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HALVE MAEN fty)aga£tne of Ctoe ^utcli Colonial

+ period in America *J*

Vol. lxiv Winter 1991 No.4

Tublijhed by The Holland Society o/U^ezv Torf^

u s 122 Cast 58th ^treet ZS(ew Torf^, ZN^T

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The Holland Society of New York

122 EAST 58th STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y 10022 President

The Rev. Louis O. Springsteen

Advisory Council of Past Presidents Bruce S. Cornell Arthur R. Smock, Jr Kenneth L. Demarest, Jr John H. Vander Veer Walter E. Hopper Thomas M. Van der Veer James E. Quackenbush Carl A. Willsey

Vice Presidents New York County Harry A. van Dyke Long Island Adrian T. Bogart, Jr. Dutchess County Kevin A. Denton Ulster County Kenneth W. DuBois Patroons Robert E. Van Vranken Central New York Old BergenCounty,NJ Paul M. Kipp Essex, Morris Counties Daniel S. Van Riper Central New Jersey Kenneth L. Demarest, Jr. Cormecticut-Westchester Harrold W. deGroff New England Tweed Roosevelt Potomac David Allen Voorhees Florida, East Coast Robert W. Banta Florida, West Coast Anson E. Voorhees Niagara Frontier Chase Viele Mid-West Peter H. Schenck Pacific Coast Paul H. Davis Virginia and the Carolinas Kendrick Van Pelt South River William M. Alrich Old South H. John Ouderkirk Texas Rev. Robert Terhune, Jr. United States Army Col. William T. van Atten, USA (Ret.) United States Air Force Lt. Col. Laurence C. Vliet, USAF United States Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard W. De Mott United States Marines Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta, USMC

Treasurer James M. Vreeland

Domine Rev. Dr. Howard G. Hageman

Secretary John O. Delamater

Associate Domine Rev. Louis O. Springsteen

Trustees: Roland H. Bogardus Adrian T. Bogart, Jr Ralph L. DeGroff J r Richard C. Deyo Leigh K. Lydecker, Jr. Hubert T. Mandeville Robert D. Nostrand David M. Riker James P. Snedeker

Frederick M. Tibbitts, Jr. James M. Van Buren II

John S. Van der Veer Peter Van Dyke

Daniel S.Van Riper Dr. David William Voorhees

John R. Voorhis III Edward A. Vrooman

Ferdinand L. Wyckoff, Jr.

Trustees Emeritus: John A. Pruyn

Stanley L. Van Rensselaer

Editor Dr. David William Voorhees

Editorial Committee: Chairman

Dr. Andrew W. Brink Kevin A. Denton James E. Quackenbush David M. Riker

Burgher Guard Captain William A. Snedeker

Rev. Louis O. Springsteen James M. Van Buren II

John S. Van der Veer Arthur W. Van Dyke

Executive Secretary Barbara W. Stankowski

Organized in 1885 to collect and preserve information respecting the early history and settlement of New Netherland by the Dutch, to perpetuate the memory, foster and promote the principles and virtues of the Dutch ancestors of its members, to maintain a library relating to the Dutch in America, and to prepare papers, essays, books, etc. in regard to the history and genealogy of the Dutch in America.

The Society is principally organized of descendants in the direct male line of residents of the Dutch Colonies in America prior to or during the year 1675. Inquiries respecting the several criteria for membership are invited.

De Halve Maen, published by the Society, is entered at the post office at New York City, New York. Communications to the editor should be directed to the Society's address, 122 East 58th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022 telephone 212-758-1675.

Copyright C The Holland Society of New York 1991 ISSN 0017-6834

The Editor's Corner Innumerable minorities composed New Netherland's

diverse population. In addition to the ethnic Dutch and English, Walloons, Huguenots, Swedes, Danes, Poles, Ger­mans. Lutherans, Jews, Africans, and Native Americans, and uncounted others contributed to the rich cultural fabric of the Dutch West India Company's North American colony. None­theless, not only have the diverse voices of the men of New Netherland remained largely unheard, but those of New Netherland's women - whether of European, African, or Native American origins - have been simply ignored. Thus we are proud to present in this issue of de Halve Maen an essay on women and the Dutch Reformed church by Joyce Goodfriend.

Dr. Goodfriend, the foremost scholar attempting to re­construct the voices of New Netherland's minorities, reveals that the female communicants of the Dutch Reformed church were not the passive observers in their male-dominated congregations as had been previously thought. They actively participated in the shaping of New Netherland's religious life and added their unique experiences to the community. It is hoped that Dr. Goodfriend's exciting research will provoke others to explore the contributions made by New Netherland's women.

Despite the valuable contribution of such material cul­tural historians as Ruth Piwonka, Mary Black, Charlotte Wilcoxen, and numerous others, we still have much to learn about the homes of New Netherland's women. For more than two centuries, the decorative arts of New Netherland re­mained largely forgotten. In an essay presented here on the Strycker portraits, Society member David Riker makes a convincing argument that seventeenth-century Dutch artists in the New World, as contemporaries of the Golden Age of Dutch art, could produce competent art works.

One of the most amazing aspects of New Netherland is that within two generations a multi-ethnic population created a unified culture that would defy Anglicization for genera­tions after the 1664 English conquest. Indeed, even to this day the descendants of New Netherland' s settlers maintain a pride in their unique "Dutch" identity no matter what their ancestor's origins. Patrick J. Curran's essay on Dutch Reformed church missions among present-day Native Americans may provide a clue as to why New Netherland's culture was so enduring. Inclusive rather than exclusive, New Netherlanders created a society embracing all peoples; a society in which we can take great pride.

IN THIS ISSUE

Recovering the Religious History of Dutch Reformed Women in Colonial New York 53

The Mystery of some 17th-Century Portraits 60 Dutch Reformed Church and the Indians 63 Book Reviews 64 Society Activities 66 Here and There With Members 67 InMemoriam 68 Cover: "Elizabeth Staats Wendell with Bible." Detail from portrait of Capt. Johannes Schuyler and his wife. Painting attributed to John Watson, [c. 1715-35]. New York Historical Society

He

HALVE MAEN VOL. LXIV • NO. 4 WINTER 1991 NEW YORK CITY

Recovering the Religious History of Dutch Reformed Women in Colonial New York

Joyce D. Goodfriend

When Anneke and Hester Van Deursen entered New York City's New Dutch Church in August 1766 with a hatchet and began mutilating the pew assigned to the city's corpora­tion, the New York Post-Boy published a detailed account of their actions.1 Yet the countless other women who for genera­tions had regularly flocked to worship at Dutch Reformed churches in New York never attracted the attention of news­paper editors. Nor, indeed, have they captured the interest of historians, despite a spate of studies dealing with women in colonial New York and a burgeoning literature on women and religion in colonial America.

Dutch colonial women conventionally have been charac­terized as shrewd traders not above earthy language and abusive behavior. Beneficiaries of laws that enhanced their status, they routinely participated in the marketplace. More­over, time and time again they demonstrated their indepen­dence in the courtroom. This thoroughly secular image of New York's Dutch women has not been challenged by historians who have expounded the consequences of the transition from Dutch to English sovereignty on the legal rights of women.2

Investigations of inheritance practices and mercantile activi­ties reinforce the impression that worldly matters were upper­most in the minds of Dutch women. Although clues to the spiritual dimensions of Dutch women's lives appear in the work of Alice Morse Earle and Alice Kcnney, and recent research has confirmed the significant role played by Dutch Reformed women in congregational life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the religious beliefs and practices of the women who attended New York's largest denomination have not been the subject of sustained inquiry.3

Dutch Reformed women also have been conspicuously absent from the widening stream of scholarship on women and

Joyce D. Goodfriend is Associate Professor of History at the University of Denver. Her numerous essays on the role of blacks, women, and other minorities in New Netheriand has contributed greatly to understanding the diversity of New Netheriand culture. Her most recent work, Beyond the Melt­ing Pot, (Princeton University Press, J 991), is achieving wide acclaim.

religion in colonial America. An impressive array of studies has delineated cultural assumptions about women's ideal religious qualities, assessed female influence on congrega­tional life, and anatomized the spiritual development of individual women.4 This path breaking scholarship has been

1 1 . N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island . 149H-1909, 6 vols., (New

York, 1915-1928), 2 : 4 , 7 6 8 .

; Linda Briggs Biemer, Woman and Property in Colonial New York: The Transition/win

Dutch to English Law. 1643-1727 (Ann Arbor. Mich., 1983); Joan R. Gundersen and Gwen Victor Gampel, "Married Women's Legal Status in Eighteenth-Century New York and Virginia," William and Mary Quarterly , 3rd Ser., 39 (1082), 1 14-34; Sherry Penney and Roberta Willenkin, "Dutch Women in Colonial Albany; Liberation and Retreat," de Halve Maen, 52, no. 1 (Spring 1977), 9-10, 14-15; no. 2 (Summer 1977), 7-8, 15; David Evan Narrett, "Patterns of Inheritance in Colonial New York City, 1664-1775: A Study in the History of the Family," Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1981: David E. Narrett, "Dutch Customs of Inheritance, Women, and the Law in Colonial New York City," in William Pencak and Conrad Edick Wright, eds.,Authority and Resistance in Early New York (New York, 1988) 27-55; David E. Narrett, "Men's Wills and Women's Property Rights in Colonial New York," in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albeit, eds., Women in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville, Va., 1989), 91-133; Jean P. Jordan, "Women Merchants in Colonial New York,"NewYork History, 58 (1977), 412-39; Christine H. Tompsett, "A Note on the Economic Status of Widows in Colonial New York," New York History, 55 (1974), 3 19-32.

•'Alice Morse Earle, Colonial DaysinOldNewYork(New Yotk,l&9&); Alice P. Kenney, The Gansevoorls of Albany: Dutch Patricians in the Upper Hudson Valley (Syracuse, N.Y. .1969), 160-187; Joyce D. Goodfriend, "The Social Dimensions of Congregational I .ife in Colonial New York City," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 46 (1989), 252-78. For a review of the literature on the religion of Dutch New Yorkers, see Joyce D. Goodfriend, "The Historiography of the Dutch in Colonial America" in Eric Nooterand Patricia U. Honomi. eds.. Colonial Dutch Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach (New York, 1988). 17-19. On women and religion in the early modem Netherlands, see Sherrin Marshall Wyntjes, "Women and Religious Choices in the Sixteenth Century Netherlands," Archive for Reformation History, 75 (1984), 276-89; Sherrin Marshall, "Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish Women in the Early Modem Netherlands," in Sherrin Marshall, ed.. Women in R efor/nation and Counter- R eformatwn Europe (Bloomington,Ind., 1989), 120-39; Sherrin Marshall, The Dutch Gentry, 1500-J 650 .Family, Faith, and Fortune (Westport, Conn., 1987), chapter 5, 'One, No Other': The Place of Religion in the Mentality of Early Modem Dutch Gentry Families: "A. Til. Van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture. Religion and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland (Cambridge, Eng., 1991).

J For a sampling of this literature, see Mary Maples Dunn, "Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period," in Janet Wilson James, ed., Women in American Religion (Philadelphia, 1980), 27-46; Gerald F. Moran, "Sisters in Christ: Women and the Church in Seventeenth-Century New England," in ibid.,47-65: Gerald F. Moran, "The Hidden Ones: Women and Religion in Puritan New England" in Richard L. Greaves, ed., Triumph Over Silence: Women in Protestant History (Westport, Conn., 1985), 1 25-49; Joan R. Gundersen, "The Non-Institutional Church: The Religious Role of Women in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 51 (19S2), 347-57; Jean Soderlund, "Women's Authority in Pennsylvania and New Jersey Quaker Meetings, 1680-1760," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 44 (1987), 722-49. See also the essays in Rosemary Radford Ruetherand Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., Wo men and Religion in America (San Francisco, 1983), vol.2. The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods.

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centered on Puritan and Quaker women in New England and Pennsylvania; groups which perennially have fascinated his­torians because of their bold challenges to orthodoxy and their propensity to chronicle their spiritual progress in excruciating detail. Regrettably, the introspective journals that form the underpinning of most research on female churchgoers in the English settlements do not appear to have survived for Dutch colonial culture.

Nevertheless, it is possible to appraise the beliefs and behavior of female adherents of the Dutch Reformed church in New Netherland and New York by culling pertinent infor­mation from a variety of sources including personal docu­ments, travelers' accounts, church records, and wills and inventories. Linking demographic and church records enables us to reconstruct the religious life cycle of Dutch Reformed women, while some sense of the meaning of religious mile­stones can be teased out of literary sources.

Dutch Reformed women in colonial New York demon­strated a commitment to their beliefs by participating in family worship, reading the Bible and other devotional works, regularly attending church services and joining the congrega­tion at an early age, and bestowing charitable gifts on their churches.

Religion played a fundamental part in the patterning of a Dutch Reformed woman's life in New Netherland and New York during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the time of her baptism, through the years of parental religious instruction and formal catechism classes, to the date of her becoming a communicant of a congregation, she absorbed the essentials of her faith, practiced its rituals, and cemented ties with its adherents. Marriage, soon followed by childbirth, initiated a new stage in a woman's spiritual development as she focused her attention on bringing her children into the Christian community through baptism and instilling religious values in them. In her adult years, she frequently would stand as a godparent for the offspring of kin and friends and eventually for her own grandchildren. During the latter por­tion of her life, attending the funerals of close kin and friends may have heightened her consciousness of her own approach­ing death and intensified her spiritual activity.

Dutch Reformed girls grew up in a setting conducive to learning the ways of God's people. Family worship was fundamental to Calvinism in the Netherlands and in the overseas colonies.5 Scriptural teachings formed a guide for personal conduct as well as the cornerstone of family life. The presence in numerous Dutch colonial households of folio Bibles printed in the Netherlands attests to the customary nature of Bible reading in New York's Dutch Reformed families. Expensive versions of the Statenvertaling, the 1637 translation of the Bible into the Dutch vernacular authorized by the States General, these folio Bibles were "great volumes often illustrated with numerous engravings and ornamented with brass corners and clasps."6 Cherishedpossessions handed down from generation to generation in Dutch families, they were used to record vital events and played a central role in family worship.7 Hearing the contents of the Bible pro­nounced in the family circle and observing family members in private devotions gradually prepared girls, as well as boys, to enter the community of believers.

Visual representations of biblical themes may also have played an important role in conveying religious precepts. Spending her early years in a home adorned with objects displaying religious motifs conditioned a girl to accept spiri­tual values as an integral part of her everyday life. Delft tiles decorated with scriptural scenes and texts, installed around the fireplace in Dutch homes both in the Netherlands and in America, have been viewed as a means of instilling religious verities in impressionable children. The educational value of the biblical tiles was undoubtedly enhanced by their pictorial attractiveness. Children learned the stories of the Bible through oft-repeated explanation of the tiles by adult members of the household coupled with family Bible reading.8

A variety of other objects in Dutch households — furni­ture, firebacks, bed warmers, and plates - might also be decorated with religious scenes and inscriptions.9 Paintings with religious themes done by New York artists were com­monplace among the Hudson Valley Dutch in the eighteenth century. These Scripture paintings were based on illustrations in Bibles imported from the Netherlands.10

Formal religious instruction in the church or local el­ementary school began early in a Dutch Reformed girl's life. To judge from the comments of Dominie Henricus Selyns on the accomplishments of his catechism class in 1698, Dutch girls were eager to absorb the tenets of their faith. Of the forty-four boys and twenty-one girls, aged seven to fourteen, who recited "all the Psalms, hymns and prayers in rhyme" in the church on the second day of Easter, Ascension Day, and the second day of Pentecost, "the girls although fewer in number, had learned and recited more in proportion than the boys."11

The perfect performance of one five-year-old girl brought

5 Paul Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt's Holland (London, 1962; first published inFrance, 1959), 79-94; Wayne Framis, "The Family Saying Grace: A Theme in Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century," Simiolus, 16 (1986), 36-49.

6 Alice P. Kenney, "Neglected Heritage: Hudson River Valley Dutch Material Culture," Winterthur Portfolio, 20 (Spring 1985), 67. On Dutch Bibles, see also Alfred Bader, The

Bible Through Dutch Eyes: From Genesis through the Apocrypha (Milwaukee, Wis., 1976); S.L.Greenslade, ed, The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the

Reformation to the Present Day (Cambridge, 1963), 122-25, 352-53.

7 Esther Singleton, Dutch New York (New York, 1909), 179-80.

8 Ruth Pi wonka has stated that 'Dutch Bible illustrations and numerous religious subjects depicted on hearth tiles reinforced [biblical] instruction." Ruth Piwonka, "Recovering the Lost Ark: The Dutch Graphic Tradition in the Hudson Valley," in Nancy Anne McClure Zeller, ed., A Beautiful and Fruitful Place: Selected Rensselaerswijk Seminar Papers (Albany, 1991), 29. On Dutch biblical tiles, see Earle, Colonial Days, 125-26; C.H. de Jonge, Dutch Tiles (New York, 1971), 46-49; Dingman Korf, Dutch Tiles (New York, 1964), 8-9, 24-25, 120-21. For illustrations of Dutch tiles with scriptural scenes, see Dutch Tiles in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 1984), 116-21; Joseph T. Butler, Sleepy Hollow Restorations: A Cross Section of the Collection (Tarrytown, N.Y., 1984), color plate of the dining room of Van Cortlandt Manor; and Charles Wilson Holland and Britain (London, n.d.), 79.

5 T. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, "The Dutch and Their Homes in the Seventeenth Century," in Ian M.G. Quimby, ed., Arts of the Anglo-American Community in the Seventeenth Century (Charlottesville, Va., 1975), 13-42. A fireback, a bed warmer, a plate and a cupboard, all examples of Dutch colonial household items with religious motifs, are pictured in Butler, Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 163, 146,109, 71. A valuable survey of Dutch colonial material culture is Roderic H. Blackburn and Ruth Piwonka, Remembrance ofPatria : Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609-1776 (Albany, 1988).

10 Ruth Piwonka and Roderic H. Blackburn, A Remnant in the Wilderness: New York DutchScripture History Paintings ofthe Early Eighteenth Century (Albany, N.Y., 1980). In 1744, Dr. Alexander Hamilton remarked that the Dutch in Albany "affect pictures much, particularly scripture history, with which they adorn their rooms." Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, 1744 (Chapel Hill, 1948), 72.

11 Edward T. Corwin, ed.. Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, 7 vols., (Albany, 1901-16), 2: 1235.

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tears to the eyes of the congregation.12 Religious education for older girls was available in catechism classes such as the one run by schoolmaster Abraham Delanoy in his New York City home in 1679. "A company of about twenty-five persons, male and female,...mostly young people...sang some verses from the Psalms, made a prayer, and answered questions from the catechism, at the conclusion of which they prayed and sang some verses from the Psalms again." ,3

Dutch Reformed women's affinity for religion was mani­fested in their early attachment to the congregation and their enduring loyalty to the church. Religiosity was a quality Dutch Reformed men valued in their prospective brides. Marrying a godly woman was of great importance to Jeremias van Rensselaer, director of the colony of Rensselaerswyck, who, shortly after he wed Maria van Cortlandtin 1662, informed his mother that "to live together so calmly and peacefully with a wife who has always led a good and moral life and feared the Lord God is the best thing I could wish for here on earth."14

Maria van Cortlandt married Jeremias van Rensselaer when she was almost seventeen; she had joined the Reformed church a few months before she was sixteen.

The timetable of church affiliation in women's lives reflected both cultural expectations and personal attitudes toward religion. Female communicants of the Dutch Re­formed church in New York City followed a pattern estab­lished in the Netherlands among Calvinists. Church member­ship was regarded as marking the attainment of maturity and thus was the normal prerequisite for marriage.15 The fear of dying in childbirth may also have prompted women to join the church at an earlier age than their husbands.

Analysis of the ages at which a sample of women was admitted to the New York City Dutch Reformed church between 1660 and 1710 reveals that of the 108 women for whom baptismal dates and dates of church admission are available, 69 (64%) become communicants before their twen­tieth birthday, 28 (26%) were admitted between the ages of 20 and 25, and only 11 (10%) were older than 25 when they joined.16 The median age of the women received into the congregation during these years was eighteen. Not only did Dutch girls join the church at an early age, the overwhelming majority did so prior to marriage. Of the 117 women whose dates of marriage and church admission are known, 94 (80%) joined the church before being wed for the first time. A similar pattern was found in the Tappan Reformed Church between 1694 and 1751. Firth Fabend's research disclosed that "two-thirds of [the Haring women] joined before marrying, most at age eighteen to twenty-one."17

Gerald Moran's examination of the age and marital status of the female members of a representative group of Puritan churches in Connecticut between 1660 and 1699 uncovered a strikingly different pattern. Only 15% of females were under the age of 20 when admitted to the congregation, 29% were between 20 and 24, and 57% were 25 or older. Moreover, admission to the church customarily followed marriage and frequently parenthood. Over three-fourths of the men and women who joined these Connecticut churches did so after they had wed.18 In contrast to their Dutch neighbors,New England Puritans did not view most young women (or men) as sufficiently mature, in a spiritual sense before marriage to be

received into the church. Women's religious life during the years following en­

trance into the community of believers is less susceptible to precise measurement, but no less important to document. Given the religious cast of the colonial Dutch domestic environment, there is little doubt that most women in New York were familiar with the contents of the Scriptures. But, more significantly, the majority of Dutch colonial women, in all likelihood, were sufficiently literate to read the Bible. Because investigators of literacy generally have equated the ability to read with the ability to sign one's name, they concluded that the large numbers of women who signed documents with a mark could not read.19 However, recent scholarship has convincingly demonstrated that reading and writing were taught as separate skills in early modern Europe and America and that therefore women who were unable to sign their names might indeed be able to read.20

Abundant evidence exists to show that reading and writ­ing were taught separately in colonial New York.21 When Anne Grant described female education in early eighteenth-century Albany, she specifically noted that girls " were taught... to read in Dutch, the bible and a few Calvinist tracts of the devotional kind...few were taught to write."22

In letters penned between 1675 and 1688, Maria van Cortlandt van Rensselaer illustrated her knowledge of the Bible's contents. To a troubled Richard van Rensselaer, she offered words of consolation from John 16:33, "The good Lord himself said to His disciples: 'in the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.' Only let us always keep our leader, Jesus Christ before our eyes and firmly trust that nothing happens without his Will."23

She did not hesitate to use spiritual teachings to judge the behavior of others. Deeply disturbed by the attempts of Philip Schuyler's widow to obtain portions of the Van Rensselaer lands, Maria averred that Mrs. Schuyler "thinks as little of God's word and law as is written in Exodus, ch. 22, where God speaks of the widows and orphans, but where there is money, there is power. But God, who will take care of the widows and

12 Ibid., 1240.

" Bartlett Burleigh James and J. Franklin Jameson, eds., Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 (New York, 1913), 63.

14 Jerimias van Rensselaer to Maria van Rensselaer, Aug. 19, 1662, Corresporulcnce of Jeremias van Rensselaer. 1651-1674 , ed. A.J.F. van Laer (Albany, N.Y., 1932), 301.

15 Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt's Holla/ui, 80.

" Joyce D. Goodfriend, "Dutch Women in Colonial New York," paper delivered at the American Society for Ethnohistory meeting, 1981.

"Firth Haring Fabend, A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 (New

Brunswick, 1991), 149. 18Moran, "Sisters in Christ," 56.

" On literacy in early New York, see William Heard Kilpatrick, The Dutch Schools in New Netherland and Colonial New York (Washington, D.C., 1912).

20 Fora concise statement of this position, see E. Jennifer Monaghan, "Literacy Iastruction and Gender in Colonial New England," American Quarterly, 40 (1988), 18-41.

21 Kilpatrick, Dutch Schools, 67-68, 127, 167-168,174; Corwin, Ecc. Rec, 4: 2626,3025;

5 :3621.

22 [Anne Grant], Memoirs of an American Lady: With sketches of Manners and Scenery

in America, as They Existed Previous to the Revolution, 2 vols., (New York, 1970; originally published, 1808), 1: 33.

23 Maria van Rensselaer to Richard van Rensselaer [January? 1683], Correspondence of Maria van Rensselaer,1669-1689, ed. A.J.F. van Laer (Albany, 1935), 88. See also ibid., 85, where she paraphrases Psalms 121:8.

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orphans, will not desert me and my six children." 24

Maria van Rensselaer's family connections placed her at the apex of New York's social structure, but, in all probability, her life experience did not differ radically from that of other seventeenth-century Dutch women on the frontier. Bible reading was part of that experience. What distinguished Maria van Rensselaer from some of her counterparts was her ability to write, not her knowledge of the Bible. Most of the women with whom she came in contact could read sufficiently well to understand the Bible. That many Dutch women owned Bibles, Testaments, and Psalters is well-documented in wills and inventories. In the years 1664-1730, members of the New York City Dutch Reformed community, from all ranks of the social structure, were much more likely to possess Bibles, Testaments and Psalters and to include provisions in their wills for passing on these objects than their neighbors of other faiths."

In colonial America, the massive Dutch family Bibles usually passed from father to eldest son. Garret Hansen Noorstrandt of Flatbush spelled out this tradition in his 1724 will: "I leave my son Hans, my Great Nether Dutch Bible, as his right as first bom, desiring that he would bestow the same upon his eldest son Gerritt, when he is of age."26 Widows who came into possession of these folio Bibles, as a rule, passed them on to their sons. In 1677, Mary Jansen, the widow of merchantGovertLoockermans, bequeathed the Great Bible to her son Cornells; more then half a century later, the widow Ann Vanderspiegel left her large Dutch Bible to her son, Lawrence.27 On occasion, women kept the family Bible. Margareta de Riemer S teenwyck recorded in her family Bible "on the 21st of Nov. 1684 died (Cor)nelius Steenwijck (58 years 8 months and 5 days old) unto his Lord, and lies buried with his daughter and 6 sons in New York in the church."28

When there were no male heirs in the family, the folio Dutch Bible was given to the eldest daughter. Evert Vandewater, a New York City merchant, bequeathed to his eldest daughter Katharine "my large House Bible and a New Testament with silver clasps." Hybert Vanderbergh, a carman, also from New York City, specified that his Great Bible was to go to "my eldest daughter Elizabeth for priority of birth," and John Van Wickell, of Flatbush, left his Great Bible to his daughter Hyltie.29

Daughters in Dutch families customarily received Psalters from their mothers and eventually passed them down to their own daughters. Psalters were "small portable books contain­ing the New Testament and Psalms [and] were sometimes ornamented with silver corners, monogrammed clasps, and carrying chains and were taken to church for use in services of worship."30 In 1708, Gertie Jans Van Langedyck gave instruc­tions in her will that her daughter's daughter was to receive her two Dutch church books with silver clasps and in 1758 Margaret Gouverneur bequeathed "my Psalm book with gold clasps" to Gertruyd Gouverneur."31

An unusual 1655 court case in New Amsterdam furnishes persuasive evidence that ordinary Dutch women treasured their Bibles, which they read over and over. A young girl was captured by Indians, who gave her two inexpensive Bibles which they had taken from another New Amsterdam home. When the girl was returned to the settlement, she wished to

Many Dutch colonial women owned small New Testaments printed in Holland. They were bound in leather and decorated with silver or brass corners, clasp, and chain.

keep the Bibles, which had undoubtedly given her spiritual comfort during her ordeal. Nonetheless, the housewife whose property they were sued for their return and won the case.32

Other religious books occasionally were mentioned in Dutch women's wills or inventories. Elizabeth Van Corlaer of Albany provided that the eldest son of her deceased eldest son have a "New Large Dutch Bible, as cast in Holland 20 or 22 guilders, Holland money" for his birthright. To another son, she bequeathed' my two books, made by Wilhelmn a Brakel."33

Anna van Driesen, whose father was Albany's Dutch Re­formed minister, left her niece a book entitled Milk der Waerheyt [Milk of Truth] in her will drafted in 1759 and Mary Leisler Gouverneur mentioned "my Large Book of Martyrs with silver hooks" in her 1740 will.34 The 1693 inventory of Elizabeth Bancker, the widow of a wealthy Albany merchant,

24 Maria van Rensselaer to Richard van Rensselaer, [October? 1683], Ibid, 128.

25 Joyce D. Goodfriend, "Probate Records as a Source for Early American Religious History :The Case of Colonial New York City, 1664-1730." Paper delivered at the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 1987. Firth Fabend confinns that great Dutch Bibles were ubiquitous in Dutch colonial homes. "Virtually every will of the period and almost every Haring will discovered refers to "my great Dutch Bible." Fabend, A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 155.

26 Will of Garret Noorstendl, New-York Historical Society Collections, [hereafter CNYHS] (1894), 385. In his 1730 will, Jurian Probasco, also of Flatbush, stated: "I leave to my son Christopher my Great Bible, and £12 for his birth right." Will of Jurian Probasco, CNYHS (1894), 83.

"Wi l l of Mary Jansen Loockermans, 1677, Historical Documents Collection, Queens College, New York; Will of Ann Vanderspiegel, CNYHS (1894), 95.

28 "The De Riemer Family Bible Record," New York Genealogical and Biographical Rccord,63 (1932), 289.

29 Will of Evert Vandewater, 1710, CNYHS (1893), 139-40; Will of Hybert Vanderbergh, 1728 CNYHS (1902), 109; Will of John Van Wickell, 1731/2, CNYHS (1894), 61-62.

30Kenney, "Neglected Heritage," 67; Earle, Colonial Days in Old New York, 276-77 .See also Alice P,. Kenney, "Hudson Valley Psalmody," The Hymn, 25 (1974), 15-26. A photograph of a woman's Psalter can be found in Maud Esther Dilliard, An A IbumofNew Nelherland (New York, 1963).

31 Will of Gertie Jans van Langedyck, 1708, CNYHS (1894), 49-50; Will of Margaret Gouverneur, 1758, CNYHS (1897), 168-69.

32 Ellis Lawrence Raesly, Portrait of New Nelherland (New York, 1945), 257-58. Among the items Evert Van Hook, a New York City cordwainer, reserved to his wife if she remarried after his death was her Dutch Bible. Will of Evert Van Hook, 1711, CNYHS (1893), 72.

33 Will of Elizabeth van Corlaer, 1750, CNYHS (1896), 172-73. Willem a Brakel (1635-1711) was a Dutch theologian.

listed a number of titles including "two Catechisms; one Isaac Ambrosius; . . .one Horin's Church History; one Hock of Israel, in French; one Coelman's Christian Interest; three volumes Christ's Way and Works; one DeWitt's Catechism; two Duycker's Church History; [and] one Cudemans on Holiness." 35

Attending Sunday church services was the high point of a week devoted to household labor. When Benjamin Bullivant, an observant English visitor to New York City in 1697 noted that "the Dutchwomen (of ye younger sort) troop the streets in morning gowns very long, theyr heads cleane, & well enough set off (for theyr faces) but without shooes & stockings, unless of a Sabath day," he confirmed the sacred character of the Sabbath for Dutch women.36

The regular round of attending worship and taking com­munion four times a year was interrupted only by the rituals surrounding childbirth. More needs to be known about the part Dutch colonial mothers played at the baptism of their children or the custom of "churching" women a few weeks after the delivery of their baby.37 Though scholars have emphasized the significance of eighteenth-century mothers' efforts to instill spiritual values in their offspring, a great deal remains to be learned about the maternal role in the process of religious education in colonial New York.38 In 1683, Maria van Rensselaer proudly reported that her eldest son Kiliaen was "a member of God's church. May the Lord let him grow up in virtue and grant His blessing as to soul and body."39 A generation earlier, Anna van Rensselaer, Maria van Rensselaer's mother-in-law, had expressed deep concern for the spiritual welfare of her son Jeremias. Soon after he left the Netherlands forRensselaerswyck in 1654, she counseled him:

Above all, fear the Lord God and keep Him con­stantly before your eyes and pray fervently that His Holy Spirit may guide you in truth. Go dili gently to church and practice God's Holy Word, as thereby you may save your soul. In that way you may expect the blessing of the Lord here tempo­rarily and hereafter eternally40

A great deal has also yet to be learned about women's interpretation of the role of godparent. How frequently were women called upon to sponsor children for baptism and what responsibilities did this entail? Did they seek to emulate Margareta Selyns, the widow of New York City's Dutch Reformed minister, who left "to all the children whereof I have been Godmother, the sum of £6 5s, and they are to produce a certificate thereof out of the Church Registry." 4I

In times of adversity, Dutch Reformed women drew solace and courage from their faith. Widowed at the age of twenty-nine with six children, and handicapped by chronic illness, Maria van Rensselaer found herself enmeshed in a complex web of family and political intrigue that prevented her from settling her husband's estate. When Labadist mis­sionary Jasper Danckaerts visited the young widow in 1679, he portrayed her as a woman of deep-seated faith. "This lady was polite, quite well informed, and of good life and disposi­tion. She had experienced several proofs of the Lord In all these trials, she had borne herself well, and God left not

Himself without witness in her.... We had several conversa­tions with her about the truth, and practical religion, mutually satisfactory.42

Maria struggled unsuccessfully to extricate herself from financial difficulty and to secure a stable economic future for her offspring. Her personal tragedy was compounded in 1684. "It has been a sad summer for me, "Maria wrote after the death of both her parents in 1684. "I doubt not but God will again rejoice us with His spirit and grace, for the Lord chastises whom he loves andpunishes every son whom He adopts. If this had not been my joy and strength, I should long ago have perished in my sorrow."43 Nurtured in a devout family - her father died while saying his prayers — Maria harbored strong religious convictions, thereby mirroring her mother, Anna Loockermans van Cortlandt, to whom Dominie Selyns paid tribute in these words:

Here rests who after Cortlandt's death no rest possessed, and sought no other rest than soon to rest beside him. He died. She lived and died. Both now in Abram rest. And there, where Jesus is, true rest and joys abide in. God's will did Anna serve; God's aid did Hannah pray In this alone alike, that both have passed away.44

Ascertaining the ways in which religious faith shaped Dutch women's lives in colonial New York is only part of the story. The nature and extent of female influence on the colony's Reformed churches also needs to be assessed. Though women enjoyed spiritual equality with their male counterparts

14 Will of Anna van Driesen, CNYHS (1897), 37-38; Will of Mary Gouvemeur, CNYHS (1895) 136-37. Cordwainer Evert van Hook left his "daughter Hendrike, My Great Manures book forherown use." Will of Evert Van Hook, 1711 (CNYHS), 1893, 72.

35 James Grant Wilson, The Memorial History of the City of New York from Its First Settlement to the Year 1892. 4 vols. (New York, 1892), 2: 54.

3,1 Wayne Andrews, ed., "A Glance at New York in 1697: The Travel Diary of Dr. Benjamin Bullivant," revised from the New -York Historical Society Quarterly (January 1956), 15. Daily meals were preceded by grace. See Dr. Alexander Hamilton's description of the distinctive style in which a Dutch woman and her daughters said grace before a meal, Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman's Progress, 39-40.

37 On "churching" see Singleton, Dutch New York, 248. The end of a woman's confinement was "ritually signified by a religious ceremony called "churching." Traditionally, a woman paid her first visit upon leaving home to her church." Judith Schneid Lewis, In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760-1860 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1986), 200-01.

38 Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in

Colonial America (New York, 1986), 106.

" Maria van Rensselaer to Richard van Rensselaer, [August 15?] 1683, van Laer, Correspondence of Maria van Rensselaer, 114.

40 Anna van Rensselaer to Jeremias, December 26, 1654, van Laer, Correspondence of

Jeremias van Rensselaerr, 15.

41 Will of Margareta Selyns, 1711, CNYHS (1893), 115-16. On godparenthood among the Dutch, see Jessica Kross, The Evolution of an American Town: Newton, New York, 1642-1775 (Philadelphia, 1983), 258-59; and Edward H. Tebbenhoff, 'Tacit Rules and Hidden Family Structures: Naming Practices and Godparentage in Schenectady, New York, 16 80-1800," Journal of Social History, 18 (1985), 567-85.

42 James and Jameson, eds., Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680, 214.

43 Maria van Rensselaer to Richard van Rensselaer, November 12, 1684, van Laer, Correspondence of Maria van Rc/issclaer, 174-75.

44 "On the 5th of April it pleased God suddenly to take out of this world my father, while he was in his prayers and in good health." Ibid., 173; Henricus Selyns, "For Madam Anna Loockermans, Widow of Olof Stephensen Van Cortlandt, Esq., Deceased 14 May 1684," in Henry C. Murphy, An Anthology of New Nctherland or Translations from the Early Dutch Poets of New York with Memoirs of Their Lives (Port Washington, N.Y., 1969: originally published 1865). For discussions of Selyns as poet, see Raesly, Portrait of New Netherlarui, 309-30, and Lynn Haims, "Wills of Two Early New York Poets: Henricus Selyns and Richard Steer," The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, 108 (1977), 1-10.

in New York's Dutch Reformed churches, this equality did not extend to the temporal realm. Unwritten rules severely re­stricted women's participation in the administrative affairs of the congregation. Authority in the church was centered on males; the minister and auxiliary church functionaries were men, as were the lay leaders of the congregation.45 Women's subordinate status was visibly displayed in seating arrange­ments in the church edifice. In Dutch Reformed churches, women's pews were not only separate from those of men, but less favorably situated. In some cases the price of women's seats was lower than that of men's. Additionally, children sat with their mother, not their father.46 A gender-differentiated seating plan was also adopted by New York City's Dutch Lutheran congregation when its new church building was nearing completion in 1729. Church authorities decided to sell the men's seats in the front, but "in the rear part for the women, no seats are to be made, but only chairs are to be placed there, for which everyone has to pay."47

Whether clustered together in a separate area of the church or intermingled with their male kin in family pews, as later became the custom in some churches, female church­goers were far from being an undifferentiated mass. The spatial patterning of the congregation reflected distinctions among female worshippers, whether these stemmed from the worldly status of husbands or their own spiritual standing. In Dutch Reformed churches, a special bench, thejujfrouw bank, was set aside for minister's wives.48 Much can be learned about the sources of gradations among female worshippers from systematic analysis of lists of seating such as those for the Albany Dutch Reformed church from 1747 to 1764 and the Tap pan Reformed church in 1724.49

Barred from the exercise of power in the church, it seems improbable that Dutch women would be called upon to deliberate on matters of doctrine or administration. Did this mean, then, that they were content to acquiesce in the teach­ings and decisions of males or did they, on occasion, criticize clergymen, question doctrine, or defy ecclesiastical authori­ties? The dramatic actions of the Van Deursen sisters in hacking away a church pew were clearly exceptional, but the lack of direct evidence should not'sway us into believing that Dutch women never articulated their dissatisfaction with the course of church affairs and never sought to place pressure on their congregation to act in ways they deemed appropriate.

Because Dutch colonial women were not free to express their views on religious issues in public does not mean that they kept silent in private. Labadist missionary Jasper Danckaerts was clearly moved by his encounter with a young woman whom he perceived as critical of the Dutch Reformed church. "Elizabeth Van Rodenburgh...has withdrawn herself much from the idle company of youth, seeking God in quiet and solitude. She professes the Reformed religion, is a mem­ber of that church, and searches for the truth which she has found nowhere except in the word and preaching, which she therefore much attended upon and loved, but which never satisfied her, as she felt a want and yearning after something more." Danckaerts sought to further her quest for religious illumination by translating and copying pietist tracts for her. That Dutch women possessed opinions on a variety of reli­gious subjects is also evident from a jotting Dr. Alexander

Hamilton made in his diary when he visited Albany on June 29, 1744: "We...supped at Widow Skuyler's where the con­versation turned upon the Moravian enthusiasts and their doc trine."50

Dutch women's conception of their religious duty was shaped by their gender. Church discipline cases offer a rare glimpse of the strategies employed by Dutch women to reconcile worldly needs with spiritual values. When in 1663 officers of the Breuckelen Dutch Reformed church investi­gated the conduct of a female member who had allegedly become engaged to marry too soon after the death of her husband, they discovered that pragmatic considerations rather then deliberate violation of communal values dictated her behavior. The consistory "reprimanded [Catherine Letie] and asked her what ever moved her to have her banns proclaimed so soon which was indecent (since her previous husband, who had led a Christian life, had just died). [She] apologized and replied that otherwise she would become a burden to the poor and that it would be impossible for her, a woman with a young child, to plant, plow, sow, weed, or use the land, which would lie barren; this second marriage could turn all of this for the better for her and lighten out burdens. And when we said that this was unallowed because she might be pregnant from her deceased husband who died six weeks ago yesterday after a sudden illness, [she] assured us with great emphasis that she was not pregnant, and to that end she mentioned several women, members, who knew this according to her."51

Even though women were denied an official voice in church affairs, the fact of their membership cannot be dis­missed as insignificant for the simple reason that they formed a numerical majority in many colonial congregations. The "feminization" of the churches during the colonial period was originally documented by scholars investigating women's role in New England church life and now the phenomenon has been examined in a broader context by Patricia Bonomi.52 The trend toward increasing female dominance in Massachusetts and Connecticut congregations that began in the late seven-4> In the early seventeenth century, there were deaconesses in the Dutch Reformed church in Amsterdam. K. H. D. Haley, TheDulch in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1972), 90.

A" Gerald F. DeJong, The Dutch Reformed Church in the American Colonies (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1978), 120,136-37. According to DeJong, children sat with theirmothers. Ibid., 137. On church seating arrangements in other colonies, see Robert J. Dinkin, "Seatingthe Meeting House in Early Massachusetts," NewEnglandQuarterly,43 (1970), 450-64: and Dell Upton, Holy Things and Profane: Anglican ParishChurches inColonial Virginia, (New York, 1986), 175-96.

47 Minutes of the meeting of the Church Council and Congregation, Concerning the New Church Building, June 29,1729, " in Simon Hart and Harry J. Kreider, eds., Protocol of the Lutheran Church in New York City, 1702-1750 (New York, 1958), 147-48.

48 Ecc. Rec., 4, 2866; Earle, Colonial Days, 271; DeJong, Dutch Reformed Church, 138.

^ "Seatings of the Dutch Reformed Church 1730 to 1770," in Joel Munsell, ed., C ollcc tiotis o n the History of Albany, From Its Discovery to the PrcscntTime,With Notices of lis Public Institutions, and Biographical Sketches of Citizens Deceased. 10 vols. (Albany, 1865), 61-78. On the seating arrangements of the Albany church,see Roberts . Alexander, Albany's First Church and It's Role in the Growth of the City, 1642-1942 ([Albany], 1988), 106.Fabend, A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 151-52, 157-60. Alice Morse Earle noted that "a woman's seat descended to her daughter, daughter-in-law, or sister." Earle, Colonial Days, 269.

50 James and Jameson, eds.,Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680,146. Quotation is from Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman's Progress, 66.

51 Vzn derL'mde, A.P.G.Jos,cd. OldDulch ReformedChurchofBrooklyn,NewYork: First Book of Records, 1660-1752. (Baltimore, 1983), 67, 69.

52 Richard Shiels, 'The Feminization of American Congregationalism, 1730-1835," American Quarterly, 33 (1981),46-62; Patricia U. Bonomi, Under theCope of Heaven, 111-15. See also Dunn, "Saints and Sisters" and Moran, "Sisters in Christ."

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teenth century was paralleled in the New York City Dutch Reformed church.

In 1686, 344 (62%) of the congregation's 556 communi­cants were female. Of the 882 persons admitted to the church between 1665 and 1695, 517 (59%) were women. Women continued to outnumber men among those entering the church between 1696 and 1730 by a ratio of approximately two-to-one. As the English colonial government chipped away at the egalitarian practices and other legal safeguards of women's rights that had been transplanted from the Netherlands, the Reformed church came to symbolize those aspects of Dutch experience that elevated the status of women. No wonder women kept the Reformed faith, joining the church in large numbers and early in their lives. Churchgoing reinforced the values that gave meaning to their existence.53

Dutch women may have played a decisive role in ensuring the vitality of the Dutch Reformed church in colonial New York not only through their membership, but also through their material support. Charitable gifts and bequests from women aided congregations in helping the poor and enlarging their buildings.

Married women left legacies to the church in conjunction with their husbands. In a customary joint will made in 1678/ 9, Sybout Claesen and his wife Susanna Jans bequeathed a sum of money to the deacons of the New York City Dutch Reformed church for the use of the poor.54 In January 1656, the deacons of the [Albany] Dutch Reformed church recorded the gift of twenty-five florins "from Goossen Gerritsen, being money which his wife has promised to the poor on her death bed."55

Such gifts supplemented ongoing charitable collections in the church and were of critical importance in an era when poor relief was doled out sparingly. Margareta Selyns, the widow of Rev. Henricus Selyns, highlighted this problem in her 1711 will. Singling out the group she felt was most deserving of her charity, she instructed the minister and elders of the Dutch Reformed church to "distribute the sum of £62, 10 s. among the poor widows of New York City who live piously and have nothing given them out of the city or the Deacons, or any of the churches." 56

Women constituted about one-fifth (58) of the 299 con­tributors to a 1688 fund for building a new Reformed church in New York City.57 Moreover, several of the men who made donations to the building campaign did so on behalf of their wives, who were church members. Englishman Walter Heyer, for example, who was married to Amsterdam-born Tryntie Bickers, pledged twelve florins for the fund. These husbands were influenced to contribute to the church by wives whose religious identity was independent of their male kinfolk.

A few women had visions of a more lasting contribution to their churches. Judith Stuyvesant, the widow of the former Director-General of New Netherland, donated the chapel on the family's Bowery farm to the Dutch Reformed church.58On

October 3, 1684, "Maria Baddia presented the Church of Breuckelen with a silver cup for the administration of the Lord's Supper."59 In her 1730 will, Catherine Phillipse do­nated "a large silver beaker, on which my name is engraven and a damask table cloth...with a long table, In trust for the congregation of the Dutch church, erected and built at Phillipsburgh by my late husband, Fredrick Phillipse."60

Studies of religion in early America traditionally have centered on male ecclesiastical and lay leaders as they con­fronted issues relating to theology, the clergy, and institu­tional development. The developing interest in lay piety in recent years coupled with the growing acceptance of gender as a vital category of analysis has spurred research on colonial women's religious beliefs and behavior.61 Inquiry into the religious experience of New York's Dutch Reformed women, however, has been deterred by the tendency of historians to devalue religious activities of a routine nature as well as the reluctance of American historians to use non-English-lan­guage documents. But the greatest obstacle to serious consid­eration of Dutch women as religious beings has been the enduring American perception of the Dutch as apeople so avid in pursuit of temporal rewards that they paid only token attention to spiritual concerns. Revising the one-dimensional image of Dutch colonial women as essentially economic beings begins with the insight that business acumen did not preclude religiosity either in the Netherlands or the overseas colonies.62 Ultimately, a further picture of Dutch colonial women will emerge, one that takes into account the multiple and sometimes contradictory roles that these hardworking, faithful wives and mothers played.

53 This paragraph is adapted from Goodfriend, "The Social Dimensions of Congregational Life in Colonial New York City," 257-58, 276. Women formed a slight majority of the membership of the Tappan Reformed Church. Fabend, A Dutch Family in the Middle

Colonics, 146-53.

54 Will of Sybout Claesen and Susanna Jans, CNYHS (1892), 107.

35 A. J. F. van Laer, "Deacons' Account Book, 1652-1664," inThe Dutch Settlers Society of Albany Yearbook , 7 (1931-1932), 7.

56 Will of Margareta Selyns, 1711, CNYHS (1893), 115-16.

57 Kenneth Scott, "Contributors to Building of a New Dutch Church in New York City, 1688," National Genealogical Society Quarterly, 49 (1961), 131-36.

58 Will of Judith Stuyvesant, CNYHS (1892), 139.

5 ' Van der Linde, A. P. G. Jos, ed., Old First Dutch Reformed Church of Brooklyn, Ne\v

York, J01.

60 Will of Catherine Phillipse, 1730/1, CNYHS (1894), 21-22.

61 On lay piety, see Jon Butler, "The Future of American Religious History: Prospectus, Agenda, Transatlantic 'Problematique'," William arul Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 42 (1985), 167-83; Gerald F. Moran and Maris A. Vinovskis, "The Puritan Family and Religion: A Critical Reappraisal," Ibid., 39 (1982), 29-63: Patricia U. Bonomi and Peter R. Eisenstadt, "Church Adherence in the Eighteenth-Century British American Colonies," Ibid., 39 (1982) 245-86. Mary Beth Norton synthesizes recent work on colonial women's history in 'The Evolution of White Women's Experience in Early America," American Historical Review, 89 (1984), 593-619.

62 In this connection, see Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation

of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York, 1987).

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The Mystery of Some 17th-Century Dutch Portraits in America

David M. Riker

Controversy often surrounds the attribution of seven­teenth-century paintings. Even some of Rembrandt's master­pieces have recently suffered de-attribution as the Rembrandt Research Project considers the authenticity of each of his works. Attribution is thus, at best, an imprecise procedure, with much still resting on the judgement of art historians. Arguments for attribution are likely to be re-opened especially when the evidence does not involve scientific analysis of the painting itself. This is the case with seventeenth-century portraits long held to be by Jacob Strijcker of New Amsterdam.

Jacob Gerritsen Strijcker (also called "Jacobus"), immi­grated to New Netherland in 1651.1 It is recorded that he painted portraits as a pastime besides being a master tailor and schepen (magistrate) of New Amsterdam. Jacob, a native of Ruinen in Drenthe, his wife Ytie Huyberts, and their children came to the New World from Amsterdam where Jacob had lived for about ten years. A year after Strijcker's immigration his brother Jan also came to New Netherland with his wife Lambertje Roelofse Seubering (Sebring), and their children. Although Jan Strijcker initially lived in New Amsterdam, by the Fall of 1653 he had removed to a new settlement on Long Island called Midwout (Flatbush). He served there as schepen and delegate to several assemblies. In 1665, Jacob moved from New Amsterdam to New Amersfoort (Flatlands), Long Island, where he died in 1687.2

In the 1920's a number of articles by Charles X. Harris concerning colonial Dutch artists appeared in the New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin? Harris' article entitled "Jacobus Gerritsen Strycker (c. 1629-1687): An Artist of New Amsterdam," was basically a study of four portraits, suppos­edly painted in New Netherland by Jacob Gerritsen Strijcker. In 1926 one of these portraits was owned by Joseph Striker, a seventh great-grandson of the supposed artist; one portrait by the New-York Historical Society; and two portraits by Catherine Van Bearen (Van Buren) of Brooklyn.

The painting owned by Joseph Striker was supposedly a self-portrait of the artist and was on loan to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1926. It became the property of the museum in 1941.4

The portrait owned by the New-York Historical Society is of Pieter Stuyvesant and was given to the Society in 1909 by Robert V. Stuyvesant, a direct descendant of the governor. It is generally attributed to Henri Couturier because of the statement made by Couturier's wife in 1663 that her husband had secured the burgher right by painting Stuyvesant's por­trait. According to Charles X. Harris, this portrait contains none of Courturier's handling of brushwork and is painted on an oak panel of two pieces of thin board glued together, so exactly like the panel on which Strijcker's self-portrait is

David Riker is a Trustee of the Society and Chairman of the Committee on Genealogy .

Disputed Self-Portrait of Jacob Strijcker (Portrait of a Man -Dutch 17th Century). Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund.

painted that both may have been made at the same time from the same board.5

The two portraits owned by Catherine van Beuren in 1926 were supposedly a portrait of the artist's brother Jan Strijcker and a portrait of Adriaen Van der Donck, lawyer and historian of New Netherland whodied in 1655. These two portraits were said to have been owned by the artist's daughter Altje who was said to have married a Van Voorhees. Johannes Coerte Van Voorhees( 1683-1757), a nephew of Altje, was the next owner.

1 Jacob Strijcker was apparently first referred to as "Jacobus" in the inscriptions painted on the back of the portraits about 1730, forty years after Strijeker's death. Since that time the name has appeared as "Jacobus" in genealogies and magazine articles. He was always called "Jacob" in the original records. This confusion may have resulted from the fact that the second Strijcker generation in America had sons they named "Jacobus" apparently after Jacob Strijcker

7 William N. Stryker, The Stryker Family in the Nelherlands, (Printed by W.N. Stryker, 1991), 15-160; Hopper Striker Mott, "Jan and Jacobus Strijcker and Some of Their Descendants," NewYorkGenealogicalandBiographical Record,3i (1907), 1-9, Rosalie F. Bailey, "Signatures of Flatbush, L.I. Settlers," de Halve Maen, XXXVHI (July 1963) 11-12, 14, 15; William J. Hoffman, "Random Notes Concerning Settlers of Dutch Descent," American Genealogist Magazine, 29,(1953), 146-147.

' Charles X. Harris, "Jacobus Gerritsen Strycker (c. 1629-1687) : An Artist of New Amsterdam," New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, 10 (1926-27), 83-91 (hereafter cited asNYHSOB). Harris also wrote "Pieter Vanderlyn: Portrait Painterfrom 1719 to 1732," NYHSQB, 5 (1921), 59-73, and "Henri Couturier: An Artist of New Netherland," NYHSQB, 11 (1927)45-52.

4 Albert T.Gardner and Stuart P. ¥e\d,AmericanPaintings: A CatalogueofThe Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Part 1 Painters born by 1815 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965), 281.

5 Harris, "Jacobus Gerritsen Strycker," 88.

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Johannes C. Van Voorhees is supposed to have written the following inscriptions on the backs of the two portraits: "Given to Altje by her father Jacobus Gerritsen Strieker who himself drew this likeness of his brother Jan -- J.C. Van Voorhees"; and "Jonkeer Adrian Van der Donck -- Given to Altje by her father Jacobus Strieker who drew it with his own hand - Johannes Coerte Van Voorhees". According to Charles X. Harris, a son of the above Johannes C. Van Voorhees, Cortland Van Voorhees, inherited the portraits and he in turn left them to his daughter Catherine who married Dr. Hendrick Van Beuren of Flatlands, Long Island. Their son, Cortland Van Beuren, in turn left the portraits to his son Henry Van Beuren of Brooklyn (1805-1892), whose daughter Catherine was the owner in 19626 The portraits later became part of the Andrew W. Mellon Collection and are now in the possession of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.7

Shortly after the Strijcker self-portrait became the prop­erty of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, researchers on the museum's staff were asked to research the artist and were unable to find any reference to Strijcker as a painter (limner) in either the New Amsterdam records or the records of seventeenth-century painters in the Netherlands. They con­cluded that the attribution to Strijcker as the painter of the self-portrait rested entirely on a family tradition that was not written down until a family genealogy was prepared in 1887. The staff of the museum then assigned the portrait to an anonymous European painter, renaming it "Portrait of A Man."8 As a consequence, the National Gallery of Art con­ducted tests on the inscriptions on their portraits and deter­mined that they were painted during a different time period, thereby discrediting them. The National Gallery of Art re­named the Jan Strijcker portrait, "Portrait of A Man, Dutch School (XVII Century)."

In 1947, the historian James Thomas Flexner used the assignment of Strijcker's self-portrait to an anonymous Euro-

Disputed Portrait of Jan Strijcker (Portrait of a Man, Dutch School -XVII Century) Courtesy of The National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection.

pean painter for an attack on family traditions and their validity. Flexner wrote, "So few authentic facts are known about early painters that writers, grasping at any straw, have been inclined to accept as an authentic source that peculiar type of rumor known as family traditions".9 Flexner, however, failed to mention the circumstantial evidence that indicates that this family tradition may be credible or at least have some elements of truth.

It is true that no contemporary record has been found which refers to Jacob Gerritsen Strijcker as a painter, although he was mentioned many times as a prominent person in the community. He was mentioned several times in the records of New Amsterdam as a tailor and once in a notarial document in Holland as "Master Jacob Strijcker tailor at the Manathans," and that occupation appears to have been his principal means of livelihood.10 All the other references call him schepen (magistrate) which office he held from 1655 to 1663 with the exception of the years 1659-61. During his last years of service he was presiding schepen. It is not surprising, then, that he was never called a painter since there would have been little demand for such a function in New Amsterdam. Nonetheless, it is not inconceivable that Strijcker received some training during his youth in Amsterdam and painted as a pastime on rare occasions. He certainly would have been personally acquainted with such contemporaries as Stuyvesant and Van der Donck.

The belief that Jacob Gerritsen Strijcker was an artist was first recorded in a November 23, 1872 article in Appleton s /^v/72<7/concerningtheoldStrikermansioninNew YorkCity. The belief was re-stated in the Strycker family genealogy published in 1887 by William Scudder Stryker of Trenton. "

It is not known how Charles X. Harris obtained the genealogical information contained in his article on Strijcker. He may have obtained it from the owners of the portraits or from his own research. We can assume that Catherine Van Beuren, who was alive in 1926, was familiar with her own genealogy back to her great-grandfather, Hendrick Van Beuren who married Catherine Van Voorhees. The supposed author of the inscription on the two portraits, Johannes C. Van Voorhees, is clearly identified in the Van Voorhees genealogy as a grandson of Steven Coerte Van Voorhees, the progenitor of the family in New Netherland. '2 Johannes C. Van Voorhees was born in 1683, son of Coert Stevens Van Voorhees and

" I b i d . , 86 .

7 Letter from the National Gallery of Art to David M. Riker, .September 4, 1986.

s Gardner and Feld, American Paintings, 28.

* James T. Flexner, First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), 290. James T.Flexner best known for his four-volume biography of George Washington, which won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.

10 Hoffman, "Random Notes Concerning Settlers;" Berthold Feniow, ed., The Records of New Amsierdamjrom 1653-1674 Anno Dominie, 7 vols. (New York. 1897; Baltimore, 1076, 1:276.

" William S. Stryker, Genealogical Record of the Strycker Family (Camden, N.J., Sinnickson Crew Printers, 1887). William S. Stryker was New Jersey's adjutant general and compiled a list of the officers and men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War which is still in use. He was president of the New Jersey Historical Society, wrote many histories of New Jersey Revolutionary War battles, and was one of the earliest members of The Holland Society.

12 Elais W. Van Voorhees, A Genealogy of the Van Voorhees Family in America (New York, 1885), 242-46, 25?; Albert L. Stokes, The Van Voorhees Family ; The First Four Generations, vol. 1, (The Van Voorhees Association, 1084), 48-58.

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Marretje Van Couwenhoven, and died at Fishkill, N.Y. in 1757. This accounts for the difference in ages between the portraits, painted in the 1650's, and the inscriptions which were probably painted about 1730. The genealogy also iden­tifies a son of Johannes C. Van Voorhees, named Coert, born 1706, who was perhaps known to later family members as Cortland. According to the genealogy, this Coert had a daughter Catherine, born 1730, who married Dr. Hendrick Van Beuren and one of their sons was named Cortland.13

The most recent Van Voorhees genealogy, however, does not identify Johannes C. Van Voorhees' uncle who married Altje Strijcker, supposed daughter of the artist. In fact, the immigrant Steven Coerte Van Voorhees is recorded in the genealogy as having only four sons:Coert, Lucas, Jan, and Albert, and none of them are known to have married an Altje Strijcker.14 It should be pointed out, however, that the inscrip­tions do not mention the relationship of Altje to Johannes C. Van Voorhees so perhaps this part of the tradition is in error. These inscriptions are the only evidence that Jacob Gerritsen Strijcker had a daughter named Altje.

In 1979, William N. Stryker of Alexandria, Va., published the first of his three volumes on The Strycker Family in America. In this first volume, Stryker included reproductions of the portraits of the Strijcker brothers, discussed the inscrip­tions painted on the portraits and mentioned the test on the inscriptions on Jan Strijcker's portrait conducted by the National Gallery of Art.15

As pointed out by William N. Stryker, the most signifi­cant piece of circumstantial evidence is that the portraits were owned by descendants of New Netherland families and that these portraits were handed down through two separate and distinct ownership lines.16 The questions are how did these families acquire these seventeenth-century Dutch portraits, and how did both ownership lines produce the same family tradition about the identity of the artist?

In October 1987, William N. Stryker wrote a letter to Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., curator of northern baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art, asking that the designation for

the "Portrait of A Man, Dutch School (XVII Century)" be changed back to "Portrait of Jan Strijcker." He gave as his justification all of the circumstantial evidence previously mentioned. In addition, Stryker wrote that the subject of the portrait appears wearing a magistrate's collar, and that Jan Strijcker was chief magistrate of the town of Midwout (Flatbush), Long Island.

Arthur Wheelock replied the following month and was totally sympathetic with William N. Stryker's arguments that the painting should be more appropriately entitled, "Portrait of Jan Strijcker." Wheelock wrote, "I have tried to work on this project on and off the last couple of years, but have never brought it to completion, both because of lack of further information of Jacob Strijcker's painting style , and because other projects somehow got in the way. In any event, thanks to the spur of your letter I will see if we can get something accomplished in the near future."

It is doubtful if this mystery will ever be resolved unless additional research into Jacob Strijcker's life reveals art training.17 Some New Netherland historians and members of the Stryker and related families will continue to believe this tradition is credible. Art historians may continue to discredit Strijcker as an artist and question whether an artist with the degree of skill required to paint these portraits could have resided in New Amsterdam in the middle of the seventeenth century.

"The Van Voorhees Family, 48-58,

14 William N. Strycker, The Stryker Family in America, vol.1 (Rome, N.Y.1979), 6-7. William N. Stryker is an employee of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and is a major in the Air Force Reserve. His address is 3804 Adrience Drive, Alexandria, Va. 22309.

l 5Ihid. ,6-7.

1,1 Stryker, The Stryker Family in The Netherlands, 15-16. According to William N. Stryker, more biographical data on Jacob Strijcker was uncovered by Dutch researchers he commissioned. Although no evidence of Strijcker's art training was found, there are still areas that could be investigated. Stryker believes that the circumstantial evidence concerning Jacob Strijcker as an artist is additionally supported by the discovery that he lived in Amsterdam for about ten years prior to immigrating to New Netherland. This would have given him ample opportunity to receive training with any of the Dutch artists working in Amsterdam during that period, 1640-1650.

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The Dutch Reformed Church and The Indians Patrick J. Curran

To many readers of de Halve Maen, the title "The Dutch Reformed Church and the Indians," will mean a study of the Evangelical work of Dominie Megapolensis and other seven­teenth-century Dutch divines with the Native Americans in what are today the states of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. These would have been the same thoughts of this author until eighteen months ago when I moved to New Mexico. Shortly after arriving in Las Cruces, I was invited to attend a ceremony on the Apache reservation at Mescalero. It was there that I learned that Wendell Chino, besides being the chief of the Mescalero Apaches, is also an ordained minister in the Dutch Reformed church. I was curious as to how a church, that I had always regarded as a regional one, became a major force in Protestantism among the western Indians.

The Dutch Reformed church was the first Protestant denomination to begin work among the Native American peoples. In 1642, the Domine of Albany, Megapolensis, after learning the Mohawk language, began preaching to the Indi­ans in that city. He then "went out preaching into their own country and castles."1 In 1816, the Dutch Reformed church along with the Presbyterians and other Calvinist denomina­tions organized the United Missionary Society to "spread the gospel among the Indians of North America and... throughout the world."2 Nonetheless, it was not until the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant that the government of the United States invited the Missionary Society to involve itself in Indian affairs. Grant personally invited the Society to appoint Indian agents to some of the tribes. Unfortunately, this enlightened policy lasted for only about ten years.

In the early 1890's, Omaha's Dutch Reformed minister, the Rev. William Harsha, read of the arrest of some Indians on the charge of vagrancy and decided that he had to do some­thing to help them. He found the ragged band of men and

Patrick J. Curran was formerly on the social studies faculty of the Islip Public Schools and Suffolk County Community College. He retired in 1989 and moved to Las Cruces, N.M. He has contributed three articles to de Halve Maen: "A History of Public Education in New Amsterdam," July 1975; "The Dutch-English Struggle for Long Island," January, April, and July, 1976; and "Education in the Dutch Towns of Long Island," April, 1978.

women in jail and began speaking to them of the Gospels. A young man pointed out to him that they were already Chris­tians. "We do not need the Bible," he said to Harsha, "we need justice. If you area good man, give us justice".3 Rev. Harsha went to his congregation and raised the money for the Indians' release, but he did not stop there. He crusaded for the needs of Native Americans with the result that the Women's Group of the Dutch Reformed church used the great Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to raise money for Indian missions. Over $4,000 was raised, and from that small beginning the church work of missions to the Indians has continued uninterruptedly to the present day.

Dutch Reformed churches are found on reservations in three states:

The Comanche Reformed Church, Lawton, Okla. The Apache Reformed Church, Apache, Okla. The Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church, Dulce, N.M. The Mescalero Apache Reformed Church, Mescalero, N.M. The Winnebago Reformed Church, Winnebago, Neb. The First Reformed Church of the Omaha Indian Mission, Macy, Neb. Besides working on the reservations, the Dutch Reformed

church maintains centers in Los Angeles and Minneapolis staffed by former reservation ministers to aid those making the painful adjustment from reservation to city life. The church also supports the Cook Christian Training School in Phoenix, Ariz. Here Bible and religious education courses are taught to members of many tribes so that they may bring the Gospel back to their own peoples. Thus, the work begun by Domine Megapolensis, back in 1642 continues today. The church is still teaching and working among Native Americans, but in an area far removed from where those first efforts occurred.

For further reading:

Woodward B. Skinner, The Apache Rock Crumbles: The Captivity of Geronimo's People, 1987.

Board of Domestic Missions, The RCA Ministers to Indian Americans, n.d.

'Francis W. Halsey, The Old New York Frontier (New York, 1901), 46.

''Through the Years with America's First Families (New York, n.d.), 3, 8.

' Ibid,4.

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#

Book Reviews

Herbert H. Rowen, The Princes of Orange: The Stadholders in the Dutch Republic (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Uni­versity Press, 1988; paperback edition, 1990).

Over the years Herbert H. Rowen's articles, translations, and books, especially his biography of John de Witt, the great statesman and grand pensionary of the province of Holland, have earned for him well-deserved recognition as a leading historian of the Dutch Republic. Now he turns to the princes of Orange and traces their careers as stadholders, a position best understood as more than a governor, but less than a sovereign prince, and includes, where appropriate, details of their lives that affected politics. Along the way he outlines the development of the stadholderate as an institution and also includes chapters on the so-called "stadholderless periods" when the powerful province of Holland dominated the politi­cal life of the loosely federated republic.

The result is a welcome addition to the literature of the Dutch Republic because it provides, in English, a readily accessible, well-documented, and scholarly overview of po­litical history. The period covered spans more than two centuries from the 1560's in the time of William I ("the Silent"), and the beginnings of resistance to Spanish rule, to the days of the inept William V and the end of the Republic under the influence of the ideas and troops of revolutionary France. The narrative covers in straightforward fashion the origins of the Republic, diplomatic and military affairs, and, above all, the continuing tension between the House of Orange and Holland, the richest and most populous of the provinces. Rowen's account of these themes is noteworthy for its terse descriptions and analysis of the complicated disputes that arose over such issues as the political status of the Reformed church or the constitutionality of the stadholderate.

Important features of political life in the Republic emerge out of this study, notably the political advantage the princes enjoyed as great nobles, the ambiguities of the political system, and the pervasive self-centeredness of provincial and town government. Through the stadholdership, which in­cluded an anomalous mix of federal, provincial and municipal functions, plus the captaincy-general which gave command of the professional army, the princes exercised enough leader­ship to be referred to as "half kings." Involved here, however, is a misreading of history. Final authority for the stadholdership rested in the provincial assemblies. Nor was the stadholderate an integral part of the constitutional system as is proved by the success with which strong leaders of Holland directed affairs in the stadholderless periods.

Rowen provides an extensive bibliography made up almost exclusively of Dutch titles, a helpful guide to the specialist, and his commentaries found in footnotes unlock a body of current Dutch scholarship for readers who cannot read Dutch. All in all, this book provides a convenient and authori­tative source for background reading and a handy tool for quick reference. The index is adequate.

— Robert G. Comegys

AT. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland. Trans, by Maarten Ultee(Cambridge, Eng.: Cam­bridge University Press, 1991).

The common people of the Netherlands during the seven­teenth century were laborers, urban craftsmen, small farmers and agricultural workers, fishermen, soldiers, sailors, and those whose income was below the poverty level who often had to turn to charity or to begging to survive. Although life was hard for many of these people, it was better than in other parts of Europe. Economic expansion gave these people a chance to improve their standard of living, but the population explosion had the opposite effect. These were the kind of people who migrated to New Netherland; many as employees of the Dutch West India Company or under contract to a patroon. It has been estimated that the native Dutch comprised about half of the non-English population of New Netherland, however their influence through the government and the church had a profound effect on colonial Dutch society.

Plain Lives in a Golden Age is about these common people, their occupations, standard of living, upbringing, social habits, their attitude toward government and taxes, and how they viewed religion. First published in Dutch in 1978 in four short volumes, it has recently been translated into English and combined into one book with four parts: Part I, Daily Bread; Part II, Popular Culture; Part III, People and Govern­ment; and Part IV, Hell and Heaven. The author, A.T. van Deursen, is a professor of History at the Free University of Amsterdam and is Holland's foremost authority on the seven­teenth-century Dutch. Professor van Deursen's analysis of the home country's common people should give a better under­standing of their colonial kinsmen.

Part I deals with occupations, standards of living includ­ing poverty, beggars, workers' guilds, the apprentice system and the taste for financial enterprise, which was the hallmark of the seventeenth-century Dutch people both great and small. We see these occupations represented in New Netherland as brewers, tailors, bakers, soldiers, sailors, and shoemakers. We also see the common man becoming wealthy in the fur trade and in commerce. For example,01off Stevensen van Cortlandt came to New Amsterdam in 1637 as a soldier for the West India Company, but worked his way up to be a wealthy merchant and landholder. Similarly, Frederick Philipse, later Lord of Philipsburg Manor in Westchester County, was a carpenter for the company when he first came to New Netherland in 1647.

Part II is perhaps the most interesting section because it deals with the relationship between people. For example, the women of the working class had to work to support the family. Thus women were more independent as some operated small shops or managed the business when their husbands were absent. The Dutch women were not subject to the absolute authority of their husbands as in some other countries.

The Dutchman had an intense liking for beer and wine.

Beer was the preferred drink of the people and was sold in inns, taverns, cellars, and many apothecary shops. In 1613 there were 518 tapsters in Amsterdam. Knife fights were apparently an acceptable risk for the general public, particularly in the countryside. From the records of New Amsterdam, it is plain that the beer consumption was also high and that fights were frequent, especially in tap rooms. There were many tapsters on each block and the West India Company found it necessary to establish its own brewery at an early date.

In Part III, Professor van Deursen explains how the government worked. The Dutch Republic was not democratic in nature. It was ruled by an oligarchy of regents, being persons of high quality with a good family background. If a man came from a regent family he was expected to serve in the govern­ment and look out for the welfare of the common people. Democracy was regarded as self-destructive by the seven­teenth-century Dutch as they believed it led to chaos. We are now better able to understand Director Pieter Stuyvesant's treatment of his Board of Nine Men, his advisors in the years 1648-1651. Some historians have made Stuyvesant out to be a despot and the Nine Men as fighters for the people' s freedom. Stuyvesant's actions, however, were consistent with seven­teenth-century Dutch thinking. His loyalties were to God and the Company, his employer. With the exception of the property tax, taxes were levied in the form of excises on consumer goods like beer, salt, and soap, which were collected

James Haswell Lansing, a member of The Holland Soci­ety of New York from 1919 until his death on January 29, 1985, established a trust by his will in 1983 to be known as The Hugh H. Lansing, 1893, and James H. Lansing, 1918, Scholar­ship Trust at The Holland Society of New York, which was to come into effect upon the demise of his wife, Mary Louise Lansing, which occurred in early 1991.

The income of the trust is "to be awarded to a male student who is a descendant of [a] Holland Society member while at Williams College, and until graduation, and successively upon the same basis if there is no scholarship application for Williams College," the "second and third choices are Wesleyan College and Amherst College."

The preceding paragraph comprise the entire instructions of the trust, which could yield around $12,000 a year. It is available on a first come, first serve basis, and will be awarded until graduation. Obviously, therefore, any member of our Society whose son fulfills the stipulations of the will, should

from the retailer who figured the tax into his price. The unpopular job of levying these taxes was the responsibility of private persons known as farmers who bid for the job. This process insulated the regents from popular anger. When Director Pieter Stuyvesant first came to New Netherland in 1647, he extended the tax on beer to include wine and other liquors, which would be paid by the tavern keepers and retailers. Also discussed in Part III is government spending and the eighty-year war with Spain which ended in 1646.

Part IV deals with religion and especially the three Christian denominations of Reformed, Catholic and Menno-nite. The Dutchman was free to chose his own religion as there was no State church, however, the choice could affect his career and social standing as the government favored the Reformed. Catholics were under suspicion as being friends of Spain, but were permitted to worship as long as they kepta low profile.

This book is ideal for the student as it has extensive notes, a bibliography and index at the back as well as statistical tables throughout the text. It is well written and has many interesting illustrations. It makes a good companion to Simon Schama's book The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age reviewed in a past issue of de Halve Maen.

David Riker

apply for this very wonderful scholarship award as soon as he becomes eligible.

James Lansing, the son of Hugh Lansing, who was also a member of our Society, was born in Watervliet, New York, and graduated from Williams College. He later pursued graduate studies in metallurgy at the University of Toulouse in France and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Mr. Lansing was an internationally recognized authority in the ferrous castings industry. Following his 1975 retirement as executive director of the Ductile Iron Society in Cleveland, Ohio, he became a consultant and was active in the industry association. The American Society for Testing and Materials awarded him an Honorary Membership, for his long and dedicated services, as well as his contribution in establishing and maintaining representative standards in the ferrous cast­ing field. Mr. Lansing was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Troy, New York.

The Society Receives $180,000 Lansing Scholarship

Trust Fund for the Benefit of Members' Sons

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Society Activities 105th Annual Banquet

The 105th Annual Banquet of The Holland Society of New York in honor of Charles Ryskamp, Director of the Frick Collection, was held on November 21, 1991, at the Harvard Club in New York City. Guests enjoyed a sparkling, conver­sational cocktail hour followed by an extraordinarily inviting dinner and ballroom dancing.The traditional Parade of the Beaver was performed by the Burgher Guard under the direction of Captain William Snedeker.

Rev. Louis 0. Springsteen, President, and Medalist Mr. Charles Ryskamp, Director oj The Frick Collection.

Mrs. W. Vincent [Brooke] Astor, the introductory speaker for the evening, who was suffering from the flu, sent a written introduction which was read by banquet chairman, James M. Van Buren II, in which Mr. Ryskamp's outstanding past history and current contributions to the field of literature, conservation, and collection management were detailed.

President Louis O. Springsteen, invested Mr. Ryskamp with the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement. Mr. Ryskamp delivered a brief and entertaining discourse. Mr. Ryskamp holds the rank of Commander in the Order of Orange Nassau.

Present as honored guests of this event were: His Excellency, Mr. C.W.A. de Groot, Consul General of the Netherlands in New York; Mrs. Charles Irwin, Directress-General ofthe Society of Daughters of Holland Dames; Mr. Kenneth Menken, President ofthe New England Society in the City of New York; Mr. Horace B. B. Robinson, Governor of the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of New York and Mr. & Mrs. John Pierrcpont.

Gracious patrons of the banquet were: Mr. Hubert T. Mandcville; Mr. C. Carlton Dialing; Mr. Joseph Hoagland; Mr. Michael L. Mandcville; Mr. Craig Van Cott; Mr. Robert J. Van Derbeek; Trustee & Mrs. Peter Van Dyke; Dr. W. Barton Van Slyke, and Treasurer and Mrs. James M.Vreeland.

Niagara Frontier Branch

The annual Spring Dinner Meeting of the Niagara Fron­tier Branch took place on Wednesday, June 12, 1991, at the Buffalo Yacht Club. The club overlooks the international waterway ofthe Niagara River at the Peace Bridge, the busiest point of entry on the entire U.S.-Canadian border. The cus­tomary kindred warmth was evident among the Society members, wives, and guests from throughout western New York, the Bingham ton and Elmira areas of south-central New York, as well as the Province of Ontario, who met for a cocktail hour preceding dinner. Guest of honor and speaker was Mrs. Grace L. Rich, officer and board member of the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation, which operates the site on behalf of the National Park Service of the U.S. Dept. ofthe Interior, and is housed in the Ansley Wilcox Mansion on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo. Other notables present were Mrs. Henriette Jockin, Consul ofthe Netherlands for Buffalo and Western New York, and her husband Dr. Hubert L. Jockin. Also present was Mrs. Johanna V. Battle, President of The Holland Club of the Niagara Frontier, a local group of Netherlands natives dedicated to strengthening Dutch-Ameri­can relations and preserving our Dutch cultural heritage.

Toasts to the President of the United States and the Queen ofthe Netherlands were followed by introductions of honored guests and others by branch President Chase Viele. As part of a current local observance of the 90lh anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt's inauguration as president at the Wilcox Mansion on September 14,1901, following the assassination of Presi­dent William McKinley at Buffalo's Pan-American Exposi­tion, Mrs. Grace L. Rich presented an illustrated talk on Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, entitled "Reminiscing with Edith Roosevelt: A Glimpse into Her Life and Times". Mrs. Rich, carefully attired in a turn-of-the-century costume such as her

subject might have worn, described how, as First Lady, Edith Kermit Roosevelt defined the role in our century by dazzling Washington with the splendor of her social activities, while shrewdly advising her husband on political affairs and man­aging six very energetic children. Displaying enlargements of many rare photos of Edith, her husband, a member of The Holland Society, and the children's play and antics, Mrs. Rich noted that Edith's years in the White House coincided with America's rise to world power and were followed by decades as mistress of Sagamore Hill, the family home at Oyster Bay, New York; now headquarters of the Theodore Roosevelt Association.

Those in attendance at the meeting were: Mr. & Mrs. Appleton Fryer, Mr. & Mrs. William Lansing Van Schoonhovcn, Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Courter, Dr. & Mrs. Harold P. Graser, Mr. & Mrs. Richard P. Garrabrant, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Coykcndall, Mr. & Mrs. Howard C. Vreeland, Mr. & Mrs. Everett L. Hopper, Mr. & Mrs. Pieter de Haas, Mr. & Mrs. Robert J.A. Irwin (Mrs. Irwin representing the Society of Daughters of Holland Dames), Dr. & Mrs. Courtland Van Dcusen III, Mr. Courtland Van Deuscn IV, Mr. Courtland Van Deusen V, Mrs. Johanna V. Battle, Mr. Colin G. Lazier,

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Mr. & Mrs. Win J. Lam, Dr. & Mrs. Hubert L. Jockin, Mr. John I. Eckerson, Mrs. Helen Kraatz, Mr. Chase Viele and Mrs. Grace L. Rich.

Mrs. Grace L. Rich speaking before the Niagara Frontier Branch Meeting last June.

South River Branch

Saturday, September 28,1991, was South River Branch day at the replica of the ship Half Moon moored at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, N.J. In addition to members of The Holland Society, there were guests from the Netherlands-American Association of the Delaware Valley and from the Netherlands Society of Philadelphia. Forty persons attended of which nineteen were Holland Society members or their relatives. Liberty State Park is easy to reach from Exit 14B of the New Jersey Turnpike extension.

An informative guide led the group through the vessel from captain's cabin to galley, explaining the history and workings of the ship. Following the tour, there was opportu­nity to visit the museum and gift shop where items such as reprints of Adriaen Block's map of New Netherland and the drawings for the ship were on sale. Later the group picnicked at the end of the park overlooking the skyline of downtown Manhattan. After lunch everyone was free to take the ferry from the park to Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty.

Those in attendance from The Holland Society were: Branch President William Alrich and Shirley Alrich from Radnor, Pa.; Trustee David Riker and Pat Riker from Mechanicsburg, Pa.; Edward Traphagen and Lois Traphagen of South Plainfield, N.J.; Donald D. Van Meter and Gertrude Van Meter of Greenbrook, N.J.; Curtis Vreeland and his family from Middletown, Pa.; Mrs. James Vreeland from Far Hills, N.J.; Richard DeMott from Springhouse, Pa.; David R. Voorhees and family from Hopewell, N.J., and Richard A. Scudder from Cherry Hill, N.J.

Here and There with Members

Mr. and Mrs. John Peter Bozzone of Ithaca, New York, announce the wedding of their daughter, Beth Anne, to Jeffrey Hunt Wyckoff on Saturday, September 7,1991, at St. Thomas More Church in New York City. Jeffrey, aLife Member of The Holland Society and a member of the Burgher Guard, is the son of Trustee and Mrs. Ferdinand Lott Wyckoff, Jr. He is the grandson of Ferdinand Lott Wyckoff, a life member of the Society.

Beth is employed by the Episcopal School, New York City, and Jeffrey is employed by Marsh & McLennan, New York City. The couple will be living in New York City upon their return home from a two-week trip to Italy.

Manning W. Voorhees, a member of The Holland Society since 1952, from Fair Haven, New Jersey, was recently elected President of the Van Voorhees Association. Mr. Voorhees has been a member of the Association for over 20 years, and has served on theExecutive Committee in theposition of Historical Committee chairman since 1985.

A graduate of Rutgers University, where he received a bachelor's and master's degree, he had been employed by Citibank for his entire career until he retired this past year. Besides his membership in our Society and the Van Voorhees Association, he is a member of the New Netherland Project and the Dutch Barn Preservation Society.

Charles T. Gehring, a Fellow of The Holland Society of New York and Director of the New Netherland Project, as well as translator and editor of the New Netherland Documents Series, a translation program funded by matching grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and sponsored by the New York State Library, recently gave the Holland Society of New York recognition as one of the two original sponsors (the other being the New York State Library). The project, which began in 1974, has published six volumes of Dutch records which had been translated at the beginning of this century, but had not been printed due to lack of funds. By 1989, an additional twelve volumes had been translated, edited, and published with several more in progress.

"The translations and publications of these records are providing researchers with the source material necessary for a balanced assessment of the Dutch impact in North America. These new resources have already contributed greatly to increased understanding and knowledge in such diverse fields as agricultural history, anthropology, archaeology, genealogy, criminal justice and economics."

Member, Bill Van Der Beek, is interested in the preservation of a small enclave of buildings on Stone Street in the Manhattan's Financial District, which is being challenged by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Bill says that many members' relatives occupied homes in this immediate area and he would like to have support in his efforts to preserve the district. Those who would like to help support the preservation of the Stone Street District may wish to contact William Van Der Beek, PO Box 451, Manasquan, N.J., (908) 736-0451.

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In Memoriam

John De Witt Blauvelt

John De Witt Blauvelt, a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1936, and The Society's 20th oldest member as of the date of his election into our Society, died on September 26, 1991, after a long illness, at the Hollywood Medical Center, Hollywood, Florida. He was 83 years of age.

He was a direct descendant of GerritHendricksen Blauvelt, who came to this country from Deventer, Holland, prior to the year 1646. Mr. Blauvelt was born on March 19,1908, at New York City, the son of Arthur Melville Blauvelt and Elsie M. Francke.

He received his education at New York Preparatory School from which he graduated in 1931. He then went on to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, receiving an A.B. in Education in 1935, and taking some graduate courses in secondary education and literature there in 1936 and 1937. While at Alabama he was a member of Gamma Sigma Epsilon and Phi Delta Kappa, both honorary societies.

Mr. Blauvelt worked at different times during his early career for Bank of America (1925-29) as a clerical employee; City-Bank Farmers Trust Co. (1929-32) as a statistician; and the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Co. (1937-40), also as a statis­tician. All of these positions were held in New York City. It was however in the military that he spent most of his younger years.

He was a cadet in the Civilian Military Training Corps, in the infantry at Plattsburgh Barracks, in 1925. In 1927 he enlisted as a private in the Reserve Corps of the 153rd Infantry Brigade, and in 1928 he was promoted to sergeant and trans­ferred to the 77th Division Headquarters Financial Section, but as a private. However, in 1929, he was appointed a second lieutenant in the Finance Reserve, and was actively engaged as a finance officer and property auditor at Fort Wadsworth, New York, in 1935 and 1936. Later in 1936, he was transferred to the headquarters of the Trenton, New Jersey, District of the Civilian Conservation Coips (CCC), and then, later in 1936, he was returned to reserve status so he could attend the University of Alabama. Later on, he returned to active military duty, and during the Second World War he served in the United States Army Finance Department as a major.

In 1946 Mr. Blauvelt retired from the service and went to work in the securities division of the former Inmont Corpora­tion in Manhattan (now known as BASF and located in Clifton, New Jersey). He retired in 1964.

Mr. Blauvelt married Mabel V. S wett Roberts, the widow of Noel B. Roberts, at Staten Island, New York, on May 31, 1947. He lived in Grasmere, Staten Island, since he was a youngster, and considered it his home until he moved to Florida in 1964. While residing on Staten Island, Mr. Blauvelt was active in Masonic organizations, and was a past master of the Tompkins Lodge of Masons and a member of the Empire Commandry, Knights Templar, the Tyrian Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, and the Richmond Forest, Tall Cedars of Lebanon. He was a member of Blauvelt Descendants for most of his life.

His principal recreations during his adult years were tennis, hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and collecting recorded music. He said he had no hobbies other than these, but he was also a member of the Sons of the Revolution of New York, and the Military Order of the World Wars, Gold Coast chapter. His religion was Episcopalian, and his politics were Democratic.

Mr. Blauvelt is survived by his wife, Mabel; two half-brothers, William and Terrence Thompson; and a sister, Virginia Northacker. He was cremated and his remains were buried at St. Andrews Church Cemetery, Richmondtown, Staten Island.

Reginald Tilghman Blauvelt, Jr.

Reginald Tilghman Blauvelt. Jr., a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1945, died on June 22, 1991 at the Princeton, New Jersey, Medical Center, at 85 years of age. Mr. B lauvelt was a direct descendant of Gerrit Hendricksen Blauvelt, who came to this country from Deventer, the province of Overijssel, Netherlands, about 1637 or 1638.

The son of Reginald T. Blauvelt and Grace Carter, Mr. Blauvelt was born on June 1, 1906 at East Orange, New Jersey. He graduated from Newark Academy, and went to work in the family-owned business, the Lincoln Mayflower Moving & Storage Company of Orange and Madison, New Jersey, that was started by his father. He spent his entire business career, with that firm. At the time of his death, he was chairman of the board. However, he maintained an interest in many other activities during his lifetime, particu­larly antiques and golf. His wife, Britha Denise Neilson, whom he married on October 11,1935,atMaplewood, New Jersey, survives him.

As an avid golfer, he belonged to Rock Spring Golf Club and the Essex Country Club, both in West Orange, New Jersey; the Baltusrol Golf Club at Springfield, New Jersey; and the Lake Placid Club, Lake Placid, New York. At the time of his death, he belonged to Pinehurst Country Club at Pinehurst, North Carolina, where he was a member of the Pinehurst Tin Whistlers and the United States Senior Golf Association. He and his wife played golf worldwide with People to People teams, a club in Washington, D.C.

Antiques, Mr. Blauvelt's other avocation, brought him renown as an auctioneer and appraiser of fine American antiques, and he became a founding member of The Appraiser's Association of America. At his death, he was a member of the Acquisitions Committee of the Newark (New Jersey) Museum.

In addition, he was a trustee of Newark Academy and the Beard School, and was a director of East Orange General Hospital.

Mr. Blauvelt was a resident of Meadow Lakes, Hightstown, New Jersey, for the past six years and the Mountain Lake Club in Lake Wales, Florida, for the past 26 years. Earlier, he had lived in the Oranges for many years,

before moving to Madison, New Jersey. Besides his wife, he is also survived by his son, Reginald

T. Blauvelt III, of Chatham, New Jersey; a daughter, Lisa Blauvelt-Weil, of Tours, France; and four grandchildren, Robert E. Long III and Britt T. Long, both of Princeton, New Jersey; and R.T. Blauvelt IV and Abigail E. Blauvelt, both of Chatham. Funeral services were private.

George Milton Brodhead

George Milton Brodhead, a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1962 and a direct male descendant of Daniel Brodhead who came to this country from England in 1664, died October 23, 1991, at Chestnut Hill Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was 87 years old. His original ancestors had settled in Kingston, New York.

Mr. Brodhead was born May 23, 1904, at Philadelphia, the son of George M. Brodhead (who was born in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania), and Clara S. Chaplain (from Onancock, Virginia).

A 1922 graduate of West Philadelphia High School, Mr. Brodhead then graduated in 1926 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was editor of the law review.

Mr. Brodhead was chairman emeritus of Rawle & Henderson, the oldest law firm in the United States, having been founded in 1783. He had worked there for 58 years.

Joining the firm in 1930, Mr. Brodhead, over the years, worked his way up from associate to partner to chairman of the firm before he retired as chairman emeritus in 1988.

"George Brodhead was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word," said Peter Paul, a longtime partner and friend. "He was known as a lawyer who cared."

His wife of 57 years, Pauline Walker Hand from Reading, Pennsylvania, whom Mr. Brodhead marriedon September 13, 1934, said, "He was very cheerful and very kind. Even if he disagreed with others, he would still do it in a kindly way."

In 1983, on the 200th anniversary of his law firm's founding, Mr. Brodhead took a report on a tour of his law office, and proudly showed off one of the firm's prize posses­sions, a 1793 letter by Alexander Hamilton, the very first secretary of the United States Treasury.

The letter reads: "Dear W., Judge Simms is anxious to know the state of the papers which were to be prepared respecting his affairs. Be so good as to inform him if he delivers this note; if not, in the course of the day drop me a line at my office. Yours with affection, A. HAMILTON."

"What we have here," Mr. Brodhead said at the time, "is a seemingly innocent note that actually is one lawyer advising another to get a move on."

In addition to his membership in our society, Mr. Brodhead was a member and past president of the Lawyers Club of Philadelphia, and a member and past president of the Union League of Philadelphia. He was also a former member of the board of directors of the Philadelphia Cricket Club, and a past president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. His hobbies included golf and tennis.

Mr. Brodhead was an active official from 1931 until 1971 of the Methodist Church of the Advocate, and later, a member, trustee, and elder of the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.

Besides his wife, Pauline, Mr. Brodhead is survived by a daughter, Anne B. Zehner of Malvern, Pennsylvania; a son, Richard C. of Philadelphia; and two grandchildren.

A memorial service was held at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. Burial at West Laurel Hill Cemetery was private.

Walter Wilson Brower, Jr.

Walter Wilson Brower, Jr., a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1985, died on August 1,1991, after a two-year battle with brain cancer, at 59 years of age. A direct descendant of Adam Berkhoven Brouwer who came to this country in 1642 from Hoorn, Holland, Mr. Brower was born at Paterson, New Jersey on August 16.1931, the son of Walter William Brower and Amelia Elmer Lotz. He never married.

A graduate of East Paterson, New Jersey, public school and the Paterson Technical and Vocational High School, Mr. Brower was a Teamster truck driver most of his adult life. He was always interested in automobiles, so that it was natural that he became a charter member and, later, a life member of the United States Auto Club. He belonged to the Junior Order of United American Mechanics of New Jersey, the Eastern Old Timers Auto Racing Club, and the Checkered Flag Fan Club of Pennsylvania. He was often an official in automobile races.

He held additional memberships in the Lake Mohawk (New Jersey) Country Club, the North Haledon (New Jersey) Grange, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Sons of Colonial Wars, the Society of the War of 1812, the Free and Accepted Mason, and Salaam Temple (Shrine).

He was Protestant and his politics were Republican. He is survived by his father, Walter, of Elmwood Park,

New Jersey, and his uncle, Alfred H. Brower, of Elmwood Park, who has been a member of The Holland Society since 1985. Burial was at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in Paterson, New Jersey.

James Higbie Polhemus, Jr.

James Higbie Polhemus, Jr., a descendant of Domine Johannes Theodorus Polhemus who landed in New Amsterdam from Brazil in 1654, died at the age of 71, in Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 2,1990. He had been a Life Member of The Holland Society since 1942. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, on September 27,1918, he was the son of James Higbie Polhemus and Linda Rowand Polhemus. He graduated from Admiral Farragut Naval Academy in Pine Beach, New Jersey, in 1938 and from the Missouri School of Mines with a B.S. in mining in 1943. During World War II he was commissioned as lieutenant junior grade in the United States Navy, serving in mine and bomb disposal units in the United States and the Pacific.

In all that hedid, Jim Polhemus combineda deep affection for the past with a lively engagement in the present. He had a strong sense of family. Professionally he was a mining engi­neer, following in the footsteps of his father, whom he lost at the age of eight, and his grandfather, Lewis G. Rowand, both of whom were prominent mining engineers. He began his mining career while still attending university. He was a

member of the mill repair crew at the American Zinc Company's Mascot, Tennessee zinc operation. This was a mining property which his father had developed for the American Zinc, Lead and Smelting Company as general manager of mines prior to 1914. After World War II Jim Polhemus remained with American Zinc and rose to become general superintendent of surface operations at Mascot in 1964. He was active in developing new ore-separation pro­cesses and held several patents for inventions in this area. He was a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, holding a variety of offices in that organization and he wrote a number of papers presented at its meetings. He retired from American Zinc's successor, the American Smelting and Refining Company, in 1973.

Mr. Polhemus' services as a mining consultant continued in demand, but increasingly his attention turned to a second career in archaeology based on interests he had pursued since he was a boy. After 1973, he completed at least twenty-three archaeological projects under a personal service contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority and was involved in a number of other archaeological projects and publications, often in collaboration with his son Richard. He served as president of the Tennessee Archaeological Society to the Eastern States Archaeological Federation, and as a director of the Fort Loudon Association. Other organizations of which he was a member were the New York State Historical Society, the American Anthropological Society, the Archaeological Insti­tute of America, the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, the Society for Industrial Archaeology, the South Eastern Archaeological Conference, the Conference of Historic Site Archaeology, the Society for State and Local History, the National Trust for Historical Preservation, and a number of other state archaeological societies. The fruits of his archaeo­logical researches are in the collections of the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut; the McClung Museum of the Uni­versity of Tennessee; and the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville.

Mr. Polhemus had a love of books and a longstanding interest in libraries. He surrounded himself with books and, together with his son Richard, assembled an impressive working collection of publications on the historic and prehis­toric archaeology of the Southeast. He was active in advancing his community library and served as chairman of the Knox County Library Board and as a member of the Regional Library Board. In addition, he was a member of the Metropoli­tan Planning Commission of Knoxville. He was also a member of the Episcopal Church and served for a time on the vestry and as a Sunday school teacher at St John's Episcopal Church in Knoxville. At his death he was a communicant of St. James Episcopal Church in Knoxville, where his memorial service was held on March 6,1990.

In recent years, when he could no longer ramble the rivers and hills of East Tennessee with his family and friends, Mr. Polhemus devoted himself to the more sedentary labor of putting in order the papers which he had assembled, particu­larly those on the history of zinc mining in the district. He donated these, together with the extensive collection of pho­tographs he had made, to the McClung Historical Collection of the Knox County Public Library.

James Higbie Polhemus, Jr., is survived by his wife, the

former Beatrice Arnold Nimick, of Mascot, Tennessee; two sisters, Mary Elizabeth Davies of Cos Cob, Connecticut, and Linda Tompkins of South Brunswick, New Jersey; two sons, James Higbie Polhemus III, a Life Member of The Holland Society, of Barwon Heads, Victoria, Australia, and Richard Rowand Polhemus, a Life Member of The Holland Society, of Mascot, Tennessee; a daughter Alexandra Nimick Polhemus of Knoxville, Tennessee; and two grandchildren, James Alexander Coleman Polhemus and Mary Catherine Polhemus of Belmont, Victoria, Australia

(Prepared by James H. Polhemus III andRichardR. Polhemus for de Halve Maen, March 10,1990.)

James Roosevelt

James Roosevelt, the eldest son of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a six-term Congressman from California, and a former delegate to the United Nations, died at his home in Newport Beach, California, on August 13,1991. He was 83 years of age. His son, H. Delano Roosevelt, stated that his death was caused by complications from a stroke and Parkinson's disease.

A direct descendant of Claes Martenszen Van Roosevelt who came to this country from Holland in or about the year 1650, James Roosevelt was born in New York City, in the first house his father and mother had all to themselves, a brown-stone on 36th Street between Madison and Park Avenues, on December 23,1907. He was the first son and second child of the four children Franklin and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt would have. A Life Member of The Holland Society of New York since 1931, Mr. Roosevelt was the 12th oldest member of our Society as of his date of election. His father, also a Life Member of our Society, was his proposer, and filled out his son's application in long hand on February 17,1931.

During the 1932 presidential campaign, the future presi­dent introduced his son as "My little boy, Jimmy," then 24 years old and 6'4" tall. This line always drew a laugh. His presence at his father's side presaged his own political career.

Mr. Roosevelt attended the Groton School, following family custom, where, in his father's words, he "did very well in athletics and leadership, rather poorly in studies." Later, after he graduated from Harvard College in 1930, Mr. Roosevelt attended Boston University Law School, while, at the same time, earning as much as $250,000-a-year selling insurance. Asked at that time by reporters if his long-term goals were in law or insurance, he said, "Neither, it's politics."

Mr. Roosevelt put aside his business career in 1936 to campaign for his father's re-election. After that successful election, he joined the White House staff as a $6,000-a-year executive assistant. Within a year he was appointed a full secretary, working as a go-between for his father to heads of Federal agencies.

When the United States entered World War II, Mr. Roosevelt, though he had gastric ulcers, was assigned to combat. He commanded a Marine battalion in the Gilbert Islands in August 1942, where he was awarded the Navy Cross for saving three men from drowning in heavy surf. Later, he fought at Guadalcanal and at the second Battle of Midway, and, in 1943, he was awarded the Silver Star.

When the war ended, Mr. Roosevelt settled in Beverly Hills, California, and became active in Democratic politics. In 1950 he ran for governor of California, but lost to the Repub­lican incumbent, Earl Warren. Four years later he was elected to the House of Representatives for the 26th District of California, which he served for the next 11 years.

In 1965, after Mayor Sam Yorty defeated Mr. Roosevelt in the Democratic primary, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him a delegate to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, a position he gave up within a year.

James Roosevelt had many brushes with controversy. In 1965, he was criticized for accepting a job on the board of a mutual fund associated with the International Overseas Man­agement Co. which it was believed compromised his position with the United Nations. Earlier, in 1955, he had been involved in an acrimonious and widely publicized divorce proceeding with his second wife. In 1956, when he married his personal secretary, the Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church at that time, the Right Reverend Francis Eric Bloy, refused to allow Father Pratt (a long-time friend of James and his wife-to-be), to officiate. In 1969, it was reported by the Associated Press that Mr. Roosevelt was "stabbed in the back at his villa in Geneva, Switzerland, in what the Swiss police described as a family quarrel." In 1983, when Mr. Roosevelt launched the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medi­care, the organization was severely criticized for using what opponents suggested were scare tactics in mailing seemingly official government letters to elderly people.

Mr. Roosevelt was married four times. First to Betsey Cushing, which ended in divorce in 1940. They had two daughters. In 1955, divorce ended his second marriage to Romelle Schneider, with whom he had a daughter and two sons. A year later, he married Gladys Irene Owens, with whom he had a son, and from whom he was divorced in 1969. A month later, Mr.Roosevelt married Mary Lena Winskill, with whom he had another daughter.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his three sons, James Jr., Michael and H. Delano; and four daughters, Sara, Kate, Anne and Rebecca.

Francis Raber Schanck, Jr.

Francis Raber Schanck, Jr., a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1958, and a direct male descendant of Roelof Martense Schanck, who arrived in this country from Amersfoort, Holland, on June 28, 1650, on the ship "De Valckener," died on November 1, 1991, at King Brewart House, Burr Ridge, Illinois, at 84 years of age.

Mr. Schanck was born in Los Angeles, California, on October 22, 1907, the son of Francis Raber Schanck and Florence Ethel Carr. After attending local schools, he gradu­ated from Stanford University with an A.B. degree in 1929. During the Second World War, he served as a commander in the United States Navy as an operations officer in Naval Air Transport.

In 1948, Mr. Schanck, who had been a stockbroker since 1928 in Portland, Oregon, joined Bacon, Whipple and Co., an investment banking firm in Chicago, and from 1962until 1980

he served as its managing partner. He retired from the firm in 1987. Active in many investment banking industry associa­tions, in 1967 and 1968 he served as president of the Invest­ment Bankers Association of America, and he was chairman of the board of governors of the Securities Industry Associa­tion of America. He was also a Hinsdale Village trustee. During his membership in our Society, he was an active member of the Mid-West branch in the Chicago area.

Mr. Schanck was married to Kathryn Sterling Short of Seneca, Kansas, on June 10,1933, at Portland, Oregon. Their marriage lasted for fifty-six years, until she died in 1989. They had two sons and a daughter: Thomas of Oak Brook, Illinois; Peter of Lawrence, Kansas, a Life Member of our Society; and Susan Fawcett of Casper, Wyoming. In 1989 he married Katherin Macey, who survives him. He is also survived by seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, in addition to his two sons and his daughter.

A memorial service was held at the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale and interment was at the Bronswood Cemetery.

Lindsley Schepmoes II

Word has just recently been received that Lindsley Schepmoes II of Hyde Park, New York, a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1974, died sometime during the summer of 1991.

Mr. Schepmoes was the son of Richard Lindsley Schepmoes and Muriel Agnes Juhl and was born at White Plains, New York, on June 1, 1938. He was a direct male descendant of Jan Jansen Schepmoes who came to this country from Elft, Holland, on the ship "Dolfyn", in the year 1638.

Mr. Schepmoes first graduated from Hamilton College in 1960. Subsequently, in 1963, he graduated from Union Theo­logical Seminary, where he was a Rockefeller Fellow, and later, in 1964, he received a master's degree from the Colum­bia University School of Journalism.

An Episcopalian, Mr. Schepmoes was a member of Grace Church in New York, where he was clerk of the vestry from 1972 until 1975, and a law reader for the Diocese of Long Island. His politics were Republican. At the time that he joined our Society, he indicated that he was planning to start his own business. He never married.

Charles Cornell Van Siclen, Jr.

Lt. Col. Charles Cornell Van Siclen, Jr., USAF Ret. a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1983, died on August 25,1991 after a long illness, at 75 years of age. The son of Charles Cornell Van Siclen and Harriett Eva Winnik, Col. Van Siclen was born on March 18,1916, at New York City,and was adirectdescendantofFerdenandus Van Sycklin, who came to New Netherland from Ghent, Flanders, in the year 1652.

Col. Van Siclen resided in San Antonio, Texas for most of the past 30 years, and had been the finance and accounting officer at Kelly Air Force Base for almost seven years during the 1960's. Prior to that time he had attended the University of Maryland and Wittenberg College in Ohio. While attending

Pace College in New York City he had been a MONY auditor.

Besides his membership in the Society, for which he hosted a Texas branch meeting at San Antonio in August 1989, Col. Van Siclen was also a member of the Oak Hills Presby terian Church, and the American Legion.

He is survived by his wife of fifty years, Theodora Marie (Dee) Henkler, whom he married April 5,1941 at Washington, D.C.; two sons (both members of The Holland Society), Robert Charles Van Siclen of Arlington, Texas, and Charles Cornell Van Siclen III of San Antonio, Texas; two grand­daughters, Sarah and Christine of Arlington, Texas; a sister, Harriet Allison, of Florida, another sister Elizabeth Depree, also of Florida; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Funeral services were held on August 27, 1991, at the Mission Park Funeral Chapel North, in San Antonio, and interment was at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery with full military honors.

Philip Van Wyck

Philip Van Wyck, a Life Member of The Holland Society of New York, and the 17th longest member as of his date of election in the Society in 1934, died on October 27, 1991, at Irvington, Virginia. He was 88 years old.

Mr. Van Wyck was a direct male descendant of Cornelius Barentse Van Wyck, who came to this country from Wijck, North Brabant, Holland, in the year 1660. He was born on August 30,1903, at Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Philip Van Rensselaer Van Wyck, an early member of our Society and Florence Wadsworth Prescott.

After first attending Hobart College, Mr. Van Wyck graduated in 1923 from Columbia University. In 1934, when he applied for membership in our Society, he listed his occupation as banking, but he always had many other inter­ests, which included finance, government and architecture. He served at one time with the United States Aid Program in Cambodia and in India. He was an active genealogist through­out his life, writing books on the genealogy and origins of his family. His other interests included history, writing, silver smithing, travel, and current events. His years in retirement were spent in England, and later, in Vermont and Virginia. He married Kathleen Hall Grant on October 30, 1925.

He is survived by two sons, Peter Van Wyck of Essex, Massachusetts (a Society member) and Philip Van Wyck (a Society member); a daughter, Kathleen, of Washington, D.C., and others.

A service was held for Mr. Van Wyck at the Chapel at Westminster, Canterbury, England, and interment was at the family grave in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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