New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

New Netherland

Dutch Concerts to Benefit Crailo Historic Site

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On Sunday June 7 and Sunday June 14, specially researched and custom designed Dutch concerts will be performed by two different musicians groups at the First Presbyterian Church at 38 Broadway in the city of Rensselaer at 3pm. The public is invited to take part and enjoy one very high style concert and, in contrast, one concert for the common folk. The concerts will benefit the Crailo Historic Site.

The first on Sunday June 7 features classical Dutch music of the Golden Age. Musicians of Ma’alwyck perform this Dutch repertoire on clavichord, traverso flute, cello, and violin-instruments popular in the first half of the seventeenth century. Director of Musicians of Ma’alwyck, music historian and virtuoso, Ann-Marie Barker Schwartz has researched and arranged a program fit for the Dutch wealthy middle
and upper classes of the first half of the seventeenth century. The popular regional musical group researched documents at Yale and in the Netherlands in order to present this concert.

The Bells and Motley Consort of Olden Music presents the second concert steeped in seventeenth folk tradition from the Netherlands and Flanders which will be held on Sunday June 14. John and Sondra Bromka, the musical couple that make up this distinctive group, have lived in the Dutch and Belgian countryside studying and teaching music of an earlier time. The instruments used in all of Bells and Motley’s performances are antique or created as authentic reproductions of early musical instruments. John has made many of the instruments himself and audience
members will be introduced to a different look and sound of music–a look and sound enjoyed by the common person of Holland and Flanders in the 1600s.

Gauging from the multitude of paintings depicting Netherlandish culture, music and dance was an important part of life in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from rollicking village peasants on upwards. In truth, no part of Europe offers better documentation of the arts of musical pastime than the Netherlands during these years, thanks to the skilled and ambitious painters, musical publishers, and composers of this region. Artists’ images leave such a rich legacy of vivid musical scenes that we can almost hear the paintings come to life, be it a village celebration with festive bagpipes, or an intimate indoor scene including the gentle lute.

Crailo State Historic Site will add ambiance to the musical events by offering images of select Dutch paintings and staff members in historic costume.

These concerts are offered as a historic musical experience and to help ring in the Quadricentennial Commemoration and the upcoming permanent exhibit debut of A Sweet and Alien Land: Colony of the Dutch in the Hudson River Valley at Crailo State Historic Site on July 4 and 5 from 11am to 5pm.

Both concerts will be held at 3pm at the First Presbyterian Church at 38 Broadway just a block north of Crailo. Concert goers are invited to the lawns at Crailo following the concert for a reception of Dutch and Flemish cheeses, mustards and pretzels. Drinks will also be served. We plan to offer a sneak preview of Crailo’s very special Marketplace Museum Shop during the receptions.

Tickets are $22.50 per person per concert or just $17.50 per person per concert if purchasing the series. Child tickets are $12.00 each. Checks may be made out to Friends of Fort Crailo and receipt of your check secures your place at the concert or concerts. Checks may be mailed to Friends of Fort Crailo, 9 ½ Riverside Avenue, Rensselaer, NY 12144. For more information please contact Crailo at 518-463-8738.

Friends of Fort Crailo is a not-for-profit educational organization that supports the research and interpretive projects at Crailo State Historic Site. Crailo State Historic Site is one of 35 state historic sites and 176 state parks administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. For further information about New York State Parks and Historic Sites, go to www.nysparks.com.

Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plants in New Amsterdam

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Dr. Joel W. Grossman, the archaeologist who directed the excavation of the early-17th century shoreline block of the Dutch West India Company at Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, will discuss “Dutch Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plants in 17th Century New Amsterdam” on Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 12:00 noon in the Arthur and
Janet Ross Lecture Hall, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York.

The dig exposed the deeply-buried remains of the colony’s first warehouse, the artifact-filled cisterns of its earliest inhabitants, and a well-preserved record of changing colonial plants. Grossman’s lavishly illustrated talk will explore the intriguing transatlantic links between the Leiden Hortus, or botanical garden, of the University of Leiden, East and West India Company doctors, institutionalized plant collecting and Native American informants in 17th Century New Amsterdam.

Grossman’s talk is presented as part of the New York Botanical Garden’s Quadricentennial Celebration: The Glory of Dutch Bulbs: A Legacy of 400 Years: May 1-June 7, 2009. Discover indoor and outdoor displays that feature large swaths of bright flowering bulbs and companion plants inspired by the great tulip and lily gardens of Holland. See Nybg.org/dutch_bulbs for other offerings on June 6th, and all the events being offered as part of the Glory of Dutch Bulbs program. For directions please call: (718) 817-8779; for general info: (718) 817-8770.

Russell Shorto: The Accidental Legacy of Henry Hudson

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Acclaimed writer Russell Shorto will present “The Accidental Legacy of Henry Hudson” at the Museum of the City of New York (1220 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street, NYC) this Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 6:30 PM. According to the program announcement: “Henry Hudson’s name is everywhere in New York-attached to a river, a street, a park, a bridge, and more-yet little is known about the man himself. Bestselling author and New York Times Magazine contributing writer Russell Shorto, author of the award-winning The Island at the Center of the World (Doubleday, 2004) and Descartes’ Bones (Doubleday, 2008), recently named a New York Times Notable Book for 2008, will consider the story of Henry Hudson.”

Shorto most recently published a feature in The New York Times (Sunday, May 3, 2009) entitled “Going Dutch: How I Learned to Love the Welfare State.”

The program is presented in conjunction with the exhibit Amsterdam / New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson. Reservations are required. The cost will be $12 for non-members, $8 for seniors and students, and $6 for museum members. A $2 surcharge applies for unreserved, walk-in tickets. Tickets may be ordered online at www.mcny.org or by calling 212.534.1672, ext. 3395.

CFP: Cities in Revolt: The Dutch-American Atlantic

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The organizers invite submissions of papers for an international conference, “Cities in Revolt: The Dutch-American Atlantic, ca. 1650-1830” to be held November 13-14, 2009, at Columbia University. Ranging from the conquest of New Amsterdam to the presidency of Martin van Buren, the conference aims to document the continuous and fruitful political exchanges that took place in the long eighteenth century between the Dutch Republic and empire on the one hand and British North America and the United States on the other.

Among the key conference aims are to examine the political consequences of trans-Atlantic commercial linkages and the impact of the American Revolution on Dutch patriots. The keynote address will be given by Professor Jonathan Israel of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Papers proposed should be approximately 20 minutes in length. Submissions on any topic relevant to the conference topic and aims will be gladly accepted, however the organizers would particularly welcome submissions relating to:

Dutch Patriots in the United States in the 1790s
The American Revolution in the Dutch Atlantic world
New York and Amsterdam financiers in eighteenth-century politics
Dutch New Yorkers and politics in the early nineteenth century

To propose a paper, please submit a 250-word abstract and a short CV via email to both npr2103@columbia.edu and wed23@columbia.edu by MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2009. Conference committee: Simon Schama (Columbia); Karen Kupperman (NYU); Evan Haefeli (Columbia); Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Columbia); Wijnie de Groot (Columbia).

State Archaeologist Paul Huey on Crailo Historic Site

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State Archaeologist Paul Huey from the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation will speak at at East Greenbush Community Library, 10 Community Way, East Greenbush, NY, Sunday, April 19 at 2:00 pm. Huey will concentrate on Crailo in the 17th century, explaining what archaeological excavations and documents have revealed.


Important archaeological discoveries have been made at Crailo at various times recently. According to Huey, “In 1974 when the sewer line was installed under Riverside Avenue and in 2007 and 2008 when we excavated for a gas line from the street to the house. We have discovered that Indians lived on the site as early as the 1400s. Dutch pottery and other artifacts discovered in 1990 and in 2008 support the interpretation that this was the location of the home of Domine Megapolensis in 1642, which was a different, earlier structure from the present house.”

Call the State Library at 518-477-7476 to register for this free talk.

A Van Rensselaer Era Program at NYS Library

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Friends of the New York State Library are presenting a program entitled “The Van Rensselaer Era” that features Stefan Bielinski and Charles Gehring with senior librarian Fred Bassett. The program, which unfortunately costs $35 per person, will be held this Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 1:00 p.m at the Huxley Theatre of the Cultural Education Center (Madison Avenue between Eagle and Swan Streets in Albany).

Stefan Bielinski, founder and director of the Colonial Albany Social History Project (a model community history program at the New York State Museum), will describe and depict the individual members of the Van Rensselaer family, Albany’s “First Family” within the city context for the period 1700-1860 (1:00-1:55 p.m.).

Dr. Charles Gehring, Director, New Netherland Institute and translator of New York Colonial Dutch documents, along with senior NYS Librarian Fred Bassett will display ten of the most significant of the original Dutch documents in the New York State Library’s Van Rensselaer Manor Papers collection dating from 1630 concerning Rensselaerswyck. These scholars will describe the historic importance and relevance to the people of Albany, Rensselaer, Columbia and Greene counties of the Van Rensselaer Manor and the Van Rensselaer family (2:00-3:00 p.m.).

To reserve seats send send $35 per person by Monday, April 20, 2009 to:

The Friends of the New York State Library
P.O. Box 2247
Empire State Plaza Station
Albany, NY 12220

Ticket will be held at the Huxley Theatre on April 23 after 12:15 p.m; Tickets at the door will be $40.

New Netherland: A Charles Gehring and Jaap Jacobs Event

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Charles Gehring, Ph.D., Director of the New Netherland Project in Albany, has spent 30 years translating 17th-century documents to uncover the Dutch origins of New York will join Jaap Jacobs, Ph.D., co-curator of Amsterdam / New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson, and one of the scholars who has built on Gehring’s work to rewrite the history of New Netherland will hold a conversation “about myths, memories, and discoveries of New York’s origins, what made New Netherland unique, and why knowledge of these
origins is important for New York and New Yorkers today.”

The event will be held April 11th, at 2 pm at the Museum of The City of New York, 1220 5th Ave,. Reservations are required. For further information about this event contact Paula Zadigian at (212) 534-1672.

Amsterdam / New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson

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A new exhibit “Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: The Worlds of Henry Hudson” opened Saturday at the Museum of the City of New York and will run through September 27, 2009. Presented in collaboration with the New Netherland Institute, Albany, and the National Maritime Museum Amsterdam / Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam, the exhibit will employ rare 16th- and 17th-century objects, images, and documents from major American and Dutch collections to bring the transatlantic world to life and reveal how Henry Hudson’s epic third voyage of exploration planted the seeds of a modern society that took root and flourished in the New World. Focusing on the economic, cultural, and ideological connections that ultimately linked two global cities, Amsterdam and New York, “Amsterdam / New Amsterdam” will illuminate not only the global significance of Hudson’s voyage, but also the creative context out of which the exploration and settlement of New York itself arose, highlighting the Dutch role in creating the very character of New York as a place of opportunity, tolerance, and perpetual transformation.

Half Moon Update – Flitsbericht Halve Maen 2009

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Captain William T. (Chip) Reynolds of the Replica Ship Half Moon (and Director of the New Netherland Museum) forwarded the following notes on the Half Moon’s progress and events this 400th year:

1. Half Moon in the News/Major Winter Work Projects

Recent articles in the Albany Times Union and the Troy Record provide a good summary of work on the Half Moon over this past winter. This past season major efforts have followed two paths: first, to expand and improve our programming (with new artifacts, educational curricula, interpretive brochures, and programming); and second, to make physical improvements to the Half Moon (renew the rig, rebuild the forecastle, improve the engine room, and rebuild the reduction gear). [Read more…] about Half Moon Update – Flitsbericht Halve Maen 2009

Mohican Seminar April 4th in Albany

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Native American Institute of The Hudson River Valley will host ten scholars who will present papers on all aspects of Mohican culture on April 4, 2009 at the New York State Museum in Albany.

The Native American Institute of the Hudson River Valley (NAIHRV) specializes in the study of the native Algonquian people, or Mohicans, who were long settled along the river. Described by Hudson’s crew as “loving people,” they greeted the explorer in a friendly manner and later played an important role in the survival of the new colony.

The NAIHRV is a nonprofit organization of interested volunteers, educators, archaeologists, historians, and researchers devoted to promoting an awareness of Native Americans in general and the Mohican Nation in particular.