring life to the story.

Fort Orange was the first permanent Dutch settlement in New Netherland, built as a trading post by the West India Company in 1624 at the present-day location of Albany, making the city the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States north of Virginia. Fort Orange was located at the nexus of the lucrative beaver-pelt trade. Between 1624 and 1664, the fort’s role in the development of New Netherland evolved from a point of contact and trade between Native Americans and Europeans to an enclosure with dwellings and private enterprises, and finally an abandoned space consumed by the development of Albany.

By the twentieth century, surface evidence of Fort Orange had long disappeared.

But in a six-month period between 1970 and 1971—just months ahead of Interstate 787 construction—a small archeology team from the State Historic Trust (the predecessor to the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, or OPRHP) headed

by Paul Huey made remarkable discoveries about life in the Dutch colony. In 2016, the collection was transferred from OPRHP to the New York State Museum, where it is available for further scientific study and the education of future generations.

Photos of select artifacts and images in the exhibit are available at: http://www.nysm. nysed.gov/about/press/kits/fort-orange The State Museum is located at 222 Madison Avenue in Albany. The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the Museum website: http://www.nysm.nysed.gov.

Bringing New Netherland Back to Breuckelen

T

HE NEW NETHERLAND Institute hosts a two-day conference in The Old Stone House at Washington Park, 336 3rd Street, in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday, June 1 and Saturday, June 2. Entitled “Bringing New Netherland Back to Breuckelen: Exploring Brooklyn’s Dutch Roots”

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the conference connects local history to Dutch history with the intent to make this history accessible to a wider audience.

The conference opens with a reception and dinner on Friday, June 1, and keynote address by Russell Shorto, author of Island at the Center of the World. Participants enjoy drinks, including a delicious punch prepared with Batavia-Arrack—the seventeenth-century spirit originally imported to the West by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), as well as hors d’oeuvres in the Old Stone House garden prepared by Jason Novick-Finder, the chef/owner of Gristmill—a Park Slope restaurant featuring foods prepared in a wood-fired grill.

The conference continues the following day with speakers placing “Dutch Breuckelen” into historical context. Russell Shorto will speak on the Dutch Golden Age and New Netherland, and Dennis Maika on New Amsterdam and western Long Island, Janny Venema on Beverwijck and Rensselaerswijck, and Charles Gehring on the South River, placing Breuckelen into New Netherland’s other settlements. A panel discussion follows on the past, present, and future of New Netherland scholarship.

There were also be an outdoor cooking demonstration with culinary historian Lavada Nahon.

Afternoon sessions explore different aspects of Dutch Brooklyn through historical research, historical art, and archeological and anthropological investigation. Speakers include Andrea Mosterman on Brooklyn’s black population, artist Len Tantillo on depicting both sides of the East River in 1650–1720, and Diana Wall and AnneMarie Cantwell on Brooklyn’s archeology.

The conference concludes with a panel of public historians, including Kamau Ware of the Black Gotham Experience, Melissa Branfman of the Wyckoff House Museum, John Krawchuk of The Historic House Trust of New York City, and Steven Jaffee of the Museum of the City of New York, who will discuss their efforts to educate the wider public on the area’s Dutch origins.

The conference is co-sponsored by The Gotham Center, with support from the Dutch Consulate and the New York State Archives. Tickets are $75 for Friday, $75 for Saturday, and $125 for both days.

de Halve Maen

Society Activities Fraunces Tavern Gathering

O

N FRIDAY, February 2, 2018, Holland Society of New York Members, Friends, and their guests joined the members of the Society of Daughters of Holland Dames and their guests for an evening of conversation, dinner, and conviviality. The meeting took place at Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street in lower Manhattan and attracted members and guests from as far away as Texas and Maryland.

Etienne (Stephen) DeLancey originally built the structure in 1719 on the site of the former residence of his father-in-law, Stephanus Van Cortlandt. At the time of its construction, the building was considered one of the most elegant townhouses on Manhattan. In 1762, Samuel Fraunces purchased the house and converted it into the popular tavern, then named the Queen’s Head. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the tavern became a popular gathering place for the Sons of Liberty. It is most famous, however, for Gen. George Washington’s farewell speech to his officers at a dinner held there on December 4, 1783.

Between 1904 and 1907, the Sons of the American Revolution undertook a restoration of the building to its eighteenth-century appearance. The Bessell Room, in which room the Holland Society and Daughters of the Holland Dames dinner was held, features a large mural of New York Harbor in 1717. The historic ambiance of Fraunces Tavern was the perfect space for our societies to join together and reflect upon our shared New Netherland ancestry.

Members of The Holland Society of New York and The Society of the Daughters of the Holland Dames gather at Fraunces Tavern.

Florida Branch Meeting

T

HE FLORIDA BRANCH meeting of the Holland Society of New York was held on Saturday, January 27, 2018.

Members, friends, and potential members in Florida at the time of the meeting were welcomed. The elegant Club at Admirals Cove in Jupiter, Florida, provided outstanding food, service, and atmosphere for the meeting.

Following refreshments and conversation, there were the traditional toasts to the King of the Netherlands, the President of the United States, and to The Holland Society

of New York. During dessert, national Holland Society President Andrew Terhune spoke about the happenings at the Society since he became president and about the Society's future. One of his goals for the Society is to make its records more accessible via digitization and to find ways to make it relevant to new (and younger) members.

Lively and enthusiastic discussion followed his comments.

Holland Society Members attending were brothers Jonathan Booream, with his wife Karen, and Kent Booraem, with his wife Joanne, John Ditmars with daughter Dianne and son-in-law Fred Watson, Steve Zabriskie, Bruce Van Voorhis and his wife Dianne (who received the prize for who traveled the farthest—three hours each way from Bradenton, Florida), Branch President and host James Lansing, his brother Cooper Lansing with his wife Barbara, and Society President Andrew Terhune. Shirley Longstreet, a longtime Friend and Admirals Cove resident who was out of town, was greatly missed this year.

Annual Meeting Florida Branch Members of The Holland Society pose for their portrait at their meeting at Admiral’s Cove in Jupiter, Florida.

O

N FRIDAY April 6, 2018, The Holland Society of New York held its 133rd Annual Meeting and dinner at the Cornell Club in Manhattan. President An-

Spring 2018

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drew Terhune called the business meeting to order at 5:02 p.m. Those gathered offered the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America followed by an invocation given by Domine Paul Lent. The Members then voted to approve and waive the reading of the minutes of the 2017 Annual Meeting. Society Secretary Dean Vanderwarker presented the Secretary’s report. He noted that since the last annual meeting the Society had elected thirty-one new Members. He then read the necrology of those who had recently passed and asked the attendees for any reflections on the deceased. Domine Paul Lent then gave a prayer in their honor.

The main portion of the meeting was the election of officers for the coming year. The slate of the President and Trustees as presented was approved. The Society reelected Andrew Terhune as President for a second one-year term. Trustees reelected at the meeting were Trustee and outgoing Treasurer Eric DeLamarter to a one-year term, and for terms ending in 2022, Trustees and Branch Presidents Christopher Cortright and David Ditmars. Newly elected to the same term are Brad Cole, David Conklin, and the Society’s first female Trustee, Laurie Bogart. Dean Vanderwarker assumed the mantel of Society Treasurer being vacated

by Eric DeLamarter. He, in turn, handed over the reins of Secretary to Jim Middaugh, Trustee and Texas Branch President.

In addition, the Members elected two new Trustees Emeriti, Rev. Rett Zabriskie and Donald Westervelt. Following the installation of officers, Treasurer Eric DeLamarter submitted the report of the Treasurer noting the endowment stands at approximately $6.1 million, the budget was trimmed by approximately $100,000 in expenses, and that the Society’s financial position is much firmer now than a year ago.

President Andrew Terhune’s address culminated the meeting. President Terhune remarked on the Society’s activities during the past year and offered options for consideration about the Society’s future. He requested those in attendance to lend their time and thoughts to the Society.

Following the meeting, Members joined families and guests in the Cornell Club for hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. Arthur Heydendael, husband of Executive Director Odette Fodor-Gernaert, provided piano music. The evening started with a brief invocation by Domine Rev. Paul S. Lent, the singing of the Dutch and American National anthems, and the Dutch hymn “We

Holland Society of New York President Andrew S. Terhune addresses Members, Friends, and quests at the Society’s 133rd Annual Meeting in the Cornell Club in Manhattan.

Members, Friends, and guests raise their glasses for the Annual Meeting’s traditional toasts.

Gather Together.” Toasts were given to the President of the United States, to King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands, to The Holland Society, and to the late Frank H. Vedder and James E. Quackenbush, hosts in absentia. The group then sat down to a delicious dinner of salmon and chicken.

The dinner’s highlight was President Terhune’s presentation of the Branch President of the Year Award to Niagara Branch President David Quackenbush. Mr. Quakenbush gave a brief address, opening by noting the

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risks and values of our seventeenth-century ancestors. “They they were hardworking as well as hard playing,” he said. “They were tolerant ethnically and politically.” He then continued that the Society needs “to find ways to rekindle their values in relevant, contemporary ways for future generations.”

Adding, “the Branch Network is a great way to accomplish this.”

Following the completion of the festivities, Members and guests continued to mingle and enjoy each other’s company.

de Halve Maen

In Memoriam Colin Simpson Lazier Colin Simpson Lazier, Holland Society of New York Life Member and retired Justice of the Superior Court of Ontario, passed away peacefully on October 30, 2016, at Sunnybrook Veterans Centre, Hamilton, Ontario, at the age of ninety-six. Justice Lazier was born in Hamilton, Ontario, on February 10, 1920, the son of Judge Ernest Franklin Lazier and Muriel Simpson. He claimed descent from François LeSeur, who came to New Netherland from France in 1657. Justice Lazier joined The Holland Society in 1995.

Justice Lazier attended Hillfield School, Hamilton, and Upper Canada College, Toronto. He received his undergraduate degree from Trinity College of the University of Toronto. During World War II, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). He thereafter served overseas as a bomber pilot with RAF Squadron 107.

Justice Lazier married Martha Gillies in Hamilton, Ontario, on September 25, 1948.

The couple had four children: Colin Gillies Lazier, born on August 8, 1949, Robert Douglas Lazier, born on August 10, 1950, Sarah Jane Lazier, and Thomas Ernest Lazier, born on September 15, 1962, all born in Hamilton. Justice Lazier’s wife, Martha, predeceased him. He subsequently married Jocelyn Davis. His son Colin Gillies Lazier, a former President of The Holland Society, also predeceased him on August 24, 2016.

Justice Lazier attended Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto, Ontario, vand was admitted to the Ontario Bar in 1948. He was joined in law practice with his brother, Harold Lazier, as partner.

Justice Lazier was appointed to the bench in 1972.

In addition to The Holland Society, Justice Lazier served on numerous charitable boards in Hamilton, Ontario. He had been a member of the Hamilton Golf and Country Club since 1933.

Justice Lazier is survived by his wife, Jocelyn, children Robert Douglas Lazier of Ottawa, Ontario, Dr. Sarah Jane Keating of Toronto, and Thomas Lazier of Hamilton, stepdaughters Julie and Deborah, eleven grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren. Funeral arrangemvents were made

by Marlatt Funeral Home and Cremation

Centre of Hamilton. The funeral service was private. There was a celebration of Justice Lazier’s life on November 5, 2016, at The Hamilton Club, Hamilton.

Robert V. Garretson Holland Society of New York Member Robert V. Garretson passed away peacefully after a long illness at his home in Watertown, Connecticut, on February 6, 2018, at the age of ninety-two. Mr. Garretson was born on August 2, 1925, in Auburn, New York, the son of Arthur Garretson and Mabel Ann Querry. Mr. Garretson became a Member of The Holland Society in 1982.

Mr. Garretson served in the US Navy during World War II as an aerial gunner with a carrier-based torpedo bomber squadron in the Pacific. After returning from service, he completed his education and was employed

by General Electric as a manufacturing engineer in their light military electronics equipment department in Syracuse and New Hartford, New York.

Mr. Garretson married Rosemary Verzole in 1940. The couple had two sons, Bill Garretson and Mike Garretson.

After leaving General Electric in 1960, Mr. Garretson was employed by Edward Segal Company in New York City as their sales manager. At that time he moved his family to Wantagh, New York. In 1972 the company relocated to Thomaston, Connecticut, when he moved with his family to Watertown, Connecticut. Mr. Garretson remained with the Segal Company until his retirement in 1994.

In retirement Mr. Garretson was active as a volunteer at the Thomaston Opera House and Waterbury Hospital, where he was treasurer of the Healthy Hearts Club and enjoyed working on many of the hospital fundraisers. He was an avid bowler, Yankee fan, and loved UConn basketball.

In addition to his wife of sixty-eight years, Rosemary, Mr. Garretson is survived by his sons Bill Garretson of Thomaston, Connecticut, and Mike Garretson of Sugarland, Texas, six grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. Hickcox Funeral Home of Watertown, Connecticut, handled funeral arrangements. A celebration of his life was held on February 10, 2018, at Hickcox Funeral Home. The burial was private.

Wallace Van Cortlandt Auser Holland Society of New York Life Member Wallace (“Wally”) Van Cortlandt Auser of Fulton, New York, passed away on February 8, 2018, at Elderwood in Liverpool at the age of ninety-four. Mr. Auser was born on May 26, 1923, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Wallace Van Cortlandt Auser Sr. and Christine Dorothy Butt. He claimed descent from Aert Willemszen, who arrived in New Netherland in 1641, and is believed to have come from Barnevelt, Gelderland.

Mr. Auser joined The Holland Society in 1997.

Mr. Auser spent his youth in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. He was a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, from which he received undergraduate and law degrees. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and later during the Korean War, attaining the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. Mr. Auser settled in Fulton, New York, where he established a law practice in 1949. He served as Fulton City Attorney, Fulton City Court Judge from 1969 to 1983, and County Court Judge from 1983 until his retirement in 1993. During his retirement, he presided as a judicial hearing officer for several years.

Mr. Auser married Elizabeth Frances Morin in Fulton, New York, on November 13, 1948. The couple had four children: Wallace Van Cortlandt Auser III, born on April 16, 1950, James Morin Auser, born on October 22, 1952, Jeffery McLaughlin Auser, born on February 27, 1957, and Elizabeth Cortright Auser, born on July 20, 1966. Mr. Auser was predeceased by his wife, Elizabeth (“Betty”), son James, and daughter Elizabeth.

Mr. Auser was a longtime member of the First United Methodist Church of Fulton and in recent years was a member of the Northside Baptist Church in Liverpool.

Wally was a member of the Fulton Rotary Club and a Paul Harris Award recipient. He served as president of the Fulton Library Board of Directors and was involved with many community activities and various historical and genealogical societies. He enjoyed numerous hobbies which included genealogy, stamp collecting, and railroad history.

Mr. Auser is survived by his two sons,

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Wallace Auser of Fulton, New York, and Jeffrey Auser of Liverpool, six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were made by Foster Funeral Home of Fulton, New York. Calling hours were on February 18. A graveside service will be held at Mt. Adnah Cemetery, Fulton, in the spring.

Derick Bradt Van Schoonhoven Holland Society of New York Life Member Derick Bradt Van Schoonhoven died on February 17, 2018, in Kirkland Village, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had resided since 1997. He was ninety-two.

Mr. Van Schoonhoven was born in Manhattan on December 19, 1925, the son of John Jacob Van Schoonhoven and Marion Elizabeth Kent. He claimed descent from Geurt Hendrickse, who emigrated from Holland to New Netherland in 1651. Mr. Van Schoonhoven became a Member of The Holland Society in 2000.

Mr. Van Schoonhoven graduated in 1944 from A. B. Davis High School, Mount Vernon, New York. From 1943 to 1946, he served in Company M, 66th Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division of the United States Army in Germany. He was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds received at the crossing of the Rhine River and the Bronze Star medal for ground combat against an armed enemy.

Following military service, Mr. Van Schoonhoven attended Champlain College, Plattsburg, New York, in 1948. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Stage Design from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1952. Mr. Van Schoonhoven worked as a lighting designer and salesman in New York and Eastern Pennsylvania during his forty-five year career with Holophane Co. and Century Lighting Co. Mr. Van Schoonhoven married Lucia Yvonne French at the Church of the Transfiguration in Manhattan on June 29, 1956. The couple had three daughters: Su-

zanna Van Schoonhoven, born December 3, 1958, Phoebe Van Schoonhoven, born on November 26, 1960, and Annabel Van Schoonhoven, born on July 24, 1964, all in Manhattan. Mr. Van Schoonhoven’s wife Lucia predeceased him in 1993. He married Anne Elizabeth Brewer in Bath, New York, on August 21, 1995.

Mr. Van Schoonhoven served as regional vice president of the Northeastern Region of the Illunination Engineering Society of New American from 1955 to 1997 and chairman of the Eastern Pennsylvania Section of the Illuminating Engineering Society in 1975–1976. He was president of the Reading, Pennsylvania, Host Lions Club in 1976, and a charter member of the United States Institute of Theatrical Technology. In addition to his membership in The Holland Society he served on the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution in 2000–2001, and Sons of the American Revolution, is a life member of the Disabled American Veterans and the American Philatelic Society, and served as president of the Greater New York Delta Tau Delta Alumni Association in 1960–1962.

Mr. Van Schoonhoven is survived by his wife, Anne, and three daughters, Suzanna Hunter of Duanesburg, New York, Phoebe Krewson of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Annabel Felton of Esperance, New York. A private memorial service will be held in Albany in the spring.

Wynant Davis Vanderpool Holland Society of New York Life Member Wynant Davis Vanderpool died on February 19, 2018, at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, after a long battle with cancer. He was seventy-eight. Mr. Vanderpool was born in Orange, New Jersey, in April 8, 1939, the son of Wynant Davis Vanderpool Jr. and Madeleine McAlpin. He claimed descent from Wynant Gerritszen van der Poel who immigrated to New Netherland in1644 from Groningen, Netherlands. Mr. Vanderpool became a Member of The Hol-

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land Society in 1969.

Mr. Vanderpool graduated from St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, and Princeton University. In 1968 he formed the design and communications firm Vanderpool and Siegel, Inc., in Manhattan, which subsequently became The Vanderpool Group, expanding into the area of management consulting to small companies including Prototype Packaging. From 1976 to 1983 he served as Vice President for the Center for Inter-American Relations in New York, a nonprofit institution chaired by David Rockefeller. In 1990, he became president of Lakeville Specialty Produce Company in Washingtonville, Pennsylvania, the foremost hydroponic grower of mȃche in the country. In 1996, he founded and became president of Melissa Peirce Enterprises, Inc. to further the professional career of Melissa Peirce, the Nashville country music songwriter, lyricist and singer.

Mr. Vanderpool married Barrie Osborn Bishop on January 11, 1982.

Mr. Vanderpool served as an advisor or a trustee to numerous organizations, including The Frick Collection, The Purnell School, The Columbia County Historical Society, The Depot Theatre, The High Peaks Education Foundation, and in 1980 the Fine Arts Committee for the Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games. The Vanderpools and the E. B. Osborn Charitable Trust have been major supporters of the restoration of the early nineteenth-century residence, the James Vanderpoel House in Kinderhook, New York.

Mr. Vanderpool was an artist, avid skier, tennis player, and golfer. For some years he held the St. Paul’s School half-mile record in track, and in 1991 claimed two Adirondack golfing firsts: playing all twenty-two of the Adirondack eighteen-hole golf courses, and breaking ninety on all of them.

By 2012 he had broken eighty-five on all but four. In 2010, he published a novel entitled Enigma: A Literary Fable.

Mr. Vanderpool is survived by his wife, Barrie. A memorial service is planned this summer in Keene Valley, New York.

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