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
New Netherland
Albany’s Distressed Children & The Albany Orphan Asylum: Some History
In 1652, New Netherland Dutch Director General Peter Stuyvesant granted land to the Dutch Church in Albany to construct a house to shelter the poor. In 1683, English Governor Thomas Dongan convened the first representative Assembly in the Colony of New York.
One of the first laws passed by the Colonial Assembly was a law regarding the treatment of orphans. [Read more…] about Albany’s Distressed Children & The Albany Orphan Asylum: Some History
Early Inhabitants of the Finger Lakes Region
According to archeological records, groups of nomadic Paleo-Indians traveled through the Finger Lakes region approximately 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Small bands of these hunters and gatherers followed large game during the last stages of the Ice Age when the glaciers that formed the area’s notable lakes were receding.
Somewhat more recent early archaic archeological sites scattered across Western New York reflect a culture that was highly mobile and left little in terms of an archeological record. [Read more…] about Early Inhabitants of the Finger Lakes Region
1820s Literary Rivalry: Manhattan Versus Boston
On November 2, 1820, the city of New York‘s Chamber of Commerce placed an advertisement in the Commercial Advertiser and other newspapers inviting merchant clerks to meet in Tontine Coffee House at 82 Wall Street and discuss forming of an organization that would be similar to Boston’s Mercantile Library (founded earlier that same year).
Nearly two hundred and fifty young men responded to the notice and joined the meeting which led to the creation of Manhattan’s Mercantile Library Association. [Read more…] about 1820s Literary Rivalry: Manhattan Versus Boston
Historic New Paltz Documents Translated
Historic Huguenot Street (HHS) in New Paltz, NY, recently commissioned the translation of historic documents from Dutch to English, thanks to a grant of $25,000 as part of the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York. The project encompasses early-American documents ranging from the mid-1600s through the 1700s, part of a larger project to digitize and make these documents available online with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. [Read more…] about Historic New Paltz Documents Translated
Pilgrim Edward Winslow: Separatist, Governor and International Diplomat
The early history of the Dutch in America is not confined to the Hudson River and the surrounding areas, but extends deep into New England. In 1620 a group of settlers from Leiden journeyed across the Atlantic to settle in North America. They are often overlooked in surveys of Dutch-American relations, because their history does not fit neatly into the nineteenth-century nationalist framework that still pervades the historiography.
Yet the Pilgrims of Plymouth — English, but honorary Dutchmen by hindsight — are worthy of our attention. One of the Pilgrims was Edward Winslow, Separatist, Governor, and International Diplomat. His story is told by Jeremy D. Bangs, the expert par excellence of Pilgrim history. [Read more…] about Pilgrim Edward Winslow: Separatist, Governor and International Diplomat
Albany’s Abraham Ten Broeck: A Short Biography
Abraham Ten Broeck was born in 1734 to Dirck Ten Broeck (1686-1751) and Margarita Cuyler (1682–1783). Abraham was one of twelve children born to the couple. Abraham first-generation grandfather had come to America from Holland in 1626 on the same ship with Peter Minuit, the first Director General of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. [Read more…] about Albany’s Abraham Ten Broeck: A Short Biography
Sojourner Truth: How An Enslaved Dutch Speaker Became A Black Liberation Icon
On March 31st, 1817 the New York State Legislature decided that enslavement within its borders had to come to an end. Final emancipation would occur on July 4th, 1827. Coincidentally, the date of choice was almost exactly two centuries after the Dutch West India Company’s yacht Bruynvisch arrived at Manhattan on August 29th, 1627. [Read more…] about Sojourner Truth: How An Enslaved Dutch Speaker Became A Black Liberation Icon
The African Burial Ground, Columbia University & Manhattan’s Grave-Robbers
On July 26, 1788, the Convention of the State of New York, meeting in Poughkeepsie, ratified the Constitution of the United States and, in doing so, was admitted to the new union as the eleventh of the original thirteen colonies joining together as the United States of America.
For New Yorkers, it had been an eventful year. [Read more…] about The African Burial Ground, Columbia University & Manhattan’s Grave-Robbers
A United Nations Exhibit Sheds Light On Dutch Colonial Slavery
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