History, Natural History & the Arts
The American artist Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (Perth Amboy, NJ 1860 – Rijsoord, Netherlands 1958), my great-grandmother, lived a long and interesting life. Her artistic career and family history has fascinated me since I was a young girl.
Wilhelmina’s ancestors were English and Scottish migrants, who moved to the east coast of the United States and Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. [Read more…] about The Hawleys, Opposition to the War of 1812 and the Church of the Presidents
During the 1920s, the Netherlands excelled in dullness, it is said. But Kees Wouters shows how the cobwebs of pillarized society were blown away by a new musical wind from the West: Jazz! Exalted by many, vilified by others, Dutch musicians playing American jazz conquered music halls and radio waves alike and even made the Dutch dance.
According to Dutch historian Hermann von der Dunk, writing in the early 1980s, life in the Netherlands after World War I was as exciting as in a girls’ boarding school. Nothing much happened. Despite the presence of about a million destitute Belgian refugees, the horrors of the war had largely passed the Netherlands by. [Read more…] about American Culture and 1920s Netherlands
My love for America started at an early age, when I pinched a book from my older brother: Pietje Bell in Amerika. I still remember the cover: a jolly Dutch newspaper boy with the skyline of New York City in the background. It pointed to the idea the book conveyed: the land of limitless opportunities, from paperboy to billionaire, a new start, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. [Read more…] about Lady Liberty as Muse: A Dutch Writer’s Love for the United States
During the Second World War, the English secret service did not trust the German-born Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, son-in-law of Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands. Yet he was wildly popular among the Dutch population suffering under the Nazi yoke. So much so that he could get away with a few missteps.
In the fall of 1944, the immediate future of many people in The Netherlands looked distinctly grim. Following the Allied invasion in Normandy in June, France, as well as Belgium and southern parts of The Netherlands, had been liberated quickly. [Read more…] about Dutch Prince Bernhard, His American Jeep and Two Women Passengers
I love to make evening walks in the town of Winterswijk, where I was born. The Dutch habit of keeping curtains open makes strolls resemble visits to a museum, with the windows framing paintings that offer ever-changing views. I like to discover routes to find new, unfamiliar places.
One evening, in December 2020, I passede the old graveyard of Winterswijk, a place that usually gives me the creeps. For some reason — I still don’t know why, — I decide to walk across the graveyard this time. I immediately spotted a brightly lit memorial: two bollards holding up a colorful plaque. The sign reads: “The Phoenix Tragedy, 1847.” [Read more…] about Dutch-American History: The Phoenix Tragedy, 1847
Berlin, May 1915. Three feminists on an historical mission — Jane Addams and New York native Alice Hamilton from the United States, and Aletta Jacobs from the Netherlands — meet Wilbur H. Durborough. The American photographer and filmmaker had traveled to Berlin with his cameraman, Irving G. Ries, to shoot footage for his war documentary On the Firing Line with the Germans (1915). [Read more…] about Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton & The Hague Women’s Congress
The exhibit “Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam” will be displayed in the lobby of the United Nations in New York City from February 27 through March 30, 2023.
The exhibition explores ten true personal stories centered on wooden foot stocks known as a “tronco” (Portuguese for tree trunk) that were used to constrain enslaved people by clamping their ankles. The foot stocks represent the more than one million people who forced to work in Dutch colonies on sugar plantations and in mines and harbors in Brazil, Suriname, the Caribbean, South Africa, and Asia. [Read more…] about A United Nations Exhibit Sheds Light On Dutch Colonial Slavery
What does it mean to be of Dutch extraction in the United States? Pella, situated on the Iowa plains, was the destination of choice for hundreds of Dutch families, led by Hendrick Pieter Scholte, after the Afscheiding (Secession) of 1834 split the Dutch Reformed Church. What is still Dutch and what has changed over time? Valerie Van Kooten, Executive Director of the Pella Historical Society and Museums, tells us about her childhood. [Read more…] about Dutch-American Stories: Growing Up Dutch
What and where a person eats, suggests togetherness with one community and dis-identification with another and is therefore a factor that affects all migrant communities. Consumption conveys an idea of public identity.
Food can also serve as a psychological stimulus by unlocking emotional childhood reminiscences. Such experiences have frequently been expressed creatively. There are, for example, the uncooked wrinkled French prunes for Tolstoy’s Ivan Il’ich or the famous “petites madeleines” for Marcel Proust’s Swann that recapture vivid images of early years. [Read more…] about Mayonnaise, Hollandaise, Huguenots and Nostalgia: A Culinary History
For the first decade of its existence, New Amsterdam was a rough place. Located on the tip of Manhattan Island, it was a haven for pirates and smugglers. Many of the earliest rules and regulations were an attempt to control the unruly citizens of a backwater outpost, but officials proved unable to lay down the law. Intemperate drinking was one of the problems.
In 1640 permission was granted by Willem Kieft, Director of the New Netherland Colony, for liquor to be distilled on Staten Island – in contemporary Dutch: Staaten Eylandt – where what is believed to have been the first commercial distillery in North America was built (today Staten Island is home to the Booze History Museum). [Read more…] about Early Distilling History: Puritan Bibles, Gin & Schnapps