WRITER EDITOR | SALLY PARKER | HIGHER ED + HISTORY

Boomtown

linking past & present

Welcome to my passion
project: writing about
people, places, and ideas
from the past that echo
​in the present.


Notify Me
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • The Latest
  • Portfolio
  • Praise
  • Blog

9/2/2019

Dutch roots

4 Comments

Read Now
 
I moved last month from Rochester, NY, where I’d lived for 33 years. I was ready to explore and experience a new place. The process of deciding where that would be took some time, but in the end it brought me to the mid-Hudson Valley of New York.

I live in Dutchess County near Hyde Park, of Roosevelt fame. I’ve been visiting friends in the area for years. It’s beautiful—plentiful parks, the mighty Hudson River, quaint towns, and trees, trees, trees.

Lately I’ve been wondering if the pull to come here might be in my DNA. A couple years ago I learned of ancestors who were among the first Dutch to live here—nearly 400 years ago. I’m starting to research one in particular, an eighth-great-grandfather named Jan Jansen Van Amersfoort.

Jan was a carpenter who helped build the stockade at Wiltwyck, which was renamed Kingston in the 1660s after the British took over. He arrived at the settlement in 1658 from New Amsterdam, now New York City, to which he had sailed as a boy from Amersfoort in the Netherlands.

I’d always heard we had Dutch in our family tree. My maternal grandfather’s mother was born a Van Steenburg. Some in our family had wondered how recently they had come to this country. My uncle traced it all the way back to the earliest Dutch settlers. 

For 40 years the Dutch—not the English—ruled European settlement in this part of New York, Massachusetts, Delaware and Pennsylvania. New York City’s melting-pot reputation has everything to do with the early Dutch presence. There is so much that we didn’t learn in school about early American colonization. Where were the Dutch in all those stories?

The more I learned, the more curious I became, and so nearly a year ago I flew to the Netherlands. I spent most of my time in Amsterdam but took a 25-minute train ride to Amersfoort, Jan’s hometown. (That's Amersfoort in the photo above.) Until I was across an ocean, standing on a brick-paved street gazing at a house that looked almost exactly like one I had seen a few months before in the Hudson Valley, the full import of the Dutch influence in early America hadn’t hit me. It was wild to think I was related to those people. Some bit of my DNA had come from that exact dot on the map of Holland.

When I got home I did some research. Jan was surprisingly easy to find. Translated Dutch court records preserved in the Ulster County Archives show that, for all of his apparent usefulness as a carpenter, Jan also was a lastpost—a persistent troublemaker. He was arrested 70 times in New Netherland, including for beating his pregnant wife, Catharyn, nearly to death. She and the baby survived. Jan was banished from Wiltwijck and fined 500 guilders.

Unfortunately, he didn’t stop. Three years later brought more of the same in a petition by Catharyn: “She is no longer able to keep house with her husband on account of his greatly abusing her every day,” the records state—pushing, beating, chasing, threatening to kill her. This time the court ordered he be sent away on the next ship for a year and six weeks.

I will probably never know what was going on with Jan. But Catharyn’s voice is clearly heard in the record—thanks to the more egalitarian ways of the Dutch, however briefly they ruled. No longer is the Hudson Valley simply a charming place to me. It is alive with all the messy moments of people who have come before me.

This post is adapted from an essay in Hudson Valley Magazine.

Share

4 Comments
roter loewe link
11/5/2023 20:36:45

Appreciate thiss blog post

Reply
Williams link
1/19/2024 17:39:13

Really great post. You offer a unique perspective. I've worked in Hudson Valley for years in a home garden center, but I feel like you've given me a new appreciation for my community.

Reply
Williams link
3/12/2024 21:45:51

Welcome to the area! It's tough and a big change to relocate after so many years. Hope that you continue to love all the Hudson Valley has to offer.

Reply
Williams link
3/29/2024 17:15:53

I'd love to visit Amsterdam someday. This post felt like you transported me there from my Hudson Valley living room.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

Details

    Author​

    These are stories of people, places and events of the past that seem to jump out at me. Maybe they've been waiting for someone to tell them! 

    Archives

    July 2020
    May 2020
    September 2019
    May 2019
    September 2018
    November 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • The Latest
  • Portfolio
  • Praise
  • Blog