ss De K

HALVE MAEN <&uarterlp Jtytaga ine of die ^utrti Colonial

+ Period in Mmectca +

Vol. Ivii No. 3

T^ublijbed by The Holland Society ofO^ezv T^or^

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122 East 58th £trcct u^cw rort, J^r Y/

The Holland Society of New York

122 E A S T 58th STREET, N E W YORK. N.Y. 10022

President

James E. Quackenbush

Advisory Council of Past Presidents: Bruce S. Cornell Thomas M. Van der Veer Kenneth L. Demarest Gerrit W. Van Schaick Walter E. Hopper Dr. Harold O. Voorhis Julian K. Roosevelt Carl A. Willsey

Vice Presidents: New York County Harry A. van Dyke Long Island Adrian T. Bogart, Jr. Dutchess County Clifford A. Crispell, Jr. Ulster County Kenneth E. Hasbrouck Patroons, Albany Henry Bradt Central New York George N. Van Fleet Old Bergen County, N.J Dr. John R. Voorhis Essex and Morris Counties, N.J Daniel S. Van Riper Central New Jersey James R. Van Wagner, Jr. Connecticut-Westchester Harrold W. deGroff New England Tweed Roosevelt Mid West Robert R. Schenck, M.D. Potomac George Bogardus Virginia and the Carolinas Howard E. Bartholf Florida Paul B. Van Dyke, Jr. Pacific Coast George E. Roosevelt, Jr. Niagara Frontier Chase Viele United States Army . Col. William T. Van Atten, Jr., USA (Ret) United States Navy Rear Adm. Blinn Van Mater, Jr. (Ret) United States Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arthur J. Poillon, USMC United States Air Force Captain Laurence C. Vliet, USAF

Treasurer: Secretary: John H. Vander Veer Rev. Louis O. Springsteen

Domine: Associate Domine: Rev. Dr. Howard G. Hageman Rev. Louis O. Springsteen

Trustees: William M. Alrich James P. Snedeker Frederick W. Bogert James M. Van Buren II Ralph L. DeGroff, Jr. Wynant D. Vanderpool, Jr. John O. Delamater Harry A. van Dyke Richard C. Deyo Peter Van Dyke William B. Deyo, Jr. Kendrick Van Pelt Henry H. Livingston Stanley L. Van Rensselaer Hubert T. Mandeville James R. Van 'Wagner, Jr. Robert D. Nostrand John R. Voorhis III Arthur R. Smock, Jr. Peter G. Vosburgh

Trustees Emeritus: Ralph L. DeGroff Wilfred B. Talman

Charles A. Van Patten

Editor:

Rev. Dr. Howard G Hageman

Editorial Committee: Frederick W. Bogert Wilfred B. Talman Clayton Hoagland James M. Von Buren II

David William Voorhees

Burgher Guard Captain: Executive Secretary: William D. Blauvelt, Jr. Mrs. Barbara W. Stankowski

Organized in 1885 to collect and preserve information respecting the settle­ment and early history of the City and State of New York, 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 vear 1675. Inquiries respecting the several criteria for membership are invited.

De Halve Maen, published quarterly by the Society in April. July, October and January, is entered at the post office at New York. N.Y. Communications to the editor should be directed to the Society's address, 122 East 58th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. telephone (212) PLaza 8-1675.

Copyright cThe Holland Society of New York L983.

Editor 's Corner 1983 is a year of celebrations, three of which are of

particular interest to members of the Holland Society. In October, 1683. the good ship Concord landed at Philadelphia with the first group of German settlers in the new world. Their settlement became Germantown, which will celebrate its tricentennial this fall.

And why should a German celebration be of interest to the Holland Society? Simply because of the little noted fact that for the first twenty years or so of its existence, Germantown had a population which was predominately Dutch. A number of Dutch Mennonites and Quakers had responded to William Penn's open invitation to come and settle in his new colony. As can be found in Dr. Wabeke's article in this issue, some of the settlers were also members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Though the settlement of Germantown lies outside the period covered by our Society, it is worth noting that it represents another, if small, Dutch settlement in Colonial America.

The Brooklyn Bridge was officially opened in May, 1883. All kinds of celebrations of this centennial have been held, but little has been said about the way in which it linked New Amsterdam to the five Dutch towns on Long Island, thus making possible the great city of New York.

In commemoration of this centennial, our cover shows the center of the town of Breukelen as it appeared in the mid-eighteenth century. The sleepy village probably had not changed that much since its first settlement a century earlier. Those who know downtown Brooklyn today can hardly imagine such a placid rural scene. Though not entirely, the dramatic change was largely the result of the opening of the bridge to Brooklyn.

Finally, the same year in which Germantown was settled saw the organization of the church in the French settlement of New Paltz, New York, a community which became one of the leading Huguenot settlements in North America. It says much for the cosmopolitan nature of our heritage that the colonial Dutch can join in this year of celebration with the colonial French and the colonial Germans.

IN THIS ISSUE

Dutch Emmigration to British America 1 New Netherland Manuscripts

in United States Repositories 5 In Search of Voices from the Past 8 Surgeon Hans Kierstede of New Amsterdam 11 What Is Low Dutch? 14 Society Activities 18 Here and There with Our Members 20 In Memoriam 21

The cover is reprinted from the History of the First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Breuckeien, 1896. The illustration of the Second Church Edifice, which was built in 1766, was drawn by Miss Elizabeth Sleight in 1808.

DC

HALVE MAEN VOL.LVII • NO. 3 AUGUST 1983 NEW YORK CITY

Dutch Emmigration to British America 1664 - 1 7 7 6

by Bertus Harry Wabeke

With the conquest of New Netherland by the English, the emigration of Hollanders to North America virtually came to an end.

Individuals, of course, continued to make their way to this continent; Governor Dongan of New York, for instance, reported on February 22, 1687, that in the past years "from Holland are come several Dutch Familys." The influence of these individual emigrants was in some cases by no means negligible. J. van Beuren (1680-1775), a student of Boerhaave, came to America at the age of twenty-two. He established himself as a doctor in New York City and was made director of the first New York hospital in 1736. Until 1772, also, the Dutch Reformed Church in America received most of its ministers from the Netherlands. One of them, Theodore Frelinghuysen, a native of Lingen, Germany, came to this country in 1720 and together with Gilbert Tennent paved the way for the "Great Awakening" in the middle colonies.

These examples could undoubtedly be multiplied, but that their sum total would by any means be considerable seems unlikely.

Whatever the size of this individual emigration may have been, only two organized groups of Dutch settlers are known to have reached the American shores after the loss of New Netherland. The first of these, consisting largely of Quakers from the towns of Krefeld and Krisheim in the Rhineland, augmented by a small number of recent converts to Quakerism from various cities in the Netherlands proper, founded Germantown in the years 1683-90. Although the Quakers were in the majority, other persuasions were also represented among the early population of this settlement. The Rev. Rudolf Varick, a Dutch Reformed minister from Long Island, tells us how, during his visit to Pennsylvania in the summer of 1690, he came "to a Dutch village, near Philadelphia . . . . This village," he says, "consists of 44 families, 28 of whom were [sic] Quakers; the other 16 are of the Reformed Church. . . . The Lutherans, Mennonites and Papists, all of whom are much opposed to the Quakers meet lovingly every Sunday, when a Mennonite, Dirck Keyser from Amsterdam, reads a sermon from a book by Joost Harmensen."

This article, originally written in 1944. appears here by permission. 1983 marks the 300th anniversary of the settlement of Germantown.

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In origin, language, and customs all but eight or ten of the 175 original settlers were Netherlanders. Many of them, such as the Op den Graeffs and the Pannebakkers, were direct descendants of Dutch Mennonites who had emigrated to Krefeld or to the Palatinate within the past hundred years. And since the influence of Dutch culture extended well into the Rhineland — in the county of Mors, to which Krefeld belonged, the Dutch language was spoken until the latter part of the 19th century — it must not have been difficult for these people to retain their cultural identity. The ties with the Netherlands were especially close in this period, for until 1702 Mors, like Lingen, remained a private possession of the House of Orange. These former Netherlanders from Krefeld and Krisheim, many of whom had become converted to Quakerism after William Ames first visited them in 1657, were likewise quick to respond to William Penn's call for settlers in Pennsylvania.

During his visits to the continent in 1671 and 1677 Penn had succeeded in making a number of converts to Quakerism in Holland, his mother's home country. Monthly meetings had been organized at Amsterdam and Harlingen. Now, after the acquisition of his new province, Penn made the Netherlands the center of an extensive advertising campaign with the hope of obtaining settlers from both Holland and Germany. From 1681 to 1686 there appeared five pamphlets, three of which were written by Penn himself; they were translated into Dutch and published by his friends Benjamin Furley of Rotterdam, and Willem Sewel and Jacob Claus of Amsterdam. A fourth pamphlet was probably written by one Robert Webb, an Englishman who claimed to have spent seven years in America. By 1685 letters from Dutch settlers in Philadelphia and Germantown also began to be pointed in the Netherlands. The writers were unanimous in their praise of the country. One found "a beautiful land with a healthy atmosphere excellent fountains and springs running through it, beautiful trees from which can be obtained better firewood than the turf [peat] of Holland . . ."; another wrote that "farmers or husbandmen live better than lords. If a workman will only work four or five days in a week he can live grandly. The farmers here pay no tithes, nor contributions. Whatever they have is free for them alone . . . . Handicraftsmen earn here much money, to­gether with their board and drink, which are very good . . . "

Cornelis Bom, a former baker of Haarlem, did not conceal the fact that "during the first year or two, men spent what they had saved," and that he himself had endured great hardships. "But now," he writes, "I am above many . . . and do not consider that I have less of my own than when I left Holland. . . . I have here a shop of many kinds of goods and edibles; sometimes I ride out with merchandise and sometimes bring something back, mostly from the Indians . . . . I have no servants, except one negro whom I bought. I have no rent or tax or excise to pay. I have a cow, . . .ahorse. . ., my pigs increase rapidly . . . I have many chickens and geese, and a garden, and shall next year have an orchard . . . ."

These letters might have been written by one of Van Raalte's or Scholte's settlers in 1847. In fact, the spirit which animated both emigrations was so much alike that Pastorius already anticipated the name which Scholte was to give to his colony in Iowa, when he wrote that the Germantown pioneers had emigrated with the confident expectation that by fleeing there from Europe, "as it were into a second Pella," they might escape the disturbances and oppressions of their day, and lead a quiet, peaceful, godly life. What these people sought were better economic opportunities and above all freedom from the restrictions which the Old World had imposed upon them: freedom from religious oppression, to be sure, but also freedom from taxation and military service. When in the early days of the settlement Philadelphia County taxed the Dutch community, the members appealed to the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania against this taxation without repre­sentation and demanded that levies be made upon them only by their own General Court of Germantown. Such a little incident exposes clearly one of the roots of that fierce, almost medieval spirit of particularism which did so much to disrupt the first British Empire and to establish American independ­ence.

Although some Quakers — Willem Sewel was one of them — believed with Spener that emigration for secular reasons was wrong, for "we should always stay where the Lord leads us," on the whole Penn found generous support for his "Holy Experiment" among the Friends in England and Holland. Two of them, Benjamin Furly and Jacob Telner, deserve special mention, as they were instrumental in effecting the removal of the Krefeld pioneers to Germantown.

Furly, an English Quaker who had settled in Rotterdam as a merchant at an early age, was Penn's chief land-agent on the continent. Through his knowlege of the Dutch language and his extensive business relations in the Rhineland, he was well equipped for this task, and succeeded in selling nearly 50,000 acres in the colony before 1700. Through him most of the Krefeld emigrants purchased their lots. The land was sold to them individually, but it was laid out in a solid block to prevent the settlers from being scattered among the English.

Furly does not seem to have had a monopoly of the land business, however, for on August 16, 1685, three Dutch Quaker households of Krisheim (or Kriegsheim), near Worms in the Palatinate, each bought 200 acres from one Sipman, a Krefeld Quaker who did not emigrate. The three families agreed to travel with the first good wind to Pennsylvania, receive their land from Herman op den Graeff, build dwellings upon it, and pay a quitrent of two rix-dollars a year. Op den Graeff himself had purchased his land from Telner.

Jacob Telner, an Amsterdam merchant, had been converted to Quakerism by Stephen Crisp perhaps as early as 1667. He had met William Penn when the latter visited Amsterdam in 1677 and had spent the next four years in America, traveling

through the middle colonies on the Hudson and the Delaware. Upon his return to Europe, he became an active promoter of emigration to Pennsylvania. In June 1683 Telner accompanied the first thirteen families of emigrants from Krefeld as far as Rotterdam, where they passed into the care of Furly. And here he sold 5,000 acres of land in Pennsylvania, which he himself had bought from Penn on March 10, 1682, to Govert Remke, Lenaert Arents, Isaac Jacobs van Bebber, and the three brothers Op den Graeff.

At Rotterdam Furly and Telner obtained passage for the Krefeld pioneers through James Claypoole, a Quaker merchant of London, who was himself going with his family on the ship Concord. The voyage lasted seventy-four days, but was a comfortable one. "Upon our whole voyage," wrote Herman Issacs op den Graeff, "we did not experience as much incon­venience as between Holland and England. . . . Our number did not decrease upon the ocean but was increased by two, a son and a daughter . . . " When the Krefelders arrived in Philadelphia on October 6, Penn and Pastorius were there to welcome them.

Telner himself crossed over with his wife and daughter in the fall of 1684. After a voyage of twelve weeks he arrived at New York. Here his zeal for Quakerism led him to disturb the services of the Dutch Reformed Church at Breuckelen and Midwout. Having promptly been ousted by the constable, "he shook his head," wrote the Rev. Hendrik Selyns, "brushed the dust from his feet, and delivered up all, who were not willing to listen to his word to the evil one."

In the next year Telner removed with his family to Pennsylvania, where he became the largest landowner in Germantown.

New arrivals from Krefeld and Krisheim continued to swell the ranks of the Germantown settlers, until in 1690 the village counted about 175 inhabitants. By this time all the Quakers from these two towns, with a very few exceptions, had moved to Pennsylvania. Though they were joined by a few Quaker families from the Netherlands, their migration failed to attract any other Dutch groups. Evidently pioneering in the wilds of America did not generally appeal to the Hollanders who were still enjoying religious freedom and fair economic opportunities at home. One cannot blame the compatriots of Cornelis Bom for not waxing enthusiastic over the prospect of enduring "great difficulties and unaccustomed hardships" for a year or two, in order to find oneself not worse off than before leaving Holland.

In this connection it is interesting to note that Surinam, which the Dutch acquired from the English in 1667, had to be peopled largely with foreigners, French Huguenots and German and Swiss emigrants — and this in spite of very liberal conditions of settlement.

Perhaps the high standard of living to which they had been accustomed made the Hollanders less well suited to the primitive conditions of American life than the Germans, who at this time were beginning to pour into the middle colonies. This seems to have been the opinion of Pastorius, the father of German emigration to Pennsylvania, for in 1684 he advised his parents to "send only Germans," if they wished the settlement to be a success; " . . . The Hollanders (as sad experience has taught me) are not so easily satisfied, which in this new land is a very necessary quality."

Nevertheless, several of the Germantown pioneers made good. One Jan Luykensdied worth ZT287. Dirk Isaacs op den Graeff served as the town's chief executive in 1693; his brother Abraham made a reputation for himself as a linen

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weaver; and both of them were among the signers of the famous Germantown petition against slavery in 1688. Reynier Jansen, a lace maker from Sneek in the province of Friesland, who had emigrated with his family in 1698, became the official printer for the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting and for the Province as well; in this latter capacity he printed the 1700 version of its laws. Another Dutch emigrant, Willem Rittinghuyzen of Arnhem, established the first paper mill in the colony.

Until 1709 Germantown remained predominantly Dutch; then the rising tide of German immigration engulfed the Dutch-speaking population and in a short time swept away all traces of the Dutch origin of the town.

The only other known attempt by Netherlanders to establish a colony in North America in the period between the fall of New Netherland and the Revolution was made by a number of followers of Jean de Labadie, who after the death of their leader in 1674 had established themselves at Wieuwerd, Friesland, on an estate of the three ladies Van Aerssen van Sommelsdyk.

Labadism was only one of the many forms in which the religious enthusiasm of the latter part of the 17th century manifested itself. The movement started as a radical develop­ment of the anti-Cartesian party within the Dutch Reformed Church. With the Quakers the Labadists had in common the supreme reliance upon the "inner light" and a strict moral code. Their church was to be a community of the elect, separated from the world by its pure teachings. At Wieuwerd the Labadists attempted to put into practice the communism of the early Christian Church. But they soon discovered that it was impossible to concentrate a large group at any one point without finding some form of remunerative employment for the members. As the community increased, therefore, it became necessary to establish daughter-churches in other localities, and this led them to consider the possibility of colonization in America.

In order to investigate conditions in New York, the Labadists at Wieuwerd sent over two of their number, Peter Sluyter and Jasper Danckaerts, who from September 23, 1679, to July 23, 1680, traveled through the middle colonies under the assumed names of P. Vorstman and J. Schilders. Here they became acquainted with Ephraim, the eldest son of Augustine Herman, a native of Prague, who had come to this country in the service of the Dutch West India Company. Herman had settled in Maryland in 1661 on a grant of land from Lord Baltimore, consisting of 24,000 acres in what is now Cecil County, Maryland, and Newcastle County, Delaware. {See map on following page).

At the invitation of Ephraim, Sluyter and Danckaerts came to New Castle (the former New Amstel) and from there visited one of his father's estates. "Bohemia Manor" on the Elk River. Having acquired a title to part of this estate through some obscure deal (which the elder Herman in later years seems to have regretted, for he had to be forced by law to surrender the land), the two Labadists returned to Europe. They took with them a detailed account of their doings which still constitutes one of our best sources for the social history of New York State at this time.

In 1683 they returned to Maryland with a small group of fellow Labadists from Wieuwerd, and on August 11 of the next year acquired "3750 acres eastwardly from the first creek that empties into the Bohemia River from the north or northeast, to near the old St. Augustine, or Manor Church."

The Labadists in Maryland never were a very large group.

At the height of its development the colony numbered slightly over a hundred men, women, and children, many of whom were converts from the Dutch population of New York rather than emigrants from Holland. Neither in the home country nor in America did the Labadist experiment in communism succeed. The colonists did not remain true to their original ideals. For example, before coming to this country they had been opposed both to the cultivation of tobacco and to slavery. Soon, however, they began to grow tobacco on a large scale, and even made use of slaves for this purpose. Selfish interests broke up the community. In 1698 the "Labadie Tract" was divided; Sluyter himself ended as a wealthy landowner; and five years after his death in 1722, the Labadist colony had passed out of existence.

The process of disintegration, however, had barely set in when the English Quaker, Samuel Bownas, visited the Labadists in the summer of 1702. In his journal he has left us an interesting description of their communal life.

. . .The women eat by themselves and the men by themselves having all things in common, respecting their household affairs so that none could claim any more right than another to any part of their stock, whether in trade or husbandry; and if any had a mind to join with them whether rich or poor, they must put what they had in the common stock, and if they had a mind to leave the society they must likewise leave what they brought, and go out empty handed . . . being a very large family, in all upwards of a hundred men women and children [they] carried on something of the manufactory of linen, and had a very large plantation of corn, tobacco, flax and hemp, together with cattle of several kinds. But at my last going there [in 1728] these people were all scattered and gone, and nothing of them remaining of a religious community in that shape.

Numerically the migration of the Dutch Quakers from Krefeld and of the Labadists from Wieuwerd was of little importance. All in all not more than 300 persons were involved. And although it is of course impossible to estimate the size of the individual emigration in this period, we may safely assume that it was a mere trickle. Those who in 1760-63 advocated the continued use of the Dutch language in the services of the Dutch Reformed Church never advanced the argument "that newcomers needed the gospel in their own tongue," says Mr. Hansen in his report on the Dutch element in the American colonies; and he reaches the conclusion that "the Dutch stock in 1790 was the product of the 17th century colonization of New Netherland."

In 1673 the town of New Orange (i.e. New York) reported to the States General that there were still from 6000 to 7000 Netherlanders in America. The majority of these were concentrated in Albany, New York City, and Ulster County, from where some migrated in a southwesterly direction into New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and — by 1781 — as far as Kentucky. A few of these migrations are interesting to trace. When Lord Cornbury in the early 18th century attempted to foist the Anglican Church upon the Dutch in New York, many moved to New Jersey where they settled the Raritan valley. The transportation of two shiploads of dissatisfied Dutchmen from New York to St. James Island, South Carolina, in 1673 accounts for the presence in this region of such truly Dutch names as Vedder and Masyck.

On the whole, however, the Hollanders were less mobile than other racial groups. It is estimated that at the end of the

yp

The northeast portion of Augustine Herrman's map of Maryland, 1673-

colonial period there were about 100,000 people of Dutch extraction in America. Of these, 85,000 were in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware — within the original territory of New Netherland. In none of the other states did the Dutch exceed 1500, except in Pennsylvania, where they numbered 7500.

For a century or more after the conquest of New Netherland the Dutch continued to dominate the financial, political, and social life of New York. The Dutch language remained in use in the services of the Reformed Church until 1764 in New York City, until 1782 in Albany, and as late as 1808 at Kingston. Francis Adrian van der Kemp, a refugee from Holland who came to this country in 1788, notes in his auto­biography that his wife was able to converse in Dutch with Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Tappan, and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. And Huidekoper found in 1796 that "on Long Island, in New

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York, along the North River, at Albany, Schenectady etc. the low dutch was yet in general the common language of most of the old people, and particularly of the negroes; though in New York it had begun to be superseded by the English language."

When in 1847 the first large-scale emigration of Nether-landers to America set in, the newcomers found a devoted friend and helper in a descendant of one of the early settlers at Rensselaerswyck, the Rev. Isaac N. Wyckoff, pastor of the Second Reformed Dutch Church in Albany. As a child in Millstone, New Jersey Wyckoff had not learned the English language until he went to grade school, and it is said that he continued to speak his native Dutch tongue "with accuracy and pleasure to the end of his life."

Thus the oldest Dutch tradition in America was still sufficiently alive to welcome the founders of the new settlements in Michigan and Iowa. ^ L

New Netherland Manuscripts in United States Repositories

by Charles Gehring

I

One of my favorite metaphors was expressed by the Spanish writer Cervantes when he said of translation that it is "like viewing a piece of tapestry on the wrong side through which the figures are distinguishable yet there are so many ends and threads that the beauty of the work is obscured." Unfortunately the history of the West India Company colony of New Netherland is viewed by most Americans in the same way. A reference to New Netherland or the Dutch in New York usually conjures up images of portly burghers smoking long clay pipes on stoeps or bowling on tavern greens, and of Pieter Stuyvesant stomping along the ramparts of the fort in New Amsterdam on his wooden leg. Such stereotypes of the early Dutch settlers and officials have contributed to reducing the role of New Netherland in the affairs of colonial America to a sort of historical aberration to be disregarded without further consideration. However, the history of New Netherland warrants much more extensive analysis than it has had in the past because this colony of the Dutch West India Company was one of the major participants in the struggle for control of Atlantic trade during the seventeenth century.

In area New Netherland extended from the Connecticut River to Delaware Bay, including within its boundaries the present states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and the western half of Connecticut. The colony's location between New England in the north and Maryland and Virginia in the south brought it into direct and constant conflict with English interests in North America for most of the seventeenth century. Therefore, any records surviving from the New Netherland period form an essential corpus of primary source material necessary for a thorough evaluation of English-Dutch relations in Nor th America and of the early development of the Middle Colonies. It is my purpose in this paper to present a survey of those surviving Dutch manuscripts relating to New Netherland in United States repositories, review past attempts at translation of Dutch records and present translation projects, and suggest what potentials exist in the Netherlands for supporting the primary source material in America.

II

T h e most extensive source of Dutch manuscripts relating to New Netherland are held by repositories within New York State. At the New York State Archives in Albany are preserved the official papers generated by the central administration of New Netherland. They comprise the remains of the archives at New Amsterdam which were surrendered to the English in 1664 and again in 1674, then surrendered by the English to the Americans at the end of the War of Independence. Amazingly these Dutch records have survived two fires, storage in the hold of a leaky warship, about seven relocations and many years of neglect. As the official records of a West India Company colony, they contain the registers of the provincial

This paper was prepared for a symposium held at the City Museum of Amsterdam February 7-8. 1983- Dr. Gehring is with the New York State Library in Albany.

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secretary from 1638 to 1662 in which are recorded copies of powers of attorney, leases, building contracts, wills, inventories, etc.; council minutes from 1638 to 1664, which are the executive, legislative and judicial proceedings of the director-general and council of New Netherland; correspondence from 1646 to 1664, containing communications with the directors of the West India Company in Amsterdam, the governors of neighboring colonies and the subordinate officers in New Netherland; laws and ordinances from 1647 to 1664; papers relating to the administration of the Delaware region of New Netherland from 1646 to 1664; land papers from 1630 to 1664, containing patents and conveyances of property through­out the colony; papers relating to the administration of Curacao, Bonaire and Aruba from 1640 to 1665; and papers of the final administration of New Netherland from 1673 to 1674. Unfortunately, these papers do not represent a complete inventory of the records kept at New Amsterdam from 1626 to 1664. Missing are council minutes prior to 1638, with several one to two year gaps thereafter; correspondence prior to 1646; and various other record books, such as "The Copybook of Petitions" and "The Book of Resolutions." Most significant is the loss of the letterbooks which contained copies of correspondence to the directors in Amsterdam and to other officials throughout the colony. In spite of these losses, the surviving manuscripts form a most complete record of this seventeenth-century colony, especially of the directorship of Petrus Stuyvesant.

The Manuscript and Special Collections section of the New York State Library in Albany holds the largest collection of papers relating to the patroonship of Rensselaerswyck on the upper Hudson. It contains 122 boxes of manuscripts, 29 rent ledgers. 45 boxes of leases and 9 boxes of survey returns, dating from the establishment of the patroonship in 1630 through the closing phases of the manorial system in the mid-nineteenth century. The State Library also preserves numerous collections of papers from the descendants of the original settlers of New Netherland. Local records for the Fort Orange-Beverwyck jurisdiction can be found at the Albany County Clerk's Office, the Albany Institute of History and Art and the First Church in Albany. These collections contain court minutes , notarial papers, land papers and some private correspondence. Moving down the Hudson to Kingston (formerly the Esopus region of New Netherland) there are two repositories of Dutch manuscripts: the Senate House Museum which has miscellaneous land papers and the Ulster County Clerk's Office which holds the local records of this central Hudson area, including court minutes and secretary's papers. Further down the Hudson at Hyde Park, the Roosevelt Library has custody of the "Livingston Papers." Among this large collection are the texts of proposals made to the Iroquois during the interim English administration from 1664 to 1673; miscellaneous legal papers; instructions to the English commander at Albany: and correspondence between the last Dutch director general and the magistrates at Willemstadt (Albany) from 1673 through 1674.

The next large source of Dutch manuscripts is in the New

York City area. The Museum of the City of New York has a small collection of land papers, while the City Clerk's Office preserves the original records of New Amsterdam after it became a municipality in 1653- These records include court minutes, land papers, orphanmaster accounts and notarial papers. The New York Public Library has a large group of manuscripts called the "Bontemantel Collection." Hans Bontemantel was the official of the West India Company in charge of New Netherland operations. He was responsible for screening all incoming correspondence from the colony, which he then summarized for presentation to the directors. He kept records of everything pertaining to this region including extracts of letters from Petrus Stuyvesant, memoranda on reports from the colony and copies of documents sent over for approval, such as the promulgation of New Amsterdam as a municipality and the articles of surrender of New Sweden on the Delaware. Among these papers is a group of manuscripts relating to the Dutch capture of New York in 1673, including the secret cipher and instructions of the Zeeland squadron commanded by Cornells Everts/, de Jonge. The New York Public Library Annex has some land papers as well as the council minutes and protocol of New Harlem from 1662 to 1674. The Pierpont Morgan Library has a collection of land papers relating mainly to property along lower Broadway in New York City.

Next to the New York State Archives, the New-York Historical Society has the largest holdings of Dutch manuscripts relating to New Netherland in the United States. Of special interest is a bundle of manuscripts recently found at the bottom of a trunk stored in a Manhattan warehouse since 1910. It contains correspondence between Govert Loockermans and the merchant family Verbrugge in the Netherlands. Loockermans eventually became one of the most prominent merchant-traders in New Netherland. Through his letters much information can be derived concerning seventeenth-century trading operations from Fort Orange to Virginia. His letters also contain many pieces of gossip, such as the flight to avoid prosecution and death of the Fort Orange commissary, Harmen Myndertsz van den Bogaert, and the birth of a son to Mevrouw Stuyvesant. The Societv also holds a large collection ot land papers and some letters, such as Johannes Bogaert's account ol Stuyvesant's expedition to the South River in 1655 to capture New Sweden.

In Brooklyn, the Long Island Historical Society has a collection of land papers for the village of Amersfoort while Saint Francis College maintains custody of the town records of Midwout, New Utrecht, Boswyck and Flatlands. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has the largest collection of Dutch manuscripts outside of New York State, including a portion of the surviving "Bontemantel Collection," numerous land papers and extensive extracts from the Dutch records now in the New York State Archives which were made in 1740 to settle a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Massachusetts Archives, Massachusetts Historical Society and the Connecticut State Library each have a few letters from the correspondence between the Dutch colony and New England. At the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey is preserved the correspondence from domines in New Amsterdam to the Classis of Amsterdam from 1648 to 1674. In Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress has land papers from the South River or Delaware region of New Netherland.

Moving away from the east coast, one of the most interesting collections of Dutch manuscripts can be found in California at the Huntington Library. The collection includes the 1625

instructions to the first director, Willem Verhulst , regarding the administration of New Netherland; instructions to the engineer, Cryn Fredericksz, for the construction of Fort Ams te rdam; a letter from the first minister , Domine Michaelius, in which he describes the colony on Manhattan Island in 1628; the journal kept by the barber-surgeon, Harmen Myndertsz van den Bogaert, while on a trading mission through the Mohawk Valley and beyond during the winter of 1634 /35 ; and papers relating to Cornells Melyn's possession of Staten Island.

Further details about the manuscript holdings of the above-mentioned repositories can be found in A Guide to Dutch Manuscripts Relating to New Netherland, which I compiled in 1977 and was published by the New York State Education Department the following year.1

Francis Adrian Van der Kemp at age 24-

III

The first concerted effort to make seventeenth-century Dutch records accessible for historical research in America was made during the second decade of the nineteenth century, when Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York commissioned Adriaen van der Kemp to produce a translation of the archives of New Netherland then kept in the Secretary of State's Office. Already in his sixties and with failing eyesight, Van der Kemp began the enormous task at his home in Barneveld, New York. Over a period of three years he produced 42 volumes of translations. Purported to be translations of all the surviving Dutch records of New Nether land, they were anything but complete. In Van der Kemp's haste to finish the task before his benefactor was voted out of office, he omitted long passages without comment and summarized other portions of the records wherever he saw fit. Although never published, his manuscript volumes of translations became the only access to the New Netherland period throughout the nineteenth century. Historians such as E.B. O'Callaghan and Samuel Hazard made extensive use of Van der Kemp's translations in their publications History of New Netherland and Annals of Pennsylvania respectively.2

1 A Guide to Dutch Manuscripts Relating to New Netherland, in United States Repositories, compiled and edited by Charles Gehring, Albany, 1978.

- E.B. O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, 2 volumes. New York, 1855; Samuel Ha/.ard, Annals of Pennsylvania from the Discovery of the De/a ware, Philadelphia, 1850.

)

Unfortunately Van der Kemp's translations proved to be so unreliable that the secondary literature based on his work can now only be used with extreme caution. O'Callaghan became so disaffected with these "Albany Records" (by which name they were known) that he suggested a new translation be undertaken. Following his own advice, O'Callaghan eventually translated the first four volumes of records before his death; however, as with Van der Kemp's works, they were also to remain unpublished. Before beginning his translations, O'Callaghan rearranged the 49 Dutch record books (which were identified by a single and double lettering system) into 23 numbered volumes, ordering them chronologically and according to type. He also provided each volume with a table of contents and an index before having them bound in leather. Although he acted out of a desire to preserve these neglected manuscripts the best way he could conceive, he destroyed their archival integrity in the process. In 1865 O'Callaghan compiled a calendar to his reorganization of the records, which is still used as a guide to the "Dutch Colonial Manu­scripts" in the New York State Archives.3

O'Callaghan's major contribution to New Netherlandic studies, however, is his translation of the so-called "Holland Documents" which represent the efforts of John Romeyn Brodhead to collect papers in Europe relating to New York's colonial history. When Brodhead returned to America in 1844 with 16 volumes or 4000 pages of transcripts of original records from the archives in The Hague and Amsterdam, O'Callaghan was given the task of editing and translating the material for publication. By 1851 the four volume set entitled The Documentary History of New York appeared in print.4 It consisted of selections from Brodhead's Dutch, English and French transcripts collected in Europe. A decision to translate and publish the remaining transcripts culminated in the monumental Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York in 11 volumes, of which the first two volumes are from Dutch records.5 Volume 2 of this series not only contains records from European sources, but also a trans­lation of the "Colve Papers" from volume 23 of the "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts" in the New York State Archives. O'Callaghan decided i.o include these records of the Dutch ad­ministration of their recaptured colony from 1673 through 1674 because he found the final volumes of Brodhead's transcripts to be "imperfect and incomplete." In addition to the above-mentioned "Holland Documents" O'Callaghan also

' Calendar of Dutch Historical Manuscripts. compiled and edited by E.B. O'Callaghan. Albany. 1865 (Reprinted by the Gregg Press/Ridge-wood, N.J. in 1968)'.

' The Documentary History of New York, volumes 1-4, translated and edited by E.B. O'Callaghan. 1849-185 1. Albany.

s Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, volumes 1-1 1. edited by E.B. O'Callaghan.'Albany. 1855-1861.

'' Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland. 1638-1674. translated and edited by E.B. O'Callaghan. Albany, 1868; The Records of New Am­sterdam. 1653-1674. 7 volumes, edited bv B. Fernow, New York. 1897.

7 Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York. volumes 12-14, edited by B. Fernow. Albany". 1877-1883.

H The Minutes of the Orphan-masters ofNew Amsterdam, 1655-1663. 2 volumes, translated and edited by B. Fernow. New York. 1902.

'' New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. 4 volumes, translated and annotated by A.J.F. van Laer. Baltimore, 1974.

10 New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, translated and edited bv Charles T. Gehring. Volumes XX-XX1. Delaware Papers. 1664-1682, Baltimore. 1977; Land Papers: GG. HH and II. Baltimore. 1980; Volumes XVIII-XIX,Delaware Papers. 1648-1664,Baltimore, 1981 ; Volume V, Council Minutes. 1652-1654. Baltimore. 1983.

translated and edited the Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland extracted from the "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts" as well as The Records of New Amsterdam kept in the New York City Clerk's Office.6

O'Callaghan was followed by Berthold Fernow as translator and editor of New York's "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts." Fernow's plan was to produce a new series of translations drawn from the surviving Dutch archives of New Netherland. Instead of following O'Callaghan's rearrangement of the records as represented in his calendar Fernow separated and reordered manuscripts according to three geographical locations: the Delaware, the Hudson River Valley and Long Island; in many cases displacing paragraphs from the same letter to three separate volumes. His translations were published in 1881 as Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York; added to O'Callaghan's series they became volumes 12 through 14.7 After Fernow's retirement from State service, he also translated the records of the orphanmasters kept in the New York City Clerk's Office.8

Berthold Fernow was followed by A.J.F. van Laer at the New York State Library. Van Laer's plan was to produce a completely new series of translations beginning with volume one of the "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts." At first he intended to revise and edit O'Callaghan's translations of volumes 1 -4 for publication. However, after comparing O'Callaghan's translations with the originals, he decided that & new translation was necessary. In 1911, when the disastrous fire broke out in the State Library, Van Laer had just completed his translation of the first volume. Unfortunately, the volume of manuscripts together with Van Laer's translation were on his desk the morning of the fire. Although everything in his office area was totally destroyed, he still had O'Callaghan's translation which fortunately survived the fire, and some 60 pages of transcripts of the Dutch which he had left at home the day before. Miraculously the Dutch records (except for volume one) survived with varying degrees of damage. Because these Dutch records were infrequently called for in the Library, they had occupied the lower shelves in the manuscript storage area. When the upper shelves full of English manuscripts collapsed in the fire, they formed a protective cover for the archives of New Netherland. Also casualties of the fire were Brodhead's 80 volumes of transcripts of colonial records which he had brought back from Europe and Van der Kemp's 42 volume translation of the "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts." Eventually Van Laer revised volume one of O'Callaghan's translation and produced his own translations for volumes 2-4. His translations, however, remained unpublished until 1974 when the Flolland Society of New York supported their publication in the series entitled New York Historical Manu­scripts.''

Publication of these first four volumes stimulated interest in reviving the Library's translation program after a lapse of over 50 years and culminated in the creation of the New Netherland Project with the writer as translator and editor. Since 1974 eight volumes of "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts" have been translated and have appeared in print, i.e., four volumes of records pertaining to the Delaware region of New Netherland from 1648 to 1682; three volumes of land papers and a volume of council minutes from 1652 through 1654."' Remaining to be translated are four more volumes of council minutes, five volumes of correspondence, and single volumes of laws and ordinances, Curacao papers, and papers relating to the administration of Governor Colve. I am presently working

on volume 17 containing papers relating to the administration of Curacao from 1640-1665 . This volume of translations will feature the Dutch text on facing pages and will be offered as a commemoration of the 200 years of peaceful relations between our two countries.

IV

In addition to producing English translations of the "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts" in the New York State Archives, the New Netherland Project is also concerned with collecting copies of seventeenth-century Dutch manuscripts relating to New Netherland kept in other repositories. The centralization of such source material at the New York State Library will not only make it possible for New Netherland scholars to do most of their primary research at one location, but also support the translation project by making it possible to reconstruct lost or damaged portions of the "Dutch Colonial Manuscripts" through the use of related manuscripts in other repositories. To date the following collections have been copied for use at the State Library: most of the manuscripts in U.S. repositories from Massachusetts to California; the "old" West India Company

Bleecker, Roosevelt, Ten Eyck, Stuyvesant, Van Schaack, Van Ness. Van Buren. Van Rensselaer, Peekskill, Rhinebeck, Saugerties, Kinderhook . . . names to conjure history. Of the traces left behind by the Dutch settlers of precolonial New York, words alone still live something like a life of their own.

"When the English took over New Netherland in 1664," says Charly Gehring, melancholy lacing his affable conversa­tional baritone, "Dutch went into gradual retreat. First English replaced it as the language of common use for administration, civil justice, and contracts. Then it began to give way in business and commerce. If you were going to succeed as a merchant, you shipped through New York City. To deal in New York, you had to be able to talk with an English-speaking broker or middleman.

"Eventually Dutch receded to the farms and into homes. Displaced languages always survive in isolated areas. In New York State, Dutch hung on mainly in the Hudson Valley, especially around Albany. The Dutch Reformed Church held services in the language into the 1800s, and you could find Dutch-speaking enclaves down through the early 1900s. By then of course, the language was quite different from what the first Netherlander arrivals had brought to the New World."

The influence of English on eighteenth century Dutch speech in New York State was the topic of Gehring's doctoral dissertation more than a decade ago. But today it's the older, "purer" tongue that occupies his time. In the manuscripts room of the New York State Library in Albany, he has since 1974 been probing an ancient cache of records housed there: the curling, cracked, cherished documentary heritage of New Netherland.

That the material exists here and now is unlikely in itself. It consists largely of official papers ("Council Minutes," "Laws and Ordinances," "Land Papers," more) of de Geoctroyeerde

Mr. Harkness' article is reprinted by permission from the magazine New York Alive.

records at the Royal Archives in The Hague; the manuscripts relating to the City's colony of New Amstel and Simon Hart 's summaries of the notarial records relating to North America at the Amsterdam Archives.

Although most of the official records kept at the archives in The Hague and Amsterdam relating to New Netherland have been located and copied for our purposes in the New Netherland Project, still lacking is the private correspondence from settlers in the colony to their relatives and friends back in the fatherland. Such personal letters and records would reveal a great deal about the texture of Dutch colonial society and add another dimension to the history of New Netherland. Our major problem is the location of such sources, which would probably be found in local archives, historical societies or in private hands. Any assistance in locating such material would be greatly appreciated. It is hoped that in the near future historians will have at their disposal the primary source material necessary for a balanced and complete examination of the Dutch colonial experience in North America and a basis for understanding the particular problems of the later English colonies from Connecticut to Delaware Bay. 3Kk

For nearly a decade, Charly Gehring has pored over fragile Dutch documents trying to establish a link with the past.

Westindische Compagnie, the chartered West India Company of the Netherlands. Until recently, at least, these papers were eclipsed by English language records among scholars special­izing in New York history.

From the New Netherlanders in the mid-1660s, the Dutch documents passed first to the English usurpers, later to victorious American revolutionaries. For two centuries they were shunted from one storeroom to another, dank back room to musty closet, until in 1881 the State Library at last laid hands upon them and recognized their value.

Compared to contemporary records held elsewhere (by the Pennsylvania Historical Society, for example), much of New York's precolonial archive is in sad shape — the paper brittle, ink faded, thirds and halves of paragraphs crisped away in a three-day fire that raged through the old state library in 1911.

In Search of Voices from the Past by James Harkness

language courses were for girls. If you were a boy, that just wasn't something that was supposed to interest you."

Young males, says Gehring, took their guidance counselors' advice and went into engineering. "In those days engineering was //, mostly civil and electrical. When I went to VMI, I went as an engineering major — for about two weeks, anyway. From that I switched to history, then physics. Physicists have to read German, so I started German classes, and finally majored in German itself when I moved to West Virginia University.

"It took me a long time to find out that this was what I really wanted to do."

After graduating from the University of West Virginia, Gehring took advantage of a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Freiburg. There his interest broadened to include Dutch. "I was taking all the Germanic languages I could, and Dutch was one of them." Back in the United States he entered a doctoral program at the University of Indiana. Three years later he received a doctorate in Germanic Linguistics, with a concentration in Netherlandic studies.

For historians, New York's Dutch-language archive ought to be a priceless treasure. It sets forth the New World experience of settlers whose culture, customs, ideas, and institutions differed widely from those of the English majority, whose chronicle eventually would become the "real" history of New York State and America itself. Moreover, Gehring points out. New York's Dutch documents have not yet been minutely examined and analyzed.

"Unlike the records in, say, Virginia or Maryland, our manuscripts haven't been exhaustively worked over. There is a much greater possibility for discovery, finding out things we didn't already know, uncovering new knowledge."

But unlike French, Spanish, or even Italian, Dutch is a language in which few American scholars feel at home. For the "possibility of discovery" to be realized, translation is essential. Even for the fluent linguist, however, translating New York's archive is triply difficult. First, languages change over time. The resemblance between seventeenth century Dutch and the modern tongue is often tricky, as is the similarity of either to the dialect that evolved in New York Dutch communities after 1664.

"From the eighteenth century onward," explains Gehring, "grammar simplified and the vocabulary took on numerous loan words from the majority language. You could compare it to French as spoken in Quebec today, or the Afrikaans dialect of the South African Boers."

Second, between the seventeenth and eighteenth century there occurred a significant alteration in handwriting. While the flowing style of the 1720s is already recognizably, legibly modern, earlier script uses Dutch rather than English ortho­graphy, including differently drawn characters demanding specialized study by the modern-day translator. According to historian Alice Kenney, transliteration may have been the shoal on which foundered a 1767 proposal to translate Dutch records owned by the city of Albany.

Finally the physical condition of New York's Dutch docu­ments is a cause for despair. Before the 1911 fire, several previous translators had approached the material. The best of them was A.J.F. Van Laer, an erudite Dutch immigrant to New York. Judiciously consulting the spotty work of prede­cessors, but relying mostly on his own background in languages and history, Van Laer labored two decades before disaster struck. During the days when the fire ravished the library, he

Much of New York's precolonial archive is in sad shape. Document at left bears signature of Peter Stuyvesant, last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam, 1 7 th century name for lower Manhattan.

Page after fragile page lies flat in buff-colored folders, each side of the paper impressed with thin protective gauze. In the air around the restricted-access shelves where the documents are carefully stored, there hangs a peculiar odor. Dry, acrid, faintly smoky — a silent scent from yesterday, the wordy smell of the past.

For Charly Gehring the aroma is as delicious as the savor of a madeleine: that tiny, shell-shaped spongecake in Remem­brance of Things Past, whose seductive taste opened up for Proust's narrator "the whole vast structure of recollection." But Gehring's madeleine has twelve thousand pages, every one in Reformation-era Dutch. At the rate of one, two, or three laborious pages daily, he proposes to translate them all.

Dressed for another time and place, Gehring himself might appear a hale New Netherlander: barrel-chested, with a boer thickness of wrist and a burgher generosity of waistline, his shaggy brown mustache salted with gray. Actually he is of German and Italian descent, born in the late thirties in his grandmother's house in Fort Plain, Montgomery County. Ethnic Dutch populated the Mohawk Valley in relatively large numbers, but "about the only things recognizably Dutch were the names. Everything else had disappeared or lost its Dutch associations."

Gehring's grandfather emigrated from Germany after 1848. Fleeing to avoid yet another bloody European conflict, he arrived in America just in time for the Civil War. He fought on the Union side in the Red River Valley campaign, survived, and returned afterward to up-state New York.

It was because of his grandparents, Gehring remembers, that he was able to nurture an early fascination with languages. "They were my only exposure to anything other than English. When I was growing up in the 1950s, the schools offered only Latin and French, if they offered any language. Not only that,

plunged again and again into the flames, while firemen trained hoses on him as he tried to rescue some portion of a life's work. Later, his son recalled Van Laer's weary, disspirited reconstructions:

"I can still see my father struggling with these papers. They had to be handled very carefully. He had envelopes in his desk drawer filled with small pieces of corners, etc. that had broken off. These were sorted by sizes so he could select the apparent proper size and then try to fit it in the proper corner according to the wording. A very tedious procedure . . . ."

From Van Laer, Charly Gehring has inherited a task no less numbing. On good days he peers painfully at brittle, aging paper, cryptic lines scrawled in an ink barely discernible from the discolored background. On other days he must use logic, research, and whatever remains of Van Laer to piece together whole passages singed into oblivion. Chronic eyestrain, he savs, is an "occupational hazard" now requiring progressively stronger lenses for correction. Before beginning his project nearly eight years ago, Gehring's vision was unimpaired. Since then, "I've gone through two, no, three pairs of glasses. Considering the problems I've been having lately, I guess it must be close to time for number four."

With the New Netherland project grant from NEH now at risk because of federal budget reductions, Gehring's zeal still shows no sign of flagging.

It's hard not to wonder why. In the larger context of American and even New York history, the Dutch episodes are interesting enough but hardly a crucial matter even to the confirmed antiquarian. Anyway, the framework of the story is already well known . . . so why does Charly Gehring go on puzzling, drumming his heavy fingers, squinting above mildewed sheaves of paper and cramped, queer-looking calligraphy?

"If only twenty percent of the official records have been translated, many of those imperfectly, how can the story really be 'well-known'? Besides," Gehring explains patiently, "the bulk of what has been written to date is political history: wars fought, officials elected, treaties entered into and broken. On the other hand, we don't understand a lot about the economics, the communal society of New Netherland — what life was like while the political events were taking place. At best people think of Washington Irving's Knickerbocker satires, with a fat old Dutchman drawing at a long-stemmed pipe, or dozing in the sun after too heavy a meal.

Early lithograph, entitled "View in Albany, "shows house of first Dutch governors at right. (From collection of McKinney Library, Albany Institute of History & Art).

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When he finally completes the painstaking translation of Reformation - era Dutch documents, Gehring hopes to have a more vivid picture of daily life among early Netv Yorkers.

"New Netherland wasn't like that. For the most part it was a vibrant frontier society. It drew hunters, trappers, shrewd traders, the kind of men and women who could make their way in a wilderness — the kind of people, too, who sometimes couldn't survive as well in a settled, orderly community.

"The New Netherland documents fill in more and more of that picture, the picture of day-to-day existence. If you think of political history as the skeleton of the story, then social history is what puts flesh on the bones."

Gehring speaks also of the compelling links between language and culture: "If you want to hang onto your ethnic roots, stay in touch with your linguistic ones. Losing your language is the first step toward losing your ethnic identity."

Call it Gehring's Paradox, then: Of all history's debris — architecture and artifacts, institutions and ideologies — lan­guage is at once the most intangible and, by way of records such as New York's Dutch archive, the most immediately present. Stuyvesant, Peekskill, Van Schaack, Rhinebeck . . . only the names haven't been changed. A matter of chance? Who knows? If so, the same brand of chance has placed into the hands of Charly Gehring, a modern German-Italian New Yorker from Fort Plain, the text of a message some twelve thousand pages in length, written in Dutch over three hundred years in the past.

Nor is accident without its irony. In 1911, when fire first licked up the walls of the old state library, the Dutch records were kept in a room on shelves running along flush with the floor. Above them were several levels of papers written in English — stored higher, says Gehring, because they were more frequently used and considered more important.

As one bookcase after another collapsed into the con­flagration, the English documents tumbled down, piling thickly on the neglected ones below. In the alternating intense heat and cascading water from the firemen's hoses, the English material disintegrated, fused, and formed a cocoon over the documents beneath. When librarians afterward began sifting gloomily through the rubble, they discovered the scorched mache shell. Under it, baked brown, permeated with an overwhelming smell of smoke (and perhaps as well the faint, hauntingly delectable odor of a scalloped madeleine), most of the New Netherland archive had come through intact. ffi&

Surgeon Hans Kierstede of New Amsterdam by David M. Riker

One of the most respected medical practitioners of New Amsterdam was surgeon Hans Kierstede. Surgeon Kierstede was first mentioned in the records of New Netherland in May of 1638, when he testified as a surgeon in the employ of the West India Company. From later records it is learned that he was born circa 1616 in Magdeburg, Germany. He and his brother Jochem were probably refugees after the complete sack of Magdeburg by Count Tilly's troops in the year 1631.

Hans Kierstede is referred to in the records as surgeon Hans Kierstede or Mr. Hans. The abbreviation Mr. was for Master, or Meester in Dutch. The Meester was for Heelmeester, the Dutch word for surgeon, in Kierstede's case. Some historians at the end of the last century, referred to Kierstede as "Doctor." There is no indication that he graduated from a University nor that the title "Doctor" was ever used by Kierstede during his lifetime. He probably received his training as an apprentice to a member of the Barber-Surgeon guild. After this apprenticeship period, and the passing of an examination, Kierstede would have been admitted into the guild. The surgeons serving aboard West India Company ships and at its trading posts came from the Barber-Surgeon's guild.1 In 1652 a petition of the surgeons of New Amsterdam, requesting the exclusive right to shave, was rejected by the governing council.

There are a number of early records which show that surgeon Kierstede was called on by the governing council to testify concerning wounds. One of these cases occurred during May of 1639 when a soldier at Fort Amsterdam, Jochem Beeckman, stabbed another soldier, Jacob Juriaensen, in the groin. In a declaration before Secretary Cornells van Tienhoven, dated May 17, 1639, Kierstede declared that the great artery and nerve were cut. Kierstede said, "that the wound progressed favorably up to the eighth or ninth day and acted as if it would reach a proper and satisfactory cure. The patient did not follow the surgeon's orders and did not observe a proper diet according to the instructions of the surgeon, who found him standing up and bleeding in front of his bunk . . . . He bled so profusely at the time that the surgeon could with difficulty stop the bleeding and since then the wound has repeatedly bled once or twice a day. This caused the patient to grow weak from loss of blood so that the surgeon could not effect a good cure." Jacob Juriaensen died May 27, 1639. Shortly afterwards the Schout-fiscal, Ulrich Lupolt (Sheriff and prosecutor), brought Jochem Beeckman before the Council on the charge of manslaughter. The Council judged Beeckman not guilty for they found "that the defendant did wound Jacob Juriaensen, deceased, but that it appears from the testimony of Hans Kierstede, surgeon, that the deceased did not die of his wounds, but through his own negligence and excesses, the more so as he did not heed the instructions of the surgeon."2

On April 10, 1640, the surgeon on the South River, Jan Pietersen van Essendelft, willed his surgical instruments to Hans Kierstede.' Pietersen probably died shortly afterwards since he was described in the will as "lying sick in bed." The kinds of instruments used by surgeons of this period were

Mr. Riker of Mechanicsburg. Pa., is a member and Trustee of the Holland Society.

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crude and included a saw to amputate broken, wounded or diseased limbs. New Netherland surgeons used medicines which were probably made from roots and herbs. There is a record of one surgeon, Jacob Varrevanger, petitioning the governing council in 1654 for payment for the medicine he imported from Holland. Varrevanger was an employee of the Company.

Hans Kierstede was married during the year 1642. The intentions were dated June 29, 1642 and read as follows: Mr. Hans Kierstede, Chirurgyn,j.m. van Maegdenburg en Sara Roelofs, j.d. van Amsterdam, beyde wonende tot N. Amsterdam.

Sara Roelofs was born circa 1627, the daughter of Anneke Jans and her first husband Roelof Janszen. Anneke Jans has become well known because of the myths created about her supposed inherited fortune. These myths were proven false by George O. Zabriski in his articles about the Roelofs and Bogardus families.4 Roelof and Anneke were of Norwegian ancestry. They were married on April 18, 1623 at Amsterdam and Sara Roelofs was baptized there on April 5, 1627. The family emigrated from Amsterdam to New Netherland in 1630 and settled in Rensselaerswyck colony where Roelof had contracted to be a farmer. Thev removed to New Amsterdam in 1634. Roelof Janszen died circa 1637. Anneke Jans married second in 1638, Domine Everardus Bogardus, the Dutch Reformed minister. The Domine, a well educated man, probably saw to it that his step-daughter Sara acquired some knowledge beyond what a normal New Amsterdam girl would receive.

The marriage of Hans and Sara was attended by many of the leading citizens of New Amsterdam including Director Kieft. Adrian Van der Donck, in writing the "Representation of New Netherland" in 1650, described the Kierstede's wedding party and how Director Kieft used the event to raise money for a church.'' "The Director then resolved to build a church and at the place where it suited him; but he was in want of money and was at a loss to obtain it. It happened about this time that the minister. Everardus Bogardus, gave his step-daughter in marriage; and the occasion of the wedding the Director considered a good opportunity for his purpose. So after the fourth or fifth round of drinking, he set about the business, and he himself showing a liberal example let the wedding-guests subscribe what they were willing to give towards the church. All, then with light heads, subscribed largely, competing with one another; and although some well repented it when they recovered their senses, they were never the less compelled to pay — nothing could avail to

1 Henry Kessler and Eugene Rachlis. Peter Stuyvesant and His New York, (Random House. N.Y., 1959), p. 47.

2 New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. ed. by A.J.F. Van Lear. (Genealogical Publishing Co.. Baltimore. 1974). Vol. I, p. 1 "31 : Vol. IV. P . 50-51.

"Ibid.A, 276.

' George O. Zabriskie. "The Roelofs and Bogardus Families," de Halve Maen. Oct. 1972. Jan. 1973. April 197 3. July 1973 and Oct. 1973 issues. The Founding Families of Neu Netherlands, No. 5 and No. 6.

5 J.F. Jameson. Narratives of New Netherland. (Charles Scribners & Sons. N.Y.. 1909). p. 326.'

Surgeon Kierstede 's house as seen from the Fort — 1661

prevent it. The church was then, contrary to every one's wish, placed in the fort."

Two years later, on March 15, 1644, Philip Gerritsen, keeper of the City Tavern, asked Domine Bogardus, Hans Kierstede, Gysbert Opdyck and others, with their wives, to a party at the Tavern. Everything was going along merrily until about an hour after supper when the Englishman, Capt. John Underhill, his lieutenant Baxter and a drummer entered. To these persons the innkeeper said, "Friends, I have invited guests here with their wives. I therefore request that you will betake yourselves to another room where you can be furnished with wine for money." They finally did leave after many words. An invitation to Opdyck was extended by Capt. Underhill to join their group and he refused. Whereupon, Capt. Underhill and his companions, with drawn swords, knocked to pieces all but three of the mugs which hung from the shelf and left cuts and hackings in the posts and doors. They then endeavored by force to break into the room where Kierstede and his companions were having their party. This was for a long time resisted by the landlady with a leaded bludgeon and by the landlord by keeping the door shut. Finally Underhill, with sword in hand, broke into the room where he made "many unnecessary remarks." Capt. Underhill said to the minister, "clear out of here, or I shall strike at random. " When the fiscal and guards arrived, Underhill and his companions were ordered to depart. They refused to do so, saying to the minister: "If the director comes here, 'tis well; I would rather speak to a wise man than to a fool" In order to prevent further and more serious trouble and perhaps even bloodshed, they broke up their pleasant party before they had intended. Capt. Underhill, an Indian fighter who had recently won some important victories for the Dutch, apparently escaped punishment.'1

The baptism of the first child of Hans Kierstede and Sara was an event of some importance in New Amsterdam. The child, Hans, was baptized Sept. 21, 1644. The event was witnessed by Governor William Kieft, Domine Everardus Bogardus, Fiscal Michael Ter Oyken, Tryntie Jonas, the child's great-grandmother, and Marritje Thymens. Hans was the first of ten children born to Hans and Sara Kierstede. Two of these children died young.

It is interesting that Director Kieft and Domine Bogardus should be together on this occasion since they were in the middle of a feud which culminated in Kieft's recall to the Netherlands in 1647. Bogardus sailed on the same ship, the illfated "Princess," to help present the case against Kieft. The opposition to Kieft held him responsible for the Indian war. The "Princess" was wrecked off the coast of Wales on Sept. 17, 1647, drowning Kieft, Bogardus, Jochem Kierstede and others. It was a sad day for the Kierstede family when they learned of the wreck and the loss of both brother and father-in-law.

Little is known about Jochem Kierstede. He appears several times in the records after 1642 and on Oct. 27, 1644, he bought one half interest in the "vessel called the Hope." He seems to have taken passengers, for on Oct. 11, 1645 he was sued by Thomas Willett and Jeuriaen Blank for damages suffered on a voyage to Rhode Island. On April 12, 1647, Jochem Kierstede received a patent for a lot on Manhattan Island on the shore of the East River, but as previously mentioned he died the following September. He apparently

6 N e w York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, ed. by A.J.F. Van Laer. (Genealogical Publishing Co.. Baltimore. 1974), Vol. II, p. 206-207.

7 Howard S.F. Randolph. "The Kierstede Family," New York G. &B. Record, July 1934 issue. Vol. 65. p. 224.

12!

had no issue nor wife as his brother Hans was his sole heir/ Surgeon Kierstede left the service of the West India

Company sometime in 1648 for on Aug. 28, 1648, he is spoken of as "late in the Company's service."K He then entered private practice in which he continued until his death. Apparently he tried to get back into the Company's service. Jehan Raye and two other directors of the Company at Amsterdam, wrote a letter to Stuyvesant, dated April 15, 1650, which said: "A surgeon, Mr. Hans Kierstede, troubles us here a good deal: he tells us, that one Jacob Molenaer, who now serves the Company there as surgeon, is inclined to leave our service and that he Kierstede, has also served under the Company a long time and as far as we know faithfully, we are willing, that you should listen to his requests, if matters are, as he says and if in your opinion his services are required by the Company, he may take the place of surgeon. We observe however, that every ship takes over many people of all kinds of professions and therefore we are in doubt, whether the Company should engage such servants, especially as we ought to avoid unnecessary expenses."' It is not known when Kierstede sailed back to the Netherlands, but he must have returned to New Netherland soon after the date of the letter, as his third child was baptized at New Amsterdam on April 23. 1651.

During the years 1646-47, Hans Kierstede had a plantation and house upon Bouwery Lane, about a mile out of New Amsterdam. It is not known whether he ever lived at the plantation. On Jan. 21, 1647, he received a patent to a lot in New Amsterdam, described as follows: "located between the Company's warehouse on the Strand (Water-side) and the lot of Roelof Jansz." Its width along the Strand was 21 feet and its depth next to the warehouse was 67 feet. The lot was enlarged by a small addition at the back in 1653 and another small addition in 1656."' The Company's warehouse was torn down shortly after the land grant in order to widen Marckveldt. It is possible that Kierstede lived at this location prior to the date of the land grant since this part of New Amsterdam was developed at an earlier date.

It was the perfect place for surgeon Kierstede to set up his private practice. It was near the fort and in the most commercial part of town. Across the Strand was the beach on the East River. It was the harbor area where ships anchored off shore. The cargos were brought to the beach in canoes or small boats. A small dock was constructed about 180 feet up the

KNew York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, ed. by A.J.F. Van Lear. (Genealogical Publishing Co.. Baltimore. 1974). Vol. III. p. 21 .

" Documents Relative to the Colonial History of The State of New York, ed. by E.B. O'Callaghan and Berthold Fernow, (Weed. Parsons & Co.. Albany. 1856-87). Vol. 14. p. 124. (hereafter cited Doc. Rel.).

"' New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, trans. & ed. by Charles T. Gehring. (Genealogical Publishing Co.. Baltimore. 1980). hind Pa­pers, p. 39. 47 & 56.

" J .H. Innes. New Amsterdam and Its People. (Charles Scribners Sons.

N.Y.. 1902). P . 73.

'-' Records of New Amsterdam, ed. bv Berthold Fernow. (Genealogical

Publishing Co.. Baltimore. 1976). Vol. 11. p. 169. 1 * Minutes of the Executive Boards of the Burgomasters of New A mster-

dam. ed. by Berthold Fernow. (I laper. N.Y.. 1907).

'•'Doc. Re/.. Vol. 13. p. 276.280.294,371.377 & 386: Vol. 14. p. 540. n New Jersey Patents & Deeds, ed. by William Nelson. (Genealogical

Publishing Co.. Baltimore. 1976). p. 8.

'" Records of New Amsterdam, ed. bv Berthold Fernow. (Genealogical

Publishing Co.. Baltimore. 1976). Vol. IV. p. 136. 143.

'Doc. Rel.. Vol. 13. p. 292. 18Doc. Rel.. Vol. 2. p. 473.

'" John R. Totten. "Anneke Jans and 1 ler Two I lusbands."i \W York G. & B. Record. July 1925 issue. Vol. 56. p. 208.

beach from Kierstede's house and was enlarged into a pier in 1659. A weight house, originally built at Schreyers Hoek in 1654, was moved and set up next to the pier.11 A weekly market where country people could bring their produce to sell was established in 1656 on the beach between the dock and Kierstede's house.12 The site of Kierstede's house became the northeast corner of the intersection of Whitehall and Pearl Streets and his descendants continued to occupy the property for fifty years after his death.

A trading house for the Indians was built in 1661 im­mediately in front of the Kierstede's house.H The Kierstedes were known to be friends to the local Indians. Hans probably gave medical attention to some of the Indians at the trading house. Sara spoke their language and acted as interpreter on numerous occasions at the Fort when the Indians came to meet with Director Stuyvesant.1'1 On Aug. 30, 1663 one of Sara's friendly Indians reported to her that eight tribes had united to kill all the Dutch on the North River including those at Fort Orange. She quickly reported that information to Director Stuyvesant. One of Sara's friends, Oratani. Sachem of the Hackensack tribe, gave her 2,260 acres of land in what is now Bergen County, New Jersey. A patent for the land, described as lying between the Hackensack River and Overpeck Creek, was issued on June 24, 1669 by Gov. Carteret of East Jersey. Sara Kierstede was selected as an arbitrator in a 1662 court case at New Amsterdam and was referred to as "good woman.""'

An estimate of the high esteem in which surgeon Kierstede was held by Director Stuyvesant and the people of New Netherland, can be seen from a letter written by Stuyvesant and his Council to Captain Cregier during the Esopus Indian Campaign. The letter, dated Aug. 27, 1663. was apparently in reply to Captain Cregier's letter asking that Surgeon Kierstede be sent to Esopus. The letter reads in part: "We understand the necessity of a good surgeon perfectly well, but you know as well as we. how difficult it is to obtain one: Master Flans is a burgher and besides can not be spared here without detriment to the whole place and all the inhabitants. You and we know, what the other two are. We see for the present no better expedient than that the sick and wounded, whom the sawbones there can neither help nor cure, be sent down by every chance."17

Surgeon Kierstede, and most of the other Burghers of New Amsterdam, signed the "Remonstrance" to Director Stuyvesant on Sept. 5. 1664, advising him to surrender to the English. The following October he took the oath of allegiance to the English.

Surgeon Hans Kierstede died in 1666, as a letter from Cornells Van Ruyven to Stuyvesant in Holland, dated Aug. 7. 1666, stated the following: "Since you left there have died here, to my knowledge Abraham Klock, Hans Kierstede."18

His widow, Sara, married second, with intentions dated Sept. 1. 1669 in New York, Cornells Van Borsum. He was living in Brooklyn at the ferry at the time of the marriage." They had one child, Anna, who apparently was simple-minded. Cornells Van Borsum was granted a patent to a lot on Manhattan Island north of the windmill in 1673. where he probably resided. Cornells died in 1682. Sara married a third time, with intentions dated July 21, 1683 in New York, Elbert Elbertszen Stoothoff. as his second wife. Sara died in 1693.1''

Many of surgeon Hans Kierstede's descendants were surgeons, for the occupation was handed down from father to son by use of the apprentice system.

/continued on page 241

)

What Is Lo by Van Cleef

What is "Low Dutch"? "Low Dutch" may be defined briefly as a form of Holland Dutch which by at least the early nineteenth century was spoken in parts of New York State and New Jersey. It must be distinguished from both the present language of Holland ("Holland Dutch") and from Nederduits, which may be defined for purposes of this intro­duction as the formal and somewhat archaic idiom of the eighteenth century. This learned Dutch was taught in some colonial schools down to the Revolution and was read in the Bibles and (few) other books which colonial Dutchmen im­ported from Holland; but it was most prominently associated with the Reformed Dutch churches, which only gradually abandoned it in the period 1765-1830.' The relationship of Nederduits to Low Dutch is complex and will be discussed below. It may be noted here that few of the Low Dutch speakers whose speech is recorded in this article ever had direct contact with Nederduits, though their parents or grand­parents must have heard it occasionally in church.

With the feeble exception of a few published rhymes, Low Dutch was an exclusively spoken language, possessing neither literature nor an accepted orthography.

Whence the name "Low Dutch "? "Low Dutch" is a direct translation of the name that its surviving speakers gave their dialect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Leeg Duits (Bergen County, New Jersey) or Lag Duits (lower Mohawk Valley). The only speaker known to have used a different term was James Storms of Park Ridge (Bergen County), New Jersey, who called it Platduits, "broad" or "vulgar" (lit. "flat") Dutch. When no effort was being made to distinguish the dialect from Holland Dutch or German, Ber­gen County speakers sometimes dropped the Leeg. Thus Ken jy Duits prate? — "Can you speak Dutch (rather than Eng­lish)?" On the lower Mohawk, speakers frequently referred to their language simply as de Taal (lit. = "the language"), as was apparently once done in the Afrikaans of South Africa. Thus one might say, Hoe zdg je dat in de Taal? = "How do you say that in Low Dutch?" In English the dialect has usually been referred to by various regional appellations, such as "Jersey Dutch," "Bergen County Dutch," "Mohawk Dutch," and the like.

The origin of the term Leeg or Lag Duits is uncertain. In the colonial period the descendants of the New Netherlanders were often called the "Low Dutch" by their English neighbors to distinguish them from the "High Dutch" or Germans. It might reasonably be supposed that "Low Dutch" was here a direct translation of Leeg {Lag) Duits, except for the fact that the English term is more likely a translation of Nederduits, a word which appeared prominently in the name Nederduyts Hervormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church), the single uni­fying institution of colonial Dutch-Americans after their subjugation to English rule.

Why did not the Low Dutch speakers of the late nine­teenth century refer to their language as Nederduits? The writer has seen no direct evidence for the use of the word Leeg (Lag) Duits before the nineteenth century. However, it

This is the second of Dr. Bachman 's introductions to the Low Dutch language.

w Dutch? Bachman

seems probable that it was coined early in the colonial period to distinguish the lowly patois of the Dutch-American farmers from the cultured Nederduits of the ministry. Low Dutch as a dialect self-consciously distinct from Nederduits may thus extend well back into colonial times, and there exists a certain amount of evidence from colonial account books, wills, letters, and such, which could give some insight into the early stages of its evolution. This article, however, re­stricts itself to the Low Dutch as spoken in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by speakers who were mostly born between 1800 and 1860.

Where and by whom was Low Dutch spoken ? Ideally we would like to identify the speakers in terms of place of resi­dence, ethnic background, and social status. Moreover, since the distribution of speakers changed rapidly as they settled new regions and as various localities and social groups aban­doned the dialect, we should try to frame our generalizations around specific points in time. The problems involved in determining the expansion and contraction of the limits of Low Dutch speech are, however, considerable, even if we avoid the knotty problem of trying to distinguish Low Dutch from Nederduits speakers by simply asking what was the distribution of Dutch speech in the middle colonies. Censuses did not gather linguistic information, and, especially in the later nineteenth century, the remaining speakers studiously avoided publicizing their bilingualism. Inferences about the extinction of the Low Dutch vernacular from the abandon­ment of Nederduits church sevices run aground on the fact that Low Dutch often persisted for a generation or two after the termination of regular Nederduits preaching. A careful sifting of a wide assortment of evidence will eventually make it possible to delimit the distribution of Dutch speech with reasonable accuracy, and when this is accomplished, the writer hopes that comparisons between localities and social groups will yield insights into the causes of the decline of the language. At present we will have to be content with a brief and somewhat impressionistic sketch.

When New Netherland was conquered by the English in 1664, Dutch settlements were concentrated at discrete points on the Hudson River (around its mouth; at Albany; and midway between, at Kingston) and on the Delaware at New Castle and several lesser settlements. Schenectady, on the Mohawk, had just been settled as an outpost of Albany. In the succeeding century the Dutch cultural presence on the Dela­ware was more or less obliterated;2 but on the Hudson land hungry Dutchmen and their wives moved out from the afore-

1 In the seventeenth century "Nederduits," as well as "Nederlands," was commonly used to designate the language of the Netherlands. Today Hollanders use "Nederduits" to refer to the dialects of Northern Germany. Our restriction of the term to the formal Dutch of schools and Church is primarily an explanatory convenience, though it proba­bly accords with the usage of nineteenth century farmers (if they knew the word at all), who never came into contact with native Hollanders and who simply distinguished between their own "Lag Duits" and the formal Dutch of their ancient family Bibles and occasional church services.

2 The Dutch on the Delaware exerted an influence on the Swedish dialect of the region. When he visited southeastern New Jersey around 1748, Peter Kalm noted that the Swedes he met used several curious

)

mentioned focal points to occupy a number of regions where they formed a large minority or even a majority. Eastwards expansion from the "Five Dutch Towns" of Kings County (now Brooklyn) into central and western Long Island was more or less blocked by English settlements, and the Iroquois Confederacy presented a barrier to expansion west of Sche­nectady. However, in New Jersey it was possible to expand up the Raritan into Somerset County, over the Navesinks into Monmouth County, and up the Passaic into Bergen and Passaic Counties. Further north, in addition to settling numerous localities close to the Hudson River, the Dutch pushed up the Wallkill and Shawangunk Kill as far as the Delaware.

This pushing back of the frontier was more than a simple migration of individuals. It brought about a real expansion of the area of Dutch language and culture as well. Everywhere the Dutch went they acted as quickly as possible to establish Reformed congregations, and, since until the decade preced­ing the Revolution, preaching in all the Reformed Dutch churches was exclusively in Nederduits, these congregations served as hearths of Dutch culture as well as of Christianity.

The vitality of the Dutch language in the mid-eighteenth century is evident from the fact that, despite the long standing English government in New York and New Jersey, inter­marriage between Dutch and English speaking individuals often produced Dutch speaking children and, when it was the father who was English, a crop of Low Dutch speaking fami­lies with English patronymics. Intermarriage with descen­dants of the French Hugenots helped Dutch to supplant French at New Paltz, New York, and in Bergen County, New Jersey.

Replacement of German by Dutch among the descendants of the early Palatine immigrants to New York State was only partial and seems to have gone farthest where these Germans stayed in proximity to established Dutch settlements and also adhered to the Reformed religion (as in the Saugerties area). Among the Schoharie and Mohawk Valley Palatines and among the Lutheran Palatines in the middle Hudson Valley, a German dialect akin to Pennsylvania German survived well into the nineteenth century. The Negro slaves of the Dutch generally learned the speech of their masters, and by the time of the Revolution many Indians had at least a working know­ledge of Dutch.

The events of the Revolution removed the Iroquois barrier to settlement of the upper Mohawk Valley. But it was New Englanders rather than Dutchmen who profited by this and founded solidly Yankee communities in central and western New York. After the Revolution the decline of the Dutch language, which had hitherto been limited to New York City and a very few of the rural areas, proceeded at an accelerated rate. By the 1820's and 1830's Dutch was long dead in New York City, a memory of the older generation in Albany, and rapidly fading even in many rural districts with long rooted Dutch populations {e.g., Somerset and Monmouth Counties, New Jersey, and Kings County, New York). The principal areas where children were still learning the Taal at this time seem to have been the rural areas of Bergen and Passaic Counties, New Jersey: Ulster County. New York; and the lower Mohawk Valley.

The Low Dutch speakers of this and later generations were thus mostly farmers, people who seldom left their farms and families except to attend church and market and to ex­change gossip around the stove of the local general store. The mental horizons of these people are reflected in the quotes and examples which Walter Hill used in his magnificent, but until

l. rip 3 t r -op 3 T-S-ocxnt'je~(/^

now unknown, studv of the Mohawk Dutch dialect in the 1870'sand 1880's.

Ekgeng nander rys terug naa Schoharie . . . . Maar Kingston, nee, dat ez juist zoo vardaaf voor myn aals Toerkv-

("I went back another time to Schoharie . . . . But Kingston, no. that is just as far off for me as Turkey.")

Ek be?! aal daag biezig de kleedre loppe endgiere. ("I've been busy patching clothes all day.")

Het ez errie by ons hoe reel kippe die vermaledyd wezels endpieskotte verzanke.

("It is bad at our place how many chickens the ac­cursed weasels and skunks do awav with.")

Amrede de longe sermoene blyve som melse wag. ("Because of the long sermons, some people stay

awav.")

Wat ek leezd in de nieuspampier dat die politisjens somtyds blove klenk nix zaktlie nen wind in nen vilt hoed.

("What I read in the newspapers that the politicians sometimes promise sounds to me just like breaking wind in a felt hat.")

Although earlier in the nineteenth century many persons of other ethnic groups had attained a limited familiarity with Low Dutch, by Walter Hill's day the Mohawk Dutch had clearly ceased to regard their language as a potential lingua franca. Hill observed that "if a stranger be among them who will attempt to speak De law/ and he be not as fluent as his listeners thev will change, almost at once, into English. Any deliberate attempt then, to learn the Tawlw'iU be thwarted at once." Hill's Low Dutch acquaintances never gave him a very satisfactory explanation for this reticence, simply professing great surprise that any non-Dutchman would ever want to learn their dialect. Hill was forced to infer that, despite the fact that the Mohawk Dutch were "to a man. a prideful people." thev were "ashamed of what they consider a sign of Boonshness" and felt thev would "be called 'Boor Dauits'

/Z-at op nen b o o n

Tc svacjte.

To<rn br«rtz ~b£~ boocn.

loen vie Ctrl .

L£n> aa I i e ko<rti<r^r'

[Boer Duils] or 'farmer' and so. looked down upon by their urban cousins.''

Did Low Dutch have significant dialectical variations? The lack of significant communication between farmers in New Jersey and upstate New York did produce some dialecti­cal differences. Our knowledge of the Mohawk and Bergen County dialects is not so complete that we can say with perfect certainty that a given word was totally unknown in one region or the other, but it does appear that there were regional differences in vocabulary. In New Jersey, for example, a "raccoon" was a hespaan, while on the Mohawk it was a suikerdas. Here the difference reflects contact with different Indian languages, the Lenape and the Iroquois, respectively. Besides more or less random differences in the form, mean­ing, or privileges of occurrence of particular words, there were a few general sound shifts.

At least in northeast New Jersey and adjacent Rockland County, New York, there was a Negro variant of Low Dutch, which the Jersey Dutch called NegerDuits ( = Negro Dutch). Although a small colony of old Negroes near Suffern, New York, was still using the dialect when John D. Prince collected information on Jersey Dutch shortly before World War I, they were shy and very difficult to approach, and Prince was forced to depend on a single informant from Passaic County.

Comparison of the dialects of Low Dutch is frustrated by the existence of significant differences in the speech of persons born and bred in the same locality. These differences, which must have resulted largely from the increasing restriction of the Taal to the household as the nineteenth century progressed, was also fostered by the reluctance of the Mohawk Dutch to correct one another. Referring apparently only to interaction between adults, Walter Hill observed that "No Laag Dauitser ever corrects any speaker no matter how gross his mistake. The reason seems to be that none of them, even the most fluent, is ever quite certain that he has the right of it." In these circum­stances neat delineation of dialects obviously becomes difficult, and we will not attempt it here.

How well could Low Dutch speakers understand Neder­duits? To what extent were Low Dutch and Holland Dutch

mutually comprehensible7 The difficulty which latter day Low Dutch speakers had in understanding Nederduits ser­mons has not generally been appreciated, though it is crucial to a correct explanation of the shift to English preaching in the Reformed Dutch Church. The clearest statement of this prob­lem was made around 1885 by Mr. Barent Myndertssen and recorded by Walter Hill in his notebook.

(Walter Hill's translation)

"When I was a boy — that was perhaps eighteen hun­dred and thirty for I was born right after the second battling with Great Britain — they had now and then Sunday services where they used Low Dutch. Hah! That was the time when all the children sat staring at nothing, and some of the parents too. Yes that is something that they gave up years ago for I am already past seventy and I can't remember any more how long it is since they had a Low Dutch service in the church. But you asked about the minister and reading from the Bible. Yes. You see, they had a reader, but he was already very old and should have had spectacles and moreover everyone knew that no one anymore can read those old Holland Bibles for the printing was way beyond the common people who sat in the pews in that church. So, naturally the minister had to do all that by himself. Well, I can remember very well that when he read from the Bible he did not pronounce the same as he did when he preached (with the preach­ing). And I've heard my father say to my uncle that it was all a waste of time since no one in the whole church understood what he read and only a small half of what he preached. I do not know if that is like what you said, but it could be. After many years I am quite certain that that minister read from the Bible and spoke from the pulpit altogether different from (than) his speaking was when he came and made us a visit. I have often wondered, but yes, when I was small I learned very early that a growing boy was only a snotnose and had best keep his mouth shut."

Evidence from other areas, though ambiguous, seems to point to a similar decline in the intelligibility oi Nederduits to Low Dutch speakers. When the Queens County Reformed churches called Do. Boelen from the Netherlands in 1766, they found that though he had a powerful voice, his language "was not simple enough" to be easily understood by the com­mon people.3 That this communication problem did not result simply from the congregation's abandonment of Dutch in favor of English is evident from the fact that Do. Rynier van Nest, who supplied the Queens County churches a generation later (1785-1797), was popular with both adults and children, although he preached primarily in Dutch and never learned to preach effectively in English.4 It would seem probable that van Nest, who was born and raised in Somerset County, New Jersey, owed his success to his ability to adulterate the pure Nederduits of the pulpit with the more understandable Amer­ican vernacular.

words: kit for creek; skeda ut att talasvenska, meaning "to give up talk­ing Swedish"; and Una for kitchen garden. Although only the last word (HD tuin) was specifically identified as Dutch by his informants, the other two (HD kit and uitscheiden) are also undoubtedly of Dutch ori­gin. See KalmT, II, 688-689.

1 Henry Onderdonk, Jr., History of the First Reformed Dutch Church of Jamaica, L.I., p. 55n.

4 Edward Tanjore Corwin, Manual of the Reformed Church (Third ed.; 1879), p. 515.

Another possible reference to the widening breach be­tween Low Dutch and Nederduits comes from Millstone (Hillsborough) in Somerset County. During the pastorate of Do. Johannes Martinus van Harlingen (1787-1795), Dutch was still "used to a great extent as the language of the house­hold," yet there was a general desire for more English preach­ing because "the theological and Biblical expressions, owing to English education, were better understood in English.'"5

Van Harlingen was a native of Somerset County and one might wonder why he could not have made some concessions to the local vernacular, as we suppose Do. van Nest to have done in Queens. Perhaps van Harlingen, who was of a minis­terial family and painfully erudite, regarded any lapse into the dialect of the local farmers as an unacceptable barbarism.

How well could Low Dutch speakers of the late nineteenth century understand the speech of recent immigrants or visitors from the Netherlands? The reports differ. In his article "The Jersey Dutch dialect" of 1910, Prince stated that the Jersey Dutch drew a firm distinction between their own language and that of recent immigrants from the Netherlands, saying, Onze taal ez Leeg Duits en bullies ez Hoollens, kwyt ddfrent. ("Our language is Low Dutch, and theirs is Hollandish, quite different.") They were unable to follow a Holland Dutch con­versation, "as the Jersey Dutch speaking countyman is quite helpless if his interlocutor makes the slightest deviation from the accepted pronunciation or idiom of the dialect." On the other hand, the writer remembers a Bergen County woman commenting that when her grandfather sold eggs in Paterson, he could understand the recent Dutch immigrants there "per­fectly." Undoubtedly comprehension of Holland Dutch im­proved rapidly as the Low Dutchman accumulated some ex­perience with it.

Around the turn of the present century some of the Re­formed Dutch churches occasionally had a Dutch language sermon for sentimental reasons. Professor Wilson Clough reports that his great-aunt "claimed that she knew enough Dutch to understand something" of the annual Dutch sermon at the Schenectady Reformed Church around 1910-1915. However. Dr. van Loon remembers hearing of several cases of relatively fluent Low Dutch speakers who found these Hol­land Dutch sermons virtually incomprehensible. One of these, probably also stemming from the Schenectady area, is described as follows in his "Ave atque vale" article.6

"A farmer who was one of the last speakers of Low Dutch in his area was brought to the city by his daughter . . . at the occasion of a Holland Dutch service, which was held in honor of some historical celebration. He wanted to hear the domine, who had come specially from New York City to conduct the service. The old man, who was almost never in the city, sat listening very quietly and politely to the formal and for him almost incompre­hensible sermon of the minister. When the service was over and the people went outside, the daughter took her old father to the minister to introduce him. especially be­cause of the reputation of the old man's Low Dutch. "En

5 Corwin, Historical discourse on occasion of (he centennial anniversary of the Reformed Dutch Church of Millstone, p. 66.

6 My translation.

"Letter quoted in Maud Esther Dilliard. Album of New Nether/and (New York. 1963). p. 15.

8 Quoted in Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker. The founding of American Civilization: The middle colonies (New York and London. 1938). p. 117.

K l i p L z J o p b o v e n o p

iZni iU-e- f -v t roop e n i a p p e l j - ^ p

/ A p p e ' . r ' a p en)> roctqe-^iv-ao

In ne-n aoe^i lerlun L r e r r i e b o o .

hoe beviel het U?" (And how did you like it?) the minis­ter asked him. Wat zdgjau?(What did you say?) he [the farmer] exclaimed broadly. Even though the question sounded a bit coarse, the minister understood it and repeated amiably "Hoe vond U den dienst?" (How did you find the service?) The old man finally understood the few and slowly spoken words. He winked and said. Jau ken my niet foele, Dominie. Dal is Sjurman oft Hoog Duts oft somting dat jau sprak. Ek ee naut sutse Lag Duts bevorgehoord — el is te hoog voor my. (You can't fool me. Dominie. That was German or High Dutch or something that you spoke. I've never heard such Low Dutch before. It is too high for me.)

How did Low Dutch sound to Hollanders? In 1866 the wife of the Dutch Consul-Genera] in New York wrote home that "the Dutch language has been handed down from parents to children and sometimes as far as the fifth generation . . . . I personally observed the above very often in New Jersey . . . . A great many descendants of the Dutch live in that neighborhood. And it is a fact that one out of ten people will be able to understand you. although it is not exactly our civilized Dutch that they speak. It is more like a countrified dialect, i.e. like the dialect our farmers speak."" Also referring to Jersey Dutch. Prince wrote in his 1910 article that "an intelligent Fleming or South Hollander with a knowledge of English can make a shift at following a conversation in this Americanized Dutch." However, in introducing his transcription of a Jersey Dutch text in 191 3. he was more reserved about the intelligi­bility of Jersey Dutch to Hollanders, commenting "The into­nation of this idiom is so different to that of the modern Holland Dutch, that Netherlanders cannot follow a conversa­tion in Jersey Dutch without previously learning the peculiar­ities of the dialect, or without some knowledge of English

The upriver dialect was described as follows by A.J.F. van Laer. a Hollander who served as archivist of the State of New York at Albany until the eve of World War II: "When I came to this country in 1897 I met a number of old people here in Albany and in Ulster County who could still speak Dutch. The language was more or less corrupted, of course, and often ungrammatical. but the accent was correct and had a native even though dialectical flavor, quite distinct from that of a foreigner. "s

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Society Dutchess County Branch Meeting

The annual meeting of the Dutchess County Branch was held on Oct. 4, 1982 at the Alumnae House of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. After a delicious prime rib dinner, there was a brief business meeting at which the current slate of officers was reelected.

President — Clifford Crispell

Vice-President — Peter Schoonmaker

Sec.-Treas. —John Van Benschoten, Jr. Kenneth I lasbrouck of New Paltz, Curator of the Young-

Morse historic site in Poughkeepsie, discussed some of the problems he is having with the local zoning boards and asked for help from the Dutchess County members.

In addition to the officers and the speaker and their wives, those attending the meeting included Mr. Robert Ackerman, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Buys, Mr. and Mrs. George Banta, Mr. and Mrs. John De Graff. Mrs. Harold Delamater, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Deyo. Mr. Alfred Hasbrouck, Mr. and Mrs. John 1 lays Myers, Mrs. Alma Ostrander, Mr. and Mrs. Allard Sutton. Mr. and Mrs. A.A. Schoonmaker, Mrs. Ralph Van Kleeck and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Eekhof.

Long Island Branch Dinner The annual meeting of the Long Island Branch was held

on October "3, 1982 at the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club. Among the speakers of the evening were former President of the Society, Julian Roosevelt, Dr. John Voorhis, President of the Old Bergen Branch and Trustee James Snedeker.

The following officers were elected for the coming year: President — Adrian T. Bogart, Jr.

Vice-President — John Brinckerhoff Secretary— Garrett De Graff Treasurer — John Vandeveer

Those attending the meeting in addition to the newly elected officers and speakers were Adrian Bogart III, George Hegeman. David and Robert Nostrand, Sedgwick Snedeker, John Van Name and Charles Voorhis.

October Trustees Meeting At their October 14th meeting held at New York's Union

Club, the trustees of the society, among other agenda items, accepted with regret the resignation of Trustee Robert E. Van Wagoner and appointed William B. Deyo, Jr., to fill the vacancy, received a report from the Executive Committee relative to the recognition of branch presidents and admitted to membership in the society a dozen applicants.

Reporting on his activities since the June meeting. President James E. Quackenbush spoke of attending the meetings of the Potomac and Old Bergen branches and noted that the Long Island, Dutchess County and the Morris-Essex branches had all held or would hold meetings this fall. He also reported that he had been present, together with other officers and trustees at the ceremony during which Domine Hageman received the Order of Orange-Nassau from the Netherlands Consul General in New York, Jonkheer Teopold Quarles Van Ufford. President Quackenbush called the attention of all present to the November 4th banquet of the society to be held at the World Trade Towers and urged those present to attend, pointing out that the ticket price had been reduced this year in the hope that attendance would increase.

Activities At the direction of the trustees, the Executive Committee

submitted suggestions for the recognition of branch presidents which would be based upon two main criteria: that each branch hold at least two meetings annually and that a majority of the branch members recommend recognition of their president to the trustees. No final action was taken by the trustees.

Regular reports by the Secretary and Treasurer were submitted and approved, It was noted that a new accounting system using a computer would supercede the former method in drawing up the quarterly financial statements submitted to the trustees. Peter Van Dyke, chai rman of the Finance Committee, reported on the endowment funds and their current status, which was the subject of some discussion.

A new supply of membership certificates has been obtained through the efforts of Trustee James M. Van Buren III. Formerly these certificates had been printed in The Netherlands but the printing firm there no longer exists. This caused a problem which was solved by Trustee Van Buren in cooperation with a printing firm here with which he is associated, a solution which was greatly appreciated by the trustees who thanked Trustee Van Buren.

A Nominating Committee was named to draw up a slate of officers and trustees to be voted upon by members at the annual meeting next April. Named to the committee were: Frederick W. Bogert, chairman, Charles A. Van Patten, James P. Snedeker, Peter G. Vosburgh and James M. Van Buren III.

The following applicants for membership recommended by the Committee on Genealogy were approved by the trustees:

Truman T. Ackerson. Upland, California

Clinton F. Bogart, Lattingtown, N.Y.

Royal A. Brink. Madison. Wisconsin

Richard C. Courter, Youngstown, N.Y.

Howard F. De Myer, Naples. Florida

Paul M. Kipp. Wyckoff. N.J .

James J. Ringo. Ringoes, N.J .

James W. Ringo, Immokalee, Florida

Richard A. Terhune III. Columbus, Ohio

Frederick C. Van Cott. Staten Island, N.Y.

Carl G. Whitbeck. Hudson, N.Y.

John V. Whitbeck, Virginia Beach. Virginia

"The Dutch in Two Worlds" at New Brunswick Theological Seminary In celebration of the renovation of Gardner Sage library,

together with the re-opening of The Dutch in Two Worlds, an exhibition of rare books, manuscripts and engravings from that library, New Brunswick Theological Seminary held a four-day program that included two addresses by Dr. Jan Willem Scholte Nordholt, Professor of American History at Leiden University, the Netherlands, on November 13th and a symposium on topics related to the Dutch-America colonial period on November 16th.

The exhibition was prepared to celebrate the bi-centennial of New Brunswick Theological Seminary and the bi-centennial of the unbroken diplomatic relations first established in 1782 between the Netherlands and the United States of America. It had been opened officially by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands during her visit to this country last June. It will remain at the Gardner Sage librarv of the seminary until

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early 1983 when it will be transported to the west coast for exhibition at the University of California.

Those taking part in the November 16th symposium were Dr. James Tanis, librarian of Bryn Mawr College, Dr. Charles Gehring of the New Netherland Project, Dr. David Cohen of the New Jersey State Historical Commission and Dr. Peter O. Wacker of Rutgers University. Their topics covered a wide range of Dutch-American subjects that included Immigration to New Netherland, Dutch settlements on the South River in what is now the State of Delaware, Folklore and Folklife in Dutch America and the Material Cul ture of the Dutch-Americans. At the completion of the symposium, a tea was held at the home of the President of the Seminary. Dr. Howard G. Hageman at which Jonkheer Leopold Quarles van Ufford, Consul General of the Netherlands, was the honor guest.

T h e Birth of New York" Exhibit A large number of society members from the New York

metropolitan area attended the cocktail party and special showing for members of The Holland Society of "The Birth of New York." an exhibition celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of Dutch-American diplomatic relations, at the New-York Historical Society on November 18th at which Robert G. Goelet. president of the latter society and former Holland Society trustee, was host.

The exhibition, sponsored by the Municipal Archives of Amste rdam and the Amsterdam Historical Museum, in cooperation with the New-York Historical Society and a number of specialists in the history, art. architecture and archaeology of New Netherland. depicts the first forty years of New York, when it was known as Nieuw Amsterdam ( 1624-1664) in a superb collection of contemporary prints, books, maps, letters, artifacts and other items related to this forty-year period. Many of these, loaned by museums and libraries in Amsterdam. The Hague. Leyden. Utrecht and other Dutch repositories, have never been seen before in America. A number of American institutions have also contributed to the exhibition, among them, being the New-York I listorical Society, the Library of Congress, the Albany Institute of I listory & Art, the New York Public Library, the

The Society's Annual Banquet Members of the Holland Society and their guests are

urged to note the date of the Annual Banquet which will be held on Wednesday, November 2, at Windows on the World in the World Trade Center in New York. Formal invitations with full details will be mailed in the fall.

The Distinguished Achievement Medal this year will be presented to Colonel Jack Lousma, N A S A astronaut, pilot for Skylab 3 and commander of the third orbital test flight of the space shuttle, Columbia. Of Frisian descent, Colonel Lousma was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is a graduate of the University of Michigan. He has also received honorary degrees from his alma mater as well as from Hope College.

On his first flight into outer space, Colonel Lousma spent just over eleven hours in two separate space walks outside the Skylab space station. It is hoped that a large number of members and friends will be present to greet Colonel Lousma on November 2.

Brooklyn Museum and Gardner Sage Library of New Bruns­wick. N.J . The I lolland Society loaned us fine specimen of a stuffed and mounted beaver.

Ulster County Branch Meeting Fifty persons, the largest group in attendance in recent

years, were present at the Ulster County Branch's annual autumn meeting at the Du Bois Fort restaurant in New Paltz. N.Y.. on November 20th. A reception, at which the famed Poucher's Punch was a feature, preceded a delicious turkey dinner drawing members and guests from Ulster and Dutchess Counties in New York as well as from the Old Bergen Branch in New Jersey. Representing the latter branch were the Secretary of The Holland Society. Rev. Louis O. Springsteen and Trustee Frederick W. Bogert. The blessing, preceded the dinner, was given by the Rev. David Maris of the New Paltz Reformed Church.

At a short business meeting following the dinner, the following members were elected to office in the Ulster County Branch: President. Kenneth E. Hasbrouck; Vice-Presidents, John O. Delamater and Melvin J. Van Sickle; Treasurer. Charles E. Deyo. Other members and guests present, in addition to those already mentioned were: Mr. & Mrs. George Banta. Mrs. Constance Bloomer, Mrs. Frederick W. Bogert, Mr. & Mrs. Douglas Buys. Mr. & Mrs. Clifford Crispell, Mr. & Mrs. Addison Crow ell. Herbert Cutler. Mrs. John O Delamater. Mrs. Leah Delamater. Mrs. Charles E. Deyo. Mr. & Mrs. C.C. DuMond. Jr.. Miss Florence DuMond. Jessie DuBois. Mr. & Mrs. W. Alan Grove. Herbert Haflev. Alfred Has­brouck. Mrs. Kenneth E. Hasbrouck. Mr. & Mrs. John A. Keenan. Mrs. David Maris. Mr. & Mrs. John Myers. Mrs. Winifred Mulvey. Stephen Scheringer. Mr. & Mrs. Charles Scott. Mrs. Louis O. Springsteen. Mr. & Mrs. Allard Sutton. Barbara Tobey. Mr. & Mrs. Herbert Van Benthuvsen, Mr. & Mrs. James Van de Mark. I lerbert Weiss and Herbert Wit/..

December Trustees Meeting The fourth quarter meeting of the trustees and officers of

the society was held December 9. 1982 at the Union Club in New York with President James E. Quackenbush in the chair. Following the Secretary's report and the reading of the

necrology, Treasurer John H. Vander Veer presented a proposed budget for 1983 which had been sent to those present for review prior to the meeting. He suggested that the trustees consider increasing the annual dues by five dollars a year in order to cover a contemplated rise in expenses which seems likely during the coming year. Such a proposition, however, would have to be submitted to the members for their approval before taking effect. Treasurer Vander Veer pointed out that, although life membership fees are added to the endowment fund of the society, they are not a part of the annual income upon which the society relies to a great extent.

President Quackenbush reported on the functions he had attended as the society's representative. These included those of the Sons of the Revolution in New York, the St. Andrews Society and the St. Nicholas Society. He noted, too, that the society's banquet on November 4th had been a success with about 1 50 persons attending it. He also singled out for special mention the cocktail party and special showing for members of the society of "The Birth of New York" the very fine exhibit of items, aritfacts and display materials connected with Nieuw Amsterdam from its founding in 1624 to its takeover by the British in 1664 at the New-York Historical Society at which former trustee and current President of the New-York 1 listorical Society, Robert G. Goelet. acted as host.

Trustee William M. Alrich, reporting as chairman of the Membership Committee, told those present that in regard to changing the name of the society, a possibility discussed earlier, he would recommend "there should be no change at this time." To do so, he emphasized, "would do more harm than good." However his committee did recommend the de-emphasizing of the "of New York" portion of the society's name, feeling that more frequent use of the name "The

Here and There Gregory and A n n e Van Zandt of Warwick, N.Y.

announce the birth of their first child, a son. Drew Waynant, born on January 24, 1983 in Suffern, N.Y. His grandfather, John Douglas Van Zandt and his uncle, Peter Van Zandt, are both members of the Society.

Gary Veeder of Pleasant Valley, N.Y. was recently re­elected to a third term as president of the Albany College of Pharmacy ot Union University Alumni Association.

Appleton Fryer was recently elected President of the Buffalo and Erie Country Historical Society.

Roger M.L. Schmitt of Syosset. L.I. was recently elected President of the New York State Society, Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Daniel M. Schuyler has become a member of the law firm of Schuyler, Roche and Zwirner with offices in the Prudential Plaza in Chicago.

Professor Andrew Brink is one of five editors at the Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., who have a $ 1.8 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humani t ies Research Council of Canada to begin publication of the Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell. The first volume is scheduled for publication in the summer of 1983.

Three members of the Society, Dr. D. Campbell Wyckoff.

Holland Society" would be preferable to any formal change of name. He also said that in cooperation with Editor Hageman of de Halve Maen a double-reply postcard will be inserted in the magazine to be used by members for sending in news to the publication and also for sending names of prospective members to the Membership Committee.

Chairman Ralph L. DeGroff. Jr., summarized the progress of the Historical Publications Committee in its work of publishing the records of New Netherland by saying that both the Brooklyn Church Records (1660-1664) and the Minutes of the Mayor's Council (1674-1675) should soon be ready. A two-day meeting of the committee held recently reviewed the books already published, discussed those in preparation and pre-viewed future volumes. "One very interesting result of the translation and editing of these manuscripts." said Chairman DeGroff, "is a developing portrait of Peter Stuyvesant as a much more compassionate and understanding human being than our (past) history books display."

Brief reports were also given the meeting by the Library and Scholarship Committees. The Committee on Genealogy submitted the following applicants for membership, all of whom were approved by the trustees:

Fred Albert Durling, Beaufort, S.C.

Robert Van Fleet Gerretson. Watertown, Conn.

Harland Edward Jacobus, Ledyard, Conn.

Bertram Conger Hopper, Taylorville, Illinois

March Trustees Meeting The first meeting of the officers and trustees of the Society

in 1983 was held March 10 at the Union Club in New York with President James E. Quackenbush presiding. After the

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with Our Members Frederick A. Wyckoff, Jr. and William S. Wyckoff were involved in the Dedication ceremonies of the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff house in Brooklyn on October 1, 1982. Located on Clarendon Road in Brooklyn, the house was originally built in 1652 and has been completely restored under the leadership of the Wyckoff House and Association. Inc.

Robert G. Goelet , as president of the American Museum of Natural History, together with Mrs. Goelet, personally welcomed former President Jimmy Carter and Mrs. Carter to a recent showing of the film "To Fly" at the museum in New York. President Carter had been urged to see the film by his daughter, Amy, after she had viewed it in Washington, D.C., during the Carter administration.

E. Lisk Wyckoff, Jr.. was recently appointed to the Board of Trustees of The New-York Historical Society. A member of the committee to preserve the 1645 Wyckoff House in Brooklyn. Mr. Wyckoff was active in the restoration of that one-story Dutch farmhouse built by Pieter Claesen Wyckoff believed to be the oldest in the State of New York.

Dr. Howard A. Rusk, medalist of the Society in 1963 and founder of the Institute of Rehabilitative Medicine at New York University Medical Center, has been given the first Pacem in 'Ferris award of the Pope John Paul II Center of Prayer and Study for Peace. The award was presented to Dr. Rusk February 2nd at an ecumenical service in St. Patrick's Cathedral. New York.

In Memoriam F R A N C I S W. V A N D E R VEER

Francis Wilson van der Veer, a member of the Holland Society of New York since 1924 (with hiatus from 1940 to 1979) died in Rockville, Maryland on January 25, 1982 at the age of 81 years. Descended from Cornelis Janse van der Veer who came to New Netherland in 1659. Colonel van der Veer was born in Somerville, New Jersey, July 2, 1900, the son of Francis S. van der Veer and Katherine D. Wilson. A retired colonel in the United States Air Force, he had been a Vice President of the Society and President of the Westchester Branch prior to his move to Somerset County, New Jersey in 1940. He is survived by a son, Pieter W. van der Veer, of Fairfax County, Virginia.

L L O Y D R. LeFEVER

Lloyd Ralph LeFever, a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1941 died at the age of 80 years in Kingston, N.Y. , on June 28, 1982. Descended from Simon LeFevre who was in New Paltz bv 1675, he was born November 6. 1901 in Rosendale, N.Y., the son of Ralph H. LeFever and Mary V. Boeven. Mr. LeFever graduated from the Albany Law School in 1925 with the degree of LL.B and started practice in Kingston where he was an active attorney for more than fifty years. He became associated with the Kingston Savings Bank (now the Albany Savings Bank) as their attorney, later becoming President and Chairman of the Board of this institution. He also took an active interest in many civic and charitable organizations in Kingston including the Y.M.C.A.. the Home for the Aged, the Kingston Hospital and the Childrens' Home. A past president of the Kingston Kiwanis Club and of Community Concerts, he was a member of the Huguenot Society, the Wiltwyck Golf Club and the Old Dutch Reformed Church of Kingston. He is survived by his wife, the former Elizabeth L. Maxon whom he married in 1931. by a son, John R. LeFever of West Hurley, N.Y., a daughter. Mrs. Walter Ruehle of Denver. Colorado and three grandchildren. Services were held at the Moylan Funeral Chapel, Rosendale, with interment in the Rosendale Cemetery.

VIRGIL B. D e W I T T , M.D.

York, he also served at various times during his career as President of the Medical Society of Ulster County, President of the Ulster County Board of Health, President of the Paltz Club, Medical Director of the State University of New York at New Paltz, as well as trustee of the Kingston, New York hospital, and of the Intercounty Savings Bank. He was also a founder and former president of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Society, a member of Sigma Phi fraternity, of the American Medical Association, the American Legion and the New Paltz Reformed Church of which he was a former consistory member as well.

In 1969, Dr. DeWitt was awarded the President's Citation of the Medical Society of New York for his outstanding community and civic service beyond his work in the field of medicine. He also received a certificate of appreciation from Ulster County Legislature in 197 1 in recognition of his decade of service as President of the county's Board of Health.

He is survived by his wife, the former Erma Ross, to whom he was married in 1931, one son, Dirck DeWitt of New Paltz, two daughters, Mrs. William Conner of Gardiner, N.Y.. and Mrs. Gay Jenssen of Kingston, N.Y., and six grandchildren. Services were held at the New Paltz Reformed Church with interment in the New Paltz Rural Cemetery.

LLOYD E. V A N AKEN

Lloyd Euclid Van Aken. a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1956 died at the age of 62 years on July 10, 1982 in Floral Park. New York. Descended from Pieter Van Aken who came to New Netherland in 1659. Mr. Van Aken was born May 10. 1920. the son of Enoch C. Van Aken and Mederise Blanchet. 1 le was a graduate of Our Ladv of Angels High School (Fort Hamilton. N.Y.), attended Brown University and successfully completed extension courses in banking in 1975.

He was a veteran of World War II. having served in the European Theater of Operations for two years with the Army of the United States. He was affiliated with the Dime Savings Bank of New York later becoming Regional Vice President of that institution. He is survived bv his wife, the former Lou Reid Taylor whom he married in 1913 and a daughter, Mary Lu Van Aken of Syracuse. New York. Services were held at St. Anne's Church in Garden City, New York with interment taking place in Calverton National Cemetery.

MILTON L. VAN SLYCK

Milton Louis Van Slyck. a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1946. died on August 14. 1982 in Lakeside. California, at the age of 74 years. Descended from Willem Pieterse Van Slvck who was in Beverwyck (now Albany, N.Y.) in the year 1655. Mr. Van Slyck was born November 3. 1908 at Chicago. Illinois, the son of Peter G. Van Slyck and Kathrvn Corcoran. After completing his education he attained prominence in the field of business and commercial journalism serving in a number of capacities that included associate editor of Newsweek magazine, editor of Mill Supplies, a McGraw-I lill publication, editor of N A M (National Associa­tion of Manufacturers) News and retired as the managing editor of The Journals of Commerce (New York-Chicago). He also served at one time as Assistant to the President of TWA air line and was the author of a number of articles appearing in various magazines and periodicals. A member of

Virgil Barzillai DeWitt , M.D. , a member of the Holland Society of New York since 1936, died July 3, 1982 in Gardiner, New York, at the age of 81 years. Descended from Tjerk Claasen DeWitt who came to New Netherland in the year 1648, Dr. DeWitt was born March 15, 1901 in Alligerville, New York, the son of Harvey B. DeWitt and Maria Van Wagonen. After elementary and secondary education, he entered Hamilton College from which he was graduated in 1923, continuing his education at Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1928. He began the practice of medicine in New Paltz, New York, in 1939 and helped to form the Medical Associates of New Paltz in 1959. He retired from practice in 1978.

During World War II, Dr. DeWitt served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and took a personal interest in the welfare of German prisoners of war interned in this country, keeping up a correspondence with several of them after the war. He also took a prominent role in both medical and civic affairs in the area of Ulster County, New York. A past president of the Ulster County branch of the Holland Society of New

the Corporation, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Mr. Van Slyck also held memberships in the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New York and the Sons of the American Revolution of the State of New York. From 1952 to 1963 he served as a trustee of The Holland Society of New York and was chairman of the Editorial Committee of de Halve Maen from 1951 to 1958. He is survived by his wife, the former Virginia Ferguson, a son, Peter J. Van Slyck. a daughter, Carolyn J. Sera and three granddaughters.

EARL L. W O O D

Pari Leroy Wood, M.D., a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1947. died August 19, 1982 in Newark, N.J., at the age of eighty-eight years. Descended from Edmund Wood of England who came to Hempstead, Long Island, in 1644, later moving to Newtown, Dr. Wood was born October 8. 1894 at Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas J. Wood and Mary Ella Miller. A well-known physician in the Newark, N.J. area, where he practiced, Dr. Wood specialized in otology. During World War II, he was a member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, retiring with the rank of Colonel. He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Newark. His wife, the former Flora Helen Assman, predeceased him. Survivors include his son, Francis Wood, M.D., and several grandchildren.

NATHANIEL S.W. V A N D E R H O E F

Nathaniel Scudder Wyckoff Vanderhoef, a member of the Holland Society of New York since 1928, died on August 30, 1982 at Greenwich, Connecticut, at the age of 85 years. He became an Honorary Life member of the Society in 1978 on the completion of fifty years of membership. Descended from Gisbert Cornelisz van der Hoeven or van den Hoegenbusch who was in the Fort Orange (Albany, N.Y.) area by 1668, Mr. Vanderhoef was born March 12, 1897 in New York, the son of Nathaniel W. Vanderhoef and Kate Martin, receiving his education at the Collegiate, Syms and Cutler Schools in New York. He began his business career with Price, Waterhouse & Company subsequently joining Turner Halsey Company, textile manufacturers agents, as their first export manager. When the Turner Halsey Export Company was incorporated in 1928, Mr. Vanderhoef became Vice-President, Treasurer and a director and, in 1947, was elected President.

An internationally recognized authority in the textile industry, he held the office of President of the Textile Export Association as well as of the Export Managers Club (now the International Executives Association) of New York. During World War I, Mr. Vanderhoef served in the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He was chosen to write the first export regulations for the O.P.A. and during World War II for the Board of Economic Warfare.

He was a member of the Merchants and Arkwrights Club (now the Merchants Club of New York) the oldest club of its type in New York; the Shenerock Shore Club of Rye, N.Y. and the Circumnavigators Club. In addition he was a member of the Masonic Order and of Christ Episcopal Church , Greenwich, Connecticut.

He is survived by his wife, the former Eunice Taylor of Boston, Massachusetts, a sister, Mrs. Harry F. Morse of New London, Connecticut, a step-daughter, Mrs. Robert Amory, Washington, D.C. and two nieces. Services were held at Woodlawn Cemetery, N.Y., where the interment took place.

LEON W. V A N D E U S E N

Leon Wilson Van Deusen, a member of the Holland Society of New York since 1915 died September 27, 1982 in New Hartford, New York, at the age of 98 years. In years of membership, Mr. Van Deusen was the Society's oldest member at the time of his death.

Descended from Abraham Pietersen (Van Deusen) who came to New Netherland about 1630 from Haarlem, Nor th Holland, as an agent of the Dutch West India Company, he was born July 28, 1884 in Phelps, N.Y., the son of Michael H. Van Deusen and Nettie E. Quick. After attending schools in Canandaigua, N.Y., Mr. Van Deusen was graduated from Syracuse University School of Law in 1908. While in college he was captain of the freshman football team and also played on the varsity team as a freshman. He was also a member and president of Pi Psi fraternity while at college.

Following graduation from law school, Mr. Van Deusen became an attorney, practicing in Canandaigua, where he also held a number of prominent civic positions including City Judge of Canandaigua and member of the Board of Education. He was a past president of the Canandaigua Exchange Club, a Th i r ty -Th i rd degree Mason and active member of the Canandaigua Congregational church. He retired from the practice of law in 1942 due to ill health later living in Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, Florida and in Savannah, Georgia, before returning north to New Hartford.

He was first married to Cornelia Barringer who died in 1966. His second marriage, to Reta H. Clarke, M.D. , of New Hartford, N.Y., took place at Allendale, South Carolina on October 26, 1976 with his son, John P. Van Deusen, professor at Georgia Southern College, in attendance. Mr. Van Deusen is survived by his wife, Reta; three daughters, Mrs. Girard Mason, Deland, Florida, Cornelia Lawson, Savannah, Georgia, and Mrs. Fred Ross, Sacramento, California; three sons, Hiram B. Van Deusen, M.D., Utica, New York, a member of the Holland Society of New York, Leon Van Deusen, Jr., of Walkill, New York and John P. Van Deusen of Statesboro, Georgia; one step-daughter , two step-sons, and several grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grand­children.

Funeral services were held September 30, 1982 at a funeral home in New Hartford with interment at Crown Hill Memorial Park in Kirkland, N.Y.

R O D M A N D . d e K A Y

Rodman Drake deKay, a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1943, died November 19, 1982 in Port Washington, New York at the age of 84 years. Descended from Willem deKay who came to New Amsterdam before 1638, he was born in New York City on February 1, 1898, the son of Charles A deKay and Lucy E.H. Coffey.

A member of the class of 1919 at the United States Naval Academy, Captain deKay was selected for early graduation in 1918 and immediately went on active sea duty in World War I. He had the distinction of being the youngest destroyer captain in the U.S. Navy in 1921 . The following year he resigned from the Navy and joined the Western Electric Engineering Co. which soon after became the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Starting as a junior electrical engineer, Captain deKay subsequently headed the power development department.

Recalled to active duty in 1940 by the Navy, he was assigned at first to the Bureau of Ships working on the development and control of landing craft. After the outbreak

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of World War II, Captain deKay was given command of one of the Navy's first destroyer escorts, U.S.S. Hammann, partici­pating in convoy duty in the Mediterranean. Later he was made Division Commander of Escort Division 36 in the New Guinea and Philippine campaigns receiving commendations and promotion to Convoy Commodore.

Following retirement from active service at the end of World War II Captain deKay rejoined the Bell Laboratories where he contributed to the development of Telestar, the world's first communications satellite before his retirement. He was a member of the United States Naval Reserve, the American Legion and the Telephone Pioneers of America.

For twenty-four years Captain deKay served as the branch president for the United States Navy in The Holland Society, representing the Society at a luncheon given in I960 at Brooklyn Navy Yard honoring Vice Admiral Leendert Brouwer, the commander-in-chief of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

He was married in 1922 to Ann Wickes Craven who predeceased him in 1970. A year later he married Isabel Bruce Baldwin Nichols who died in 1977. He is survived by a son, Rodman D. deKay, Jr., of Chatham Center, N.Y., a daughter Ann (Mrs. John C.) Galvin, Port Washington, N.Y., five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. A memorial service was held at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Port Washington with interment taking place in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.

ROBERT N. SUYDAM

Robert Nichols Suydam, a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1956. died November 24. 1982 at Lincolnville, Maine at the age of 85 years. Descended from Hendrick Reycken who emigrated from Zutphen, Holland in 1663, he was born at Providence, Rhode Island, March 24. 1897 the son of George W. Suydam and Alice Skirrow.

Mr. Suydam began a successful business career in 1919 when he became clerk for the investment securities firm of Moore & Schley in Wall Street. New York. Later he transferred to another investment house, Tobey & Kirk as assistant manager and cashier before assuming the position of general manager for Moyse and Berry. When the latter firm consoli-

What Is Low Dutch?

How does Low Dutch differ from Holland Dutch ? In this article we can only give a few examples suggesting the kinds of differences which developed between Holland Dutch and Low Dutch during the course of two centuries of mutual isolation.

On being confronted with Low Dutch, a Hollander would probably have been struck by differences in syntax, intona­tion, vocabulary, and the pronunciation of certain vowels and consonants. Low Dutch syntax is not formally treated in this article, but a study of Barent Myndertssen's statement will illustrate a partial replacement of Holland Dutch syntactical constructions by English ones. This was typical of most Low Dutch speakers.9 Low Dutch intonation was regarded as es­sential to correctness and intelligibility by the Low Dutch themselves, and Prince believed that it would be a significant barrier to a Hollander's understanding Jersey Dutch.

9 This syntactical change was not usually accompanied bv simplification and regularization of verb forms, as has occurred in Afrikaans. Com­pare Afrikaans ek hetgekry. by bet gekry, with Mohawk Dutch ek her gekrege. by beegekrege. In this respect Low Dutch is more conserva­tive than Afrikaans, though it lost contact with Holland Dutch before Afrikaans did.

dated with Fenner & Beane and soon thereafter with Merrill, Lynch, he became a full partner, as well as manager of operations, for the new partnership of Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane (later to be Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith). In March of 1958 he was made a member of the American Stock Exchange and the following year was elected one of the governors of this prominent financial institution.

Mr. Suydam is survived by his wife, the former Mildred Lovering, and two daughters, Mildred and Georgia. Following funeral services, interment took place in the cemetery of the Bound Brook Reformed Church in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.

EDWARD GARDNER

Edward Gardner, a member of The Holland Society of New York since 1954 died at the age of 88 years on December 1 5, 1982 at Albany, New York. Descended from Jacob Jansen (Flodder) Gardenier who came from Campen, Holland, to Beverwyck (Albany) in 1638, he was born March 20. 1894 at New Concord, Columbia County, New York, the son of George H. Gardner and Ida M. Proper.

Following graduation from the public elementarv schools and high school of Glens Falls, New York, Mr. Gardner took a number of extension courses of study in the fields of accounting, investments, banking, finance and labor relations. He was associated in various capacities with the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation and its predecessor companies from 1917 until 1963 when he retired as assistant controller of Niagara Mohawk. During World War I he served with the 71st Regiment. 11th Division of the U.S. Army from 1918 to 1919. Mr. Gardner was a past president and member of the Dutch Settlers Society of Albany. N.Y.. and of the Albany Chapter of the Financial Executives Institute. He was also a member of the Albany County Historical Society as well as of the Controllers Institute of America and the University Club.

He is survived by his wife, the former Eva M. Creighton to whom he was married in 1923. Services were held at the Bethany Community Church (Reformed Church in America) of which he was a member and had served on the consistory as elder.

(continued from page I "I

Even before the English conquest of New Netherland. the Dutch in America had come into contact with Indians of two major linguistic families (Algonquian and Iroquoian) and with significant numbers of Europeans of English, French, Low German, and Scandinavian origin. After the English conquest the influence of English was. of course, enormously amplified, and during the eighteenth century significant im­migrations from the Palatinate and from Highland Scotland introduced Palatine German and Gaelic, especially in the Mohawk area.

Lenape. an Algonquian Indian language, contributed hes-paan and tehym to Jersey Dutch and perhaps the first element in spanbontrok to Mohawk Dutch. From Iroquois. Mohawk Dutch received tjonniedaag and the first element in akwiejas and suikerdas. In view of the nature of Iroquois-Dutch com­mercial relations, it is not surprising that all these words are related to the fur trade.

Considering the widespread intermarriage of Dutch and French speaking families, the virtual lack of clearly identifi­able French borrowings is surprising. (Low Dutch has. of

/continued on pa^e 24)

)

What Is Low course, a number of words of French origin, but most of these were apparently already used in the Netherlands in the seven­teenth century). The oath Sentoel and perhaps the doubtful form twille (usually twyfele) are the only possible remnants of any of the Scandinavian tongues which the writer has noticed. Contact between the Palatine Germans and the Mohawk Dutch is evident in a few words likeselleweek, kaatswyle, and perhaps hennebdse (< Hembeere ?), but the assertion of some local Mohawk Valley historians that Mohawk Dutch was a hybrid of German and Dutch is an extreme exaggera­tion.

The influence of English was profound, especially because Low Dutch families were often more or less bi-lingual for several generations before they shifted totally to English. This led not only to borrowing of specific words and to the syntacti­cal changes but also to "idiom weakness," i.e. the tendency to abandon Dutch idioms in favor of literal translations of Eng­lish ones. Thus, to quote an example given by van Loon, where a Hollander might relate a narrow escape using the phrase "Ik ben net met de hakken over deslootgekomen"(lit., "I just got over the ditch by my heels"), a Jersey Dutchman might well say, Ek ben zoo durdeur met de vdlvamme taande,

D u t c h ? (continued)

a word for word translation of "I got through by the skin of my teeth."

It should be pointed out that even in the last years of the dialect the amount of English borrowing varied very consider­ably from speaker to speaker. Van Loon gave the following imaginary conversation as an example of the melange of Dutch and English used by some speakers:

Zdg Hank. Tdl mie wat luk joe had met die setting yers joe brogt van Noe Jork.

Niet zoogoed. Baut e dozzen were gekrdkt, en van de rdst hetsjen ek oonlie ebaut fif tie persent kuikes.

("Say, Hank. Tell me what luck you had with the setting eggs you brought from New York."

"Not so good. About a dozen were cracked, and from the rest I only hatched about fifty percent chicks.")

On the other hand, van Loon remembers finding it remark­able that his grandfather's friend TerwiUiger used almost no English words in the conversation van Loon had with him in the early 1920s. ^

Dr. van Loon is responsible for the delightful illustrations in the Low Dutch nursery rhymes which accompany this article.

Surgeon Hans Kierstede (continued)

The issue of Hans Kierstede and Sara were as follows: (1) Hans, bapt. Sept. 21, 1644, married 1667, Jannetje Loockermans, daughter of Govert Loockermans and his first wife Ariaentje Jans. Hans was a surgeon who lived in New York City and died in 1692; (2) Roelof, bapt. Jan. 1, 1647, married circa 1670, Ytie Roosa, daughter of Albert Roosa. He was a surgeon and Schepen at Kingston, N.Y.; (3) Anna, bapt. April 30, 1651, died young; (4) Blandina, bapt. June 8, 1653. married 1674, Peter Bayard, son of Samuel Bayard and Anna Stuyvesant (sister of Director Peter Stuyvesant); (5) Jochem, bapt. Oct. 24, 1655, moved to Maryland where he was a surgeon, died 1710; (6) Lucas, bapt. Sept. 23, 1657, married 1683, Rachel Kip, daughter of Jacob Kip. They lived in New York City; (7) Catharyn, bapt. Jan. 4, 1660, married

1681, Johannis Kip, son of Jacob Kip; (8) Jacob, bapt. June 4. 1662, died young; (9) Jacobus, bapt. Nov. 28, 1663, married 1691, Ann Holmes, daughter of Samuel Holmes, died circa 1702; and (10) Rachel, bapt. Sept. 13, 1665, married 1686, William Teller.20

Female descendants of surgeon Kierstede married into families such as Bayard, Beekman, Bruyn, Bush, DeWitt, Kip, Livington, Romeyne, Rosencrans, Teller, Traphagen, Vanderhoof, Vandergrift, Van Ness, Van Ranst and Wynkoop. As a result many persons with New Netherland ancestors, are descended from this surgeon of New Amsterdam. *du

-'"Howard S.F. Randolph, "The Kierstede Familv." New York G. & B. Record. July 1934 issue. Vol. 65. p. 224.

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Society Activities (continued)

Other items on the meeting agenda included the drawing up of a standard procedure for electing Fellows of the Society. and discussion regarding the celebration of the centennial of the Society in 1985. With the approval of the trustees, the Scholarship Committee will divide its 1983 award between Randall Balmer of Princeton University, whose research and study of Dutch religious and political influence during the 17th century in New York has appeared in de Halve Maen and David W. Voorhees. a member of the Society, whc is engaged in graduate study on the Dutch colonial period at New York University. For the Historical Publication Committee, chairman Ralph L. DeGroof, Jr., noted that five volumes are planned for publication this year, among them. Council Minutes V (1652-1654), Court Records (1665-1672) and theBrooklyn Church Records. Dr. Charles Gehring of the editorial staff of these publications also spoke at a symposium in Amsterdam. The Netherlands in February on the location of Dutch manuscripts in America and the translation of them.

The following applicants for membership were approved upon the recommendation of the Committee on Genealogy:

Robert Coykendall. Youngstown. Ohio Robert Ten Eyck Lansing. Lake Forest. Illinois Douglas Mather Maybee. Bondville. Vermont

David George Putman. Schenectady. N.Y. Jan Bogaart Quackenbush. Montrose. Pennsylvania

David Arthur Onderdonk. Glastonbury. Connecticut Stephen Mark Sutphen. Freehold. N.J.

John Foster Van Horn. Red Hook. N.Y. Jeffrey Hunt Wyckoff. Mount Kisco. N.Y. John Scudder Wyckoff. Mount Kisco. N.Y.

Stephen Sanburv Wyckoff. Mount Kisco. NY'.

Seal of the Neiv Netherlands

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minutes of the last meeting were read and approved with minor corrections, reports were given by Secretary, Treasurer and committee chairmen. President Quackenbush also made an informal report of his activities.

Treasurer John H. Vander Veer reported a comparison of the 1982 projected budget with actual income and disbursement during the past year showed a very favorable balance due, in great part, to increased income from the Society's invested funds during the past year. However, the Banquet Committee reported a loss of over a thousand dollars from their affair last November at the World Trade Center in New York.

Trustee Arthur R. Smock, Jr. called the attention of the board to a proposed change in the By-Laws which had been informally approved last year but never formally adopted. He then proposed that Article X be amended to include an additional paragraph the President would be authorized to award the medal of the Society "to recognize distinguished service to the Society by a member or to recognize an outstanding contribution by a member in any field of human endeavor." Presentation of this award to be made "at or following the Annual Meeting of the Society." Although awards of this kind have been made since 1959. on an informal basis, they will now be made officially.

Following the recommendation of the Executive Com­mittee, the trustees voted to use the Amerman Memorial Fund, consisting of contributions received as a tribute to the late Richard FI. Amerman, as the basis for a Library Memorial Fund with the details of such a fund to be worked out by the Library Committee. Reporting for the Library Committee, Trustee Robert Nostrand listed a number of new acquisitions now accessible to users of the library and expressed his intention of improving the facilities for members.