History, Natural History & the Arts
The New York Almanack recently heard from Will Katerberg, the curator of Heritage Hall, the archives of Calvin University, Calvin Theological Seminary, and the Christian Reformed Church.
They have significant records in Dutch North American history, focusing on immigrants who came beginning in the 1840s, and the ethnic communities those immigrants and their descendants created. [Read more…] about Featured Collections: Dutch American History at Heritage Hall
The New York and New Jersey metropolitan area hosts several leading higher education institutions, ranging from elite Ivy League and public research universities to specialist technological schools. Three of those belong to the historic group of nine pre-Revolutionary colonial colleges. [Read more…] about Rutgers, Race & The Hardenbergh Legacy
In the spring of 1613, a sailor named Jan Rodrigues arrived at the shore of the Hudson River from a Dutch trading ship, likely the Jonge Tobias. Identifying himself as a free individual, he became the earliest documented Black man in New Netherland. Jan Rodrigues is the subject of one of 25 new, peer-reviewed biographical sketches published by the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society in August, part of the NYG&B’s New Netherland Settlers initiative. [Read more…] about 25 New Netherland Biographies Published
Christianity banned beer from the sacred domain as the Roman clergy continued the Latin habit of drinking wine. The opposition: Christian wine versus pagan beer, was upheld even in the north of Europe. Believers accepted wine’s sacramental role, whatever their climates, social habits, or drinking customs.
The Catholic Church was, at the same time, actively involved in the lucrative business of beer making. The Reformation was not just a schism that breached the unity of the Church, it was also a revolt against clergy-imposed customs that brought about a drastic change – from herbs to hops – in beer production and consumption. [Read more…] about Beer, Hops, Reformation & Prohibition
The “Four Kings” were Native American leaders who traveled to London, England in 1710 during Queen Anne’s War as diplomats of the Mohawk Valley. They met with Queen Anne in London, where their portraits, the earliest surviving oil portraits of Native people painted from life, were painted by Dutch artist John Verelst by royal commission.
Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) was the second in a series of colonial wars fought in North America involving Great Britain, France, and Spain. The four men, long misidentified as Mohawk leaders, were actually three Mohawks and one Mohican man. [Read more…] about Schenectady Church Recognizing Indigenous ‘Four Kings,’ Early Mohawk Members
Sugarbaker is a relatively common name that began to appear in American censuses from the 1830s onward. As an occupational surname, it derives from the German Zuckerbäcker. Originally, this compound noun referred to the highly rated skill of a confectioner. By the mid-nineteenth century, the word pointed at all those who worked in the sugar refining industry.
Sugar was mega business. First produced in India, it spread to Europe by way of Persia. Venetians played a crucial role as intermediates. A hub of commerce between Europe and the East, its merchants dominated the trade until around 1500 when other regions became involved. The “mystery” skill of sugar refining was brought to America by various groups of European immigrants. [Read more…] about Sugar, Slave Labor & Art Galleries
A French girl born in 1625 is believed to be “the first white child” born in what is now New York. She was raised in the Dutch colony of New Netherland.
Sarah Rapalje (1625-1685) was the daughter of Joris Jansen Rapelje (1604–1663) and Catalina Trico (1605–1689), Walloon Calvinists who sailed on board the ship Eendracht from the Dutch Republic in 1624. [Read more…] about The Story of Sarah Rapalje and Dutch Manhattan
New England was a male-dominated Puritan society in which women could not vote, own property or hold a post in religious or governmental bodies. Men were inferior to God and women lesser than men. But the lived experience varied according to background and education.
Despite restrictions, some women did make themselves heard and challenged communal norms. Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) and Deborah Moody (1586-1659) battled for the right to speak out. Demanding inclusive debate, they were accused of undermining the authority of the Colony’s patriarchal structure. [Read more…] about The Expulsion of Deborah Moody
Throughout Saratoga County’s long history, many religious and spiritual communities have called our home their home, with the land even being sacred to some. This article will highlight the founding of several of Saratoga County’s religious communities through the 19th century, with a focus on Saratoga Springs.
Today, diverse people of faith have joined those long-established denominations to call Saratoga home, including Jewish communities, several Indigenous Cultural Revival Movements, and a Mosque, Masjid Al-Arqam in Halfmoon. All of them play important roles in the Saratoga Community. [Read more…] about Early Saratoga County Religious Communities: Some History
Six capital projects will receive funding from The Preservation League of NYS’s Preservation Opportunity Fund, which provides funding for urgent historic preservation projects. The creation of the Preservation Opportunity Fund in 2024 allows the League to have an immediate impact on historic sites in need of maintenance and repair. [Read more…] about Six Historic Preservation Projects Get Much-Needed Private Funding
Walloon-born Peter Minuit was the third Director of New Netherland from 1626 until his dismissal for reasons that remain unclear in 1632. Five years later he founded, on behalf of the Swedish government, a settlement on the lower South River (now the Delaware River) which he named New Sweden.
This rivalry between the Dutch and the Swedish for control of the local fur trade came to a climax when Peter Stuyvesant became Director-General of New Netherland in 1647. [Read more…] about New Amstel: A City Colony’s Rise and Fall
The history of education in New York has no single beginning date. Wherever people have lived, they have educated themselves and their children. The process and content of education and the institutions developed to perform this function have changed over time.
Only part of the task of education has ever been carried out by the schools. Newspapers, libraries, apprenticeships, churches, and especially families, have been key educators, transmitting knowledge, skills, and attitudes to successive generations. [Read more…] about A History of Education in New York: From Earliest Times to the Revolution
Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland, was the stiffest of men, outraged by immoral behavior. He must have nearly burst in anger when Broad Advice was published in 1649.
Purporting to offer advice to the West India Company, this pamphlet really delivered a libelous screed against Stuyvesant and his predecessor Director Willem Kieft. [Read more…] about Peter Stuyvesant and Judith Bayard: A Romance
Catalyntje Jeronimous Trico was born in about 1605 in Pres or Prijs, Hainault, in what was then the Spanish Netherlands, now Nord, Valenciennes, France to Jeronimus Jean Tricot and Michele Sauvagie.
Although her birth record has never been found (records in her parish only begin nearly a century after her birth), she is known through her sister Margareta (Triko) de la Fontaine dit Wicart’s will, which left half of her estate to Catalina. [Read more…] about Catalyntje Trico: A Life in New Amsterdam
During the early days of settlement, economics in New Netherland trumped religion or identity. Pragmatism and tolerance were essential conditions of coexisting in a multi-national and multi-lingual colony, not abstract ideals. The Dutch Reformed Church may have been the official religion, but citizens were free to worship other teachings.
A substantial population of Huguenots, Quakers and Calvinists settled along the Hudson River. They were followed by Jewish immigrants. New England did not provide such leniency. Plymouth Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Bay Puritans were separate communities. [Read more…] about A Quaker Legacy: Religious Freedom, Commerce & Compassion
It seems a simple enough question: when was New York founded? So when and how should we celebrate or commemorate it? As we come to the end of this essay series, Jaap Jacobs takes a look at previous commemorations of Dutch-American friendship. An exploration of the early history of New York that shaped these events leads to the question of how to commemorate New York’s Dutch history and Dutch-American friendship in 2024 and beyond.
On November 16, 1776, the brig Andrew Doria, flying an American flag, arrived at the roadsteads of the Dutch-held island St. Eustatius. The ship fired the customary gun salute and the guns of Fort Orange replied in like fashion. [Read more…] about When Was New York Founded? History, Commemorations & Moral Measures of the Past
In 1631 Charles I summoned his Royal printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas to court after it was discovered that their reprint of the King James Bible contained a typographical mistake by leaving out the word “not” from the seventh commandment. In between exhortations that “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal,” readers are instructed that “thou shalt commit adultery.” [Read more…] about Politics, Printers, Bibles & Founding Fathers
New York by 1820 was becoming a “colony from New England” to use the phrase of President Timothy Dwight of Yale. The “Puritan Pope,” as he was some times called, estimated that 60 to 67 percent of the people of New York had originated in the “land of steady habits.”
The few thousand Puritans who had established a new Zion around Boston in the 1630s were a remarkably energetic, prolific, and self-assertive people. The thin soils on the hilly lands, the harsh winters, and the stern theology of John Calvin created a distinct community spirit and shaped a unique character. [Read more…] about “Locusts of the East”: The Yankee Invasion of New York
Traveling from Washington D.C. to Milwaukee, Dutch journalist Bas Blokker makes a stop-over in Hurley, Ulster County, NY, and discovers its Dutch history. His curiosity is piqued and he dives into the past to find the nineteenth-century views of the Dutch colonizers very different from modern ones.
During the last five years, I always crossed the Susquehanna River just north of Baltimore when driving from my house in Washington DC to New York. Once on the bridge the same scene unfolded again and again in my mind’s eye: a sailing ship changing course from the Chesapeake Bay to enter the river’s mouth and drop anchor at what is now Havre de Grace or Garret Island. [Read more…] about Nieuw Dorp, Now & Then: Dutch History in Ulster County
By 1642, the number of inhabitants of Rensselaerwyck (spelled Rensselaerswijck in Dutch), at the time basically what is now Albany and Rensselaer Counties, had grown and Patroon Kiliaen Van Rensselaer willingly complied with a requirement of the Dutch West India Company to secure a clergyman for a Dutch Church to conduct services for the settlers. [Read more…] about New Netherlanders’ Views of Indigenous People
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