de Halve Maen, Vol. 92, No. 4

de Halve Maen Journal of The Holland Society of New York Vol. 92, No. 4 2019-2020

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de Halve Maen

The Holland Society of New York 1345 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10105 President Andrew S. Terhune Vice President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III Treasurer R. Dean Vanderwarker III

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Sarah Bogart

Editorial Committee Peter Van Dyke, Chair Christopher Cortright John Lansing

Copy Editor Rudy VanVeghten

VOL. XCII

Winter 2019–2020

NUMBER 4

IN THIS ISSUE: 74

Editor’s Corner

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The Lawyer and the Fox: A Tale of Tricks and Treachery in New Amsterdam

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Accessories and Ornaments in New Netherland

89

Book Review: Jeroen Dewulf, The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo: The Forgotten History of America’s Dutch-Owned Slaves

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Here and There in New Netherland Studies

92

Society Activities

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by Jaap Jacobs

by Mary Collins

by Sam Huntington

In Memoriam

The Holland Society of New York was organized in 1885 to collect and preserve information respecting the history and settlement of New Netherland by the Dutch, to perpetuate the memory, foster and promote the principles and virtues of the Dutch ancestors of its members, to maintain a library relating to the Dutch in America, and to prepare papers, essays, books, etc., in regard to the history and genealogy of the Dutch in America. The Society is principally organized of descendants in the direct male line of residents of the Dutch colonies in the present-day United States prior to or during the year 1675. Inquiries respecting the several criteria for membership are invited.

De Halve Maen (ISSN 0017-6834) is published quarterly by The Holland Society.

Subscriptions are $28.50 per year; international, $35.00. Back issues are available at $7.50 plus postage/handling or through PayPaltm.

POSTMASTER: send all address changes to The Holland Society of New York, 1345 Sixth Ave., 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10105. Telephone: (212) 758-1675.

Fax: (212) 758-2232.

E-mail: info@hollandsociety.org Website: www.hollandsociety.org Copyright © 2020 The Holland Society of New York. All rights reserved.

David M. Riker Rudy VanVeghten

Cover: Hendrick van der Burgh, A graduation ceremony at Leiden University (c. 1650), Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Wikimedia Commons.

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Editor’s Corner

C

ONFLICT DOMINATED THE Dutch Republic’s Golden Age. Arguments over hierarchical power and society’s structure was, as historian Maarten Prak has demonstrated, vigorously debated in countless pamphlets by special interests. The Dutch Republic and, indeed, all successful republics since ancient times, was filled with the “noise of conflict.” Plato in The Republic suggested that through debate the interests of different parts of a society can create a harmonious unity which allows each part to flourish without expense to the others.

Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, despite authoring The Prince, promoted “a well-managed republic characterized by a free, open political culture in which dissent and conflict are not discouraged but seen as essential elements of a flourishing society.”

In this issue Jaap Jacobs reviews the political conflict between Adriaen van der Donck and West India Company Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant. The episode is popularly known today from being a central theme in Russell Shorto’s bestselling 2004 book, Island at the Center of the World. By late summer 1649, disagreements between Stuyvesant and Van der Donck had deteriorated into an open conflict. Its outcome defined the political maturation of the Dutch colony. Some scholars place the conflict’s origins in differing theological interpretations of Reformed Calvinism, as Van der Donck matriculated in law at the allegedly theologically tolerant Leiden University, while Stuyvesant had attended the theologically orthodox University of Franeker.

Hence the title of Jacobs’ essay.

Jacobs in these pages, however, takes issue with this theological interpretation. He found upon investigation that Van der Donck and Stuyvesant shared the same religious outlook.

The root of their conflict, he argues, must be located elsewhere. Dutch political divisions, he notes, were not “political parties with a clearly defined purpose” but “loose groups of men who at times found their individual interests aligned along the same axis and then acted upon the opportunities as they arose.” Using a 1650 letter by Van der Donck as his starting point, Jacobs takes us on a fascinating exploration into Van der Donck’s and Stuyvesant’s connections in the Dutch Republic and New Netherland. “Networks, whether familial, religious, professional, or, as in this case, political,” he writes, “can go a long way towards explaining the actions of individuals in the past.” Placing the struggle between the two men within its seventeenth-century Dutch context, Jacobs provides a convincing revised interpretation of the men and their actions which shaped events and the outcome. “There is no reason to doubt that Stuyvesant and Van der Donck both wanted the Dutch colony to grow and prosper,” he writes, “and that gives a tragic tinge to the tale of the Leiden Lawyer and the Franeker Fox.” Diversity and conflict are not only found in the political

realm. Mary Collins seeks in her essay to illuminate how New Netherlanders employed personal accessories and objects of ornament in their daily lives. She notes that the settlers were to some degree tolerant of differences and, “if begrudgingly,” welcoming of people from different places.

Hence, the population exhibited cultural variety. Nonetheless, few portraits of New Netherland’s citizens survive and the number of their personal objects in modern collections is small. Archeology provides additional evidence, but mostly limited to inexpensive, nonperishable items such as lost or discarded buttons. As a result, little attention has been given to the accessories and ornaments New Netherland’s inhabitants wore.

Collins corrects this neglect through identifying objects of personal adornment appearing in New Netherland textual sources. Sumptuary laws regulating dress were rarely enforced in the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth century and, unlike in the surrounding English colonies, none were imposed in New Netherland. Yet, Collins reveals clothing and accessories could still be subject of disputes and legal action. Looking at the documentary evidence found in court and governmental records, personal correspondence, and shop inventories, she compares the ornaments mentioned to similar objects found in European collections. By doing so she is able to provide a visual representation and “a glimpse of both the mundane and the precious” ways the colonists adorned themselves.

Jaap Jacobs notes that the authors of Van der Donck and Stuyvesants’ pamphlet war employed the common staple of Dutch political pamphlets, “a toxic mix of fiery rhetoric, innuendo, half-truths, and outright lies.” “Through the lens of accessories and ornaments,” Collins writes, “ideas about tradition, sentiment, and status are highlighted, and the legal world in which colonists operated is made visible, their lives as real, complex people are revealed.”

The medium has changed from ancient handwritten placards to early modern print to digital, but the health of a republic has always been found in the vigorous debates of its citizens. Indeed, the Dutch came to equate human freedom with such liberties and brought this notion to its North American colony. It is a bequest by our ancestors we must deeply cherish and preserve when those on all sides are demanding unquestioning allegiance. For as French philosopher Montesquieu wrote in the eighteenth century, “If in the interior of a state you do not hear the noise of any conflict, you can be sure that freedom is not there.”

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David William Voorhees Editor

de Halve Maen

The Lawyer and the Fox: A Tale of Tricks and Treachery in New Amsterdam

by Jaap Jacobs

T

HE MOST IMPORTANT day of the year in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands is October 3rd, when Leiden commemorates Leids Ontzet: the lifting of the siege over four hundred years ago. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the Low Countries had started a rebellion against their ruler, Philip II, who happened to be also the King of Spain. By 1574, things were not going well for the rebellion. Leiden, strategically a key city in the province of Holland, was besieged

by Spanish troops, and the inhabitants were dying from famine and disease. Prince William of Orange, the rebellion’s leader, tried to reach the city with his troops, the so-called Sea Beggars, on flat-bottomed ships, but he made slow progress. By early October, the situation in Leiden had become desperate. And then suddenly, the Spanish troops appeared to have left. As the traditional story goes, an orphan boy, Cornelis Joppensz, slipped out of the city, made his way toward the Spanish lines and found them deserted. What he did find was a large kettle with hutspot, a dish of mashed potato and vegetables. Soon afterward, the flatbottomed ships of the Sea Beggars reached the city and provided the starving inhabitants with bread and herring, which, with Jaap Jacobs is an Honorary Reader at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. This article is based on a lecture given for the New Amsterdam History Center on October 3, 2019. A short version appeared in the New Amsterdam History Center Newsletter, New Amsterdam Yesterday and Today, vol.

II, no. 2 (Fall 2019) (http://newamsterdamhistorycenter.org/news/). For a much fuller version, see “‘Act with the Cunning of a Fox’: The Political Dimensions of the Struggle for Hegemony over New Netherland, 1647–1653,” Journal of Early American History 8 (2018), 2: 122–52.

Liberatio Urbis or De ontsetting der Stad Leyden, the lifting of the siege of the city of Leiden in 1574. Etching and engraving. Jan Jansz Orlers, Beschryvinge der stadt Leyden. Leiden, 1614. Wikimedia Commons. hutspot, are still traditional fare in Leiden on October 3rd. The people of Leiden were jubilant. And so was William of Orange. As a reward for its stout defense, he offered Leiden a choice between tax exemptions or the foundation of a university. Whether Leiden made the right choice is still questioned by some, but the university quickly acquired an excellent reputation as a seat of learning. It attracted such theologians as Jacobus Arminius and Franciscus Gomarus, who were able to discuss the finer points of predestination over their garden fence—in Latin of course. The faculty of law was of high quality too, with students such as the famous Hugo Grotius and the Leiden lawyer in the title of this article: Adriaen van der Donck.1 Adriaen van der Donck is best known as

the writer of A Description of New Netherland, which remains an important source for the history of the Dutch colony. He was born in Breda, only a few years before that city was conquered by Habsburg forces in 1625. Van der Donck and his parents fled northward and were only able to return after the army of the Dutch Republic captured the city in 1637. A year later, Van der Donck matriculated at Leiden University to read law. He was subsequently employed by Kiliaen van Rensselaer to serve as chief judicial officer at the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck in New Netherland. After leaving Van Rensselaer’s service, he started J. W. Marsilje ed., Leiden: De geschiedenis van een Hollandse Stad: Vol. 1, Leiden tot 1574 (Leiden, 2002); Willem Otterspeer, Groepsportret met dame. Het bolwerk van de vrijheid. De Leidse universiteit 1575–1672 (Amsterdam, 2000).

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Portrait of a man, French, seventeenth century, often thought to be Adriaen van der Donck (1618–1655). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Below: Academia Leidensis (cropped), Wikimedia Commons.

his own patroonship Colendonck just north of Manhattan. Van der Donck became involved in the politics of New Netherland, which was rife with divisions in the aftermath of a devastating war with the Native Americans for which the West India Company was blamed. In 1649 he traveled back to the Dutch Republic with two others to present complaints to the States General in the form of a remonstrance. After his return to New Netherland in 1653, Van der Donck stayed out of public life until his untimely death at the hands of Native Americans two years later.

Historians of New Netherland have largely viewed Van der Donck in a positive vein. In the nineteenth century Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, a journalist of Irish origin who had fled to New York after getting into trouble with the authorities in British-ruled Canada, recognized his own travails in Van der Donck’s life and portrayed him as the leader of a popular movement that foreshadowed the American Revolution. Likewise, Russell Shorto, in his bestselling Island at the Center of the World, depicts Van der Donck as a cartesian paragon of the early enlightenment, a conduit for Dutch tolerance into North America, and a shining example for our own troubled times. A recent biography of Van der Donck, written by Julie van den Hout, is similarly positive.2 This positive image of Adriaen van der Donck is hard to reconcile with the historical record. Van der Donck did not play a role in the struggles of Jews, Quakers, and Lutherans for tolerance, as these for the most part took place after his death in 1655.

Also, the chronology of Van der Donck’s

life argues against any influence by the French philosopher René Descartes. By the time that Descartes’ thinking acquired traction in the Dutch Republic, Van der Donck had already departed for America.

None of Van der Donck’s writings display cartesian traits. In fact, most of the details of Van der Donck’s life point in an opposite direction and show signs of orthodox, even militant, Calvinism. Van der Donck’s exile from Breda during the Spanish occupation, his marriage in America to a daughter of Francis Doughty, a Puritan minister from England, and his continuing membership of the Calvinist church suggest that his engagement in colonial projects stemmed from religious motives similar to those of New England colonists: the desire to create a safe haven overseas, a bastion of the true reformed religion and far away from persecution by the Spanish. In that sense, it seems likely that Van der Donck entertained religious ideas quite similar to those of Petrus Stuyvesant.

Stuyvesant is of course the Franeker Fox in the title of this article. He only requires a brief introduction: he was born into an orthodox Calvinist family in the early 1610s in Peperga, Friesland, a province in the north of the Dutch Republic. Stuyvesant enrolled as a student at the University of

Franeker in 1630. He subsequently served the Dutch West India Company in a lower administrative position on the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha. After a brief return to the Netherlands, he went to Curaçao in 1639 where he was in charge of the stores. He became director of the island in 1642, but he returned to the Netherlands again after losing his right leg during an attack on the Spanish-held island of St. Martin. Subsequently, the West India Company appointed him director general of New Netherland.3 If Van der Donck and Stuyvesant had a similar religious outlook, what then lies at the root of their conflict? This question has been on my mind for a considerable time.

Over twenty years ago, I came upon a letter by Adriaen van der Donck, dated April 15, 1650. There is something odd about this letter. It is not in Van der Donck’s own handwriting, but it is a copy, made by one of the clerks of the Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch West India Company. And this A. P. G. J. van der Linde, “De ‘Remonstrantie van NieuNederlandt’ (1649) en haar bijzondere betekenis voor Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan,” in E.F. van de Bilt and H.W. van den Doel, eds., Klassiek Amerikaans: opstellen voor A. Lammers (Leiden, 2002), 92–102; Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, The Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (New York, 2004); Julie van den Hout, Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America (Albany, 2018).

2

3 Jaap Jacobs, “Like Father, Like Son? The Early Years of Petrus Stuyvesant,” in Joyce D. Goodfriend, ed., Revisiting New Netherland: Perspectives on Early Dutch America (Leiden, 2005), 205–244; Joanne van der Woude and Jaap Jacobs, “Sweet Resoundings: Friendship Poetry by Petrus Stuyvesant and Johan Farret on Curaçao, 1639–1645,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 75, no. 3 (2018), 507–40; Donna Merwick, Stuyvesant Bound: An Essay on Loss Across Time (Philadelphia, 2013).

Portrait of Petrus Stuyvesant (1611/12–1672). New-York Historical Society, 1909.2. https://digitalcollections.nyhistory. org/islandora/object/nyhs%3A1816.

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The Academy of Franeker.

copy made its way to the archive of the Amsterdam city government. There can only be one conclusion: Van der Donck’s correspondence was intercepted, opened, and copied, the first dirty trick in the conflict. This copy was subsequently used by the directors of the West India Company to jolt the Amsterdam city government into action. Just five days later, April 20, 1650, the Amsterdam directors wrote to inform Stuyvesant that the “ingratitude and treachery” of the delegates from New Netherland had now become evident. They did not mention Van der Donck or his letter, but they advised Stuyvesant to “act with the cunning of a fox.”4 I looked at both these documents again while working on my biography of Stuyvesant. Obviously, the struggle with Van der Donck required further research, but this time with a view to the wider context. In order to fully understand what was going on, I needed to investigate both Van der Donck’s and Stuyvesant’s connections.

Networks, whether familial, religious, professional, or, as in this case, political, can go a long way towards explaining the actions of individuals in the past. Now, in some ways historical research is similar to a criminal investigation: tracing who was in contact with whom, at which moment, at what place, and to what purpose. Stuyvesant’s network might be easier, as his main contacts were already known: the Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company who had appointed him. Van der Donck’s network was not immediately obvious. So, with the 1650 letters as my starting point, I reconstructed the struggle between Van der Donck and Stuyvesant and their networks in New Netherland and the Dutch Republic as they evolved over five

years. That reconstruction is the basis of this essay. ***

I

N APRIL 1650, the struggle between the two men was nearing its climax. Soon after arriving on Manhattan, Stuyvesant had become involved in a conflict that had been sparked by actions of his predecessor Willem Kieft. At stake was who was to blame for the war with the Native Americans. The opposition against Kieft, whose conduct was defended by the Amsterdam directors, consisted of people of different backgrounds: settlers, merchants, and a small number of patroons and their representatives, such as Cornelis Melijn. He had invested heavily in New Netherland, setting up the patroonship of Staten Island in the process. In this venture, Melijn collaborated with Godard van Reede van Nederhorst, a Dutch nobleman, who had become attracted to the idea of investing in colonizing ventures through the 1638 and 1640 “Freedoms and Exemptions.”

This scheme to encourage colonization by privatizing it also appealed to Adriaen van der Donck. When Melijn and Van Reede planned their patroonship in 1641, Van der Donck contemplated offering his services to them. Instead, he accepted Kiliaen van Rensselaer’s offer and went to Rensselaerswijck on the upper Hudson River.

This allowed him to acquire experience that would help him in setting up his own patroonship later on.5 In the summer of 1647, Kieft’s quarrel with Melijn led to a trial resulting in the latter’s banishment from New Netherland.

On the way to the Dutch Republic both men were involved in a shipwreck in which Kieft drowned. Upon his arrival in the Dutch

Republic, Melijn immediately traveled to Zutphen in the eastern Netherlands to meet Hendrick van der Capellen. Mentioned in Van der Donck’s 1650 letter, Van der Capellen was a member of the Gelderland nobility who often represented his province in the States General and frequently chaired its committee for West Indian affairs. There is no indication that Van der Capellen and Melijn had met before, and the most likely explanation is that Lubbert Dinclagen had enabled the contact between the two men.

Lubbert Dinclagen was at that moment Stuyvesant’s vice director, the second in command. He owed his appointment to Van der Capellen’s influence and plays a shadowy role in the conflict; he appears to have been something of an undercover agent. Whatever the case may be, the contact between Melijn and Van der Capellen proved fruitful. First, Van der Capellen purchased Godard van Reede’s part of the patroonship of Staten Island, and thus aligned his personal interests with those of Melijn. Next, when Melijn submitted his papers to the States General, their complaints were forwarded to the committee

4 Van der Donck to La Montage, 15 April 1650, inv.nr.

541, archive burgemeesters, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; Jaap Jacobs, “A Hitherto Unknown Letter of Adriaen van der Donck,” de Halve Maen 71 (1998), 1–6. The quote “act with the cunning of a fox” was destroyed in the 1911 New York State Capitol fire and has been supplied from Berthold Fernow’s unreliable translation of 1883 as published in E.B. O’Callaghan and B. Fernow, trans. and ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (hereafter abbreviated as DRCHNY), (Albany, 1853–1883), 14: 122–23; Amsterdam chamber to director general and council, 20 April 1650, New York Colonial Manuscripts (NYCM), vol. 11, doc. 20, p. 1–2, New York State Archives (hereafter abbreviated as NYSA), Albany, New York. Also in Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., Correspondence 1647–1653. New Netherland Documents Series, vol. XI (Syracuse, 2000), 87-88.

“Vrijheden ende Exemptien” (Freedoms and Exemptions), 7 June 1629, in A. J. F. van Laer, trans. and ed., Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts, being the letters of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1630–1643, and other documents relating to the colony of Rensselaerswyck (Albany, 1908) (hereafter VRBM), 136–53; “Articulen ende Conditien” (Articles and Conditions), 30 August 1638, inv.nr. 5755, archive of the States General (SG), National Archives (NA), The Hague (DRCHNY 1:110–114); “Vrijheden ende Exemptien”, 19 July 1640, inv.nr. 5755, SG, NA. On the patroonship plans, see Oliver A. Rink, “Company Management and Private Trade: The Two Patroonship Plans for New Netherland,” New York History 59 (1978), 5–26, and Jaap Jacobs, “Dutch Proprietary Manors in America: The Patroonships in New Netherland,” in L. H. Roper and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, eds., Constructing Early Modern Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World (Leiden, 2007), 301–26. On Kiliaen van Rensselaer, see Janny Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer (1586–1643): Designing a New World (Hilversum, 2010). On Van der Donck seeking employment with patroons, see Kiliaen van Rensselaer to Toussaint Muyssart, Jan. 31, 1641, letter book of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam (VRBM, 527). On Melijn and Godard van Reede, see agreement between Cornelis Melijn and Godard van Reede concerning Staten Island, 16 January 1648, Melijn Papers, New-York Historical Society.

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chaired by Van der Capellen. Through these connections Melijn and, later on, Van der Donck, became involved in a much larger political struggle.6 During the seventeenth century political developments in the Dutch Republic evolved around the relation between Amsterdam and the stadtholder. The stadtholder could wield substantial power, depending on his personality and on the circumstances. In 1618, Stadtholder Maurits, son of William of Orange, had used his military powers to intervene in a long-running conflict and had purged the city government in a number of cities in an exceptional power grab, which included the arrest of political opponents, such as Hugo Grotius. Maurits’s successor, Frederik Hendrik, had been much more careful and diplomatic in exerting influence than his brother. But his health and strength of will began to wane in the 1640s, and his son Willem II was waiting impatiently in the wings.7 In the course of the 1640s, a number of Dutch noblemen had become dissatisfied, even disgusted, with the growing dominance of the province of Holland in which the merchant-ruled city of Amsterdam held prime position. They coalesced around the stadtholder, first Frederik Hendrik and after his death in 1647, around Willem II. The most important issue in the 1640s was the question of war or peace with Spain. Peace would benefit Amsterdam’s trade, but it would lead to a reduction in the size of the Dutch army, thus taking away career opportunities for sons of noble families. It would

Portrait of Godard van Reede (1588–1648), Lord of Nederhorst and the Province of Utrecht’s delegate at the peace negotiations in Munster (1646–1648), by Gerard ter Borch the Younger.

Oil on copper, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

make it difficult for Willem II to make a name for himself on the battlefield.8 Some of the faction’s members, for instance Alexander van der Capellen, the younger brother of Hendrick, were adherents of an ideology that stressed the hereditary privilege and duty of the nobility to govern. Alexander even wrote a Latin tract, De Ambitione Plebejorum Supra Nobiles [The Ambition of The People Against the Nobility], which dealt with the fear of many noblemen that the cities tried to usurp the government of the land. In the opinion of these noblemen, the failures of the West India Company in Brazil and New Netherland were caused by the inherent unsuitability of merchants for positions of governmental authority. The merchants’ natural focus on self-interest, guided by

mercantile considerations, instead of on the general welfare was anathema to noblemen, to whom honor was paramount.9 Factions were not modern-style “political parties” with a clearly defined purpose and strong leadership. Rather, they were loose groups of men who at times found their individual interests aligned along the same axis and then acted upon the opportunities as they arose. Some of the members of the

6 Letter of the Amsterdam chamber to director general and council, 16 February 1650, NYCM, vol. 11: 18, p. 5, NYSA (Gehring, Correspondence 1647–1653, 81); Jaap Jacobs, “Crimen Læsæ Maiestatis or Abuse of Power? The 1647 Trial of Cornelis Melijn and Jochem Pietersz Kuijter,” Albert M. Rosenblatt and Julia C. Rosenblatt eds., Opening Statements: Law, Jurisprudence, and the Legacy of Dutch New York (Albany, 2013), 83–103.

On the government of the Dutch Republic up to 1650, see Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford, 1995); Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, Dutch Culture in a European Perspective 1650: Hard-Won Unity (New York, 2004); Simon Groenveld, Verlopend getij. De Nederlandse Republiek en de Engelse Burgeroorlog, 1640–1646 (Dieren, 1984); Simon Groenveld, Evidente factiën in den staet: sociaal-politieke verhoudingen in de 17e-eeuwse Republiek der Vereenigde Nederlanden (Hilversum, 1990); and Lesley Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Politics of Particularism (Oxford, 1994). On Frederik Hendrik, see J. J. Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, Prins van Oranje: een biografisch drieluik (Zutphen, 1978) and Jonathan I. Israel, “Frederick Henry and the Dutch Political Factions,” The English Historical Review 98, No. 386 (Jan. 1983), 1–27.

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8 Simon Groenveld, “Willem II en de Stuarts, 1647–1650,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 103, no. 2 (1988), 157–81; Simon Groenveld, “Een hinderlaag bij Brasschaat. Prins Willem II en de bevelvoering bij een eendaags gevecht, 4 september 1643”, in Simon Groenveld, Facetten van de Tachtigjarige Oorlog: twaalf artikelen over de periode 1559–1652 (Hilversum, 2018), 239–49.

On Van der Capellen, see Conrad Gietman, Republiek van adel. Eer in de Oost-Nederlandse adelscultuur (1555–1702) (Westervoort, 2010), 25–27, 45, 99; Robert Jasper van der Capellen, ed., Gedenkschriften van Jonkheer Alexander van der Capellen, Heere van Aartsbergen, Boedelhoff, en Mervelt: beginnende met den jaare 1621, en gaande tot 1654 (Utrecht, 1777), 1: 28–31; Hotso Spanninga, Gulden vrijheid? Politieke cultuur en staatsvorming in Friesland, 1600–1640 (Hilversum, 2012), 392–95.

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Binnenhof, The Hague. Engraving, early seventeenth century.

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stadtholder faction were publicly known to be on the side of the stadtholders, but others were not clearly identified as such and carefully hedged their bets as failure would imply public loss of face. The stadtholder faction often had to use stealth and dirty tricks in order to achieve its objectives.

The decentralized and sometimes byzantine decision-making processes in the Dutch Republic allowed ample scope for that.

While the estates of each province remained sovereign, general decisions on defense and foreign policy were dealt with by the States General, which met at the Binnenhof in The Hague. During the course of the seventeenth century, the plenary sessions of the States General gradually became the place where decisions that had been prepared in committee meetings were rubber-stamped.

Although the chair of the plenary sessions rotated among the provinces on a weekly basis, the committee meetings were always chaired by the member with the highest rank present. That usually was Gelderland, which as a duchy ranked higher than Holland, which was only a county. The committee meetings took place in the morning, before the plenary session started, or in the afternoon, after the plenary session had ended. Many people were involved in the meetings of the States General, but only about fifteen of them attended more than forty percent of the meetings. This was the core group that determined policies and of which Hendrick and Alexander van der Capellen were members.10 Several carefully planned measures were required for the stadtholder faction to get the resolutions it needed passed by the plenary sessions of the States General. First, a draft resolution had to be approved in committee. That meant that either Hendrick or Alexander van der Capellen had to be in The Hague to chair the committee. But as Holland would always have a representative at the meeting of the committee for West Indian affairs, the committee chair could only push through a draft resolution if the Holland representative did not come from Amsterdam or was not one of that city’s trusted confidants. Second, a draft resolution was voted on by the plenary session of the States General. Whether a draft resolution was introduced at the plenary session depended on who occupied the chair. So the stadtholder faction needed one of its members, such as Johan van Reede van Renswoude, a Utrecht nobleman, brother of Godard van Reede van Nederhorst, to chair the meeting that week. The chair

determined the agenda and usually kept a close eye on the interests of his province, of himself, and of his network. Third, the draft resolution needed to be brought to a vote at a favorable moment. There were several ways to push a resolution through.

Draft resolutions were not circulated on paper, but were read aloud by the main clerk. Distracting opponents by engaging them in conversation, so that they could not pay attention to the business in hand, introducing a draft resolution when specific members were absent because of a call of nature or because a committee meeting was running late, these were all tricks that were used at some point in time. And fourth, if a potentially controversial resolution made it through, it would help if the distracted opponents would not become aware of its contents straightaway and try to revoke it.11 If we look at the main decisions taken by the States General on New Netherland from 1648 to 1652, it becomes obvious to what extent Melijn and Van der Donck relied on the stadtholder faction. All the decisions went through the committee stage when Alexander or Hendrick van der Capellen was in The Hague and all were introduced in the plenary session when the chair was a member of the stadtholder faction. ***

L

ET US LEAVE The Hague for the moment and return to New Netherland.

Cornelis Melijn arrived back in New Amsterdam in early 1649. He had obtained a provisional appeal from the States General that suspended his banishment and called upon Stuyvesant to appear in person or send a representative to the States General as the designated court of appeal. This provided clear proof to Melijn’s allies in New Netherland, in particular Lubbert Dinclagen and Adriaen van der Donck, that they had powerful friends: their complaints were heeded and an attempt to reform the colony’s government might succeed.12 Up to this point, Adriaen van der Donck had hardly played a part in the conflict, even though he did have a seat on the advisory council, the Nine Men. Now, he decided to take center stage. He began to prepare a remonstrance to the States General, outlining the problems of New Netherland, and requesting substantial support. For this purpose he proposed sending a delegation to the Dutch Republic. Stuyvesant did not object to Van der Donck’s proposal per se, but according to

him a delegation had to be initiated by a colonial assembly. This ran counter to the plans of Van der Donck: his main aim was to strengthen the influence of patroons by reforming the colonial government of New Netherland through adding patroon members to director general and council.

A colonial assembly with representatives of both villages and patroonships would make it much more difficult to draw up a remonstrance criticizing the West India Company and send out a delegation tasked with advocating governmental reform.13 By late summer 1649, the relation between Stuyvesant and Van der Donck had deteriorated into open conflict and the men had taken up entrenched positions.

Clearly, the standoff had to be resolved by authorities in the Dutch Republic. So Van der Donck and his co-delegates made the transatlantic journey and then used several means to further their cause. For instance, they produced an inflammatory pamphlet, entitled Broad Advice. The anonymous pamphlet blames the mercantile inclinations of the directors of the West India Company for their failure to properly govern the colonies. In October 1649, Van der Donck submitted several documents, including the Remonstrance, to the States General.

These were turned over to its committee for West Indian affairs for further perusal.

In its defense, the Amsterdam chamber also 10 Groenveld, Evidente factiën); Theo Thomassen, Instrumenten van de macht. De Staten-Generaal en hun archieven 1576–1796 (Den Haag, 2015); Lesley Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Politics of Particularism (Oxford, 1994); Guido de Bruin, Geheimhouding en verraad. De geheimhouding van staatszaken ten tijde van de Republiek (1600–1750) (‘s-Gravenhage, 1991); John H. Grever, “The Structure of Decision-Making in the States General of the Dutch Republic 1660–68,” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 2, issue 2 (1982), 125–53.

11 Thomassen, Instrumenten van de macht, 109–211; De Bruin, Geheimhouding en verraad; Paul Knevel, Het Haagse bureau. 17de-eeuwse ambtenaren tussen staatsbelang en eigen belang (Amsterdam, 2001).

Resolution of the States General, 11 January 1648 and 9 April 1649, inv.nr. 4845, fol. 306r, 399, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 188, 248); Mandamus in case of appeal, 28 April 1648, inv.nr. 12308, fol. 274r-275r, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 250251); Prince of Orange to Stuyvesant, 19 May 1648, inv. nr. 12564.25, doc. 6, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 351-352).

See Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: DutchAmerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia, 2006), 152, for a different interpretation of the decisions of the States General.

12

13 Letter of the Eight Men to the Amsterdam Chamber, 28 October 1644, inv. nr. 12564.25, SG, NA, (DRCHNY 1: 213); resolution to summon the English towns on Long Island to send delegates to New Amsterdam, to consider of an embassy to Fatherland, 21 February 1649, NYCM, vol. 4, 425c, NYSA (NYHM 4: 580). See also Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden, 2005), 138–41.

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? y E R T O O G H op t VAN Nieu-Neder-Land Weghens de Gheleghentheydt,Vruchtbaerheydt, en Sobe-ren Staet deflelfs. IN \'SGR A ven-HAGE; Ghedrü^tbv^idk/ Sfael, Bouck-verkooper woonend®— \' - qjjlpHo^ tegen-over de Gevange-Poort, so»

submitted numerous documents.14 The contents of the Broad Advice and the Remonstrance are often taken at face value. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that its authors employed a toxic mix of fiery rhetoric, innuendo, half-truths, and outright lies. It included allegations of usurpation, tyranny, and arbitrary rule, which had been the common staple of Dutch political pamphlets since the late sixteenth century. In their demand for governmental reforms the delegates from New Netherland were deliberately vague: asking the States General to relieve the West India Company of the government of New Netherland, they asked for a competent civil government, such as your High Mightinesses will deem advisable to apply to this region, having something in common with the laudable government of our fatherland.15 This was not a request for a city government for New Amsterdam, as it is sometimes interpreted. Rather, the reference to region (provincie) suggests that the delegates had an institutional change at the level of director general and council in mind, probably something like the meeting of the regional estates in Gelderland, with guaranteed seats for the landowning nobility.

The Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company, confronted with this political attack, immediately sprang into action. In December 1649 the WIC directors briefed the city government of Amsterdam and thereby alerted their most powerful ally.

Alexander van der Capellen assumed the chair of the committee for West Indian

affairs in January 1650, which allowed the delegates from New Netherland the opportunity to press their case. Using the fact that in early February Johan van Reede van Renswoude chaired the plenary session, the stadtholder faction managed to speed things up, and in March 1650 the committee for West Indian affairs sent a list of proposed measures to the plenary session of the States General. But there it hit a snag: the Holland delegates, alerted by Amsterdam, requested a paper copy, and this delayed a decision.

Subsequently, delegates from Amsterdam in the States of Holland argued that the proposed measures ran contrary to the authority of the West India Company chamber in their city. So in this case, Amsterdam only managed to block proposals after they had gone through the committee stage.16 As a result of this setback, Van der Donck and his collaborators changed tack.

In April 1650 (the month of the two letters mentioned earlier), the committee for West Indian affairs sent the plenary session a “provisional order” with sweeping measures. If implemented, this would radically change the composition of director general and council: it would consist of a director and vice director and three members, one of which would be jointly appointed by the West India Company and the States General. The other two would be nominated by an assembly consisting of representatives of the patroons and the commonalty, which is what the delegates asked for in their request for “a civil government.” Second, Stuyvesant would be recalled. Third, a city government would be instituted in New Amsterdam, consisting of a schout, two burgomasters, and five schepenen.17 The delegates of New Netherland of course reacted enthusiastically to these proposals, especially as Van der Donck, one of the very few non-absentee patroons, would be an obvious candidate for one of the council seats. But there was immediate opposition from the Amsterdam chamber.

In their reply, the directors proposed a number of changes to the governmental reforms. They also objected to the recall of Stuyvesant, but remained silent about the proposed city government for New Amsterdam. This is not surprising. The proposed format for New Amsterdam was not controversial and there was no reason for the Amsterdam directors to object to it. Far more important was what the powers of a New Amsterdam city government would be, and even more so who would be appointed to it.18

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In addition, the Amsterdam directors resorted to a bribe in the form of a job offer.

They promised to send Francois Deckers to New Netherland as supercargo and ordered Stuyvesant to provide him with suitable employment there. This was a favor to Deckers’ uncle, the Utrecht burgomaster Gijsbert van der Hoolck, a delegate to the States General and a regular member of the committee for West Indian affairs. In this way, the Amsterdam chamber managed to send back the Provisional Order to the committee for West India affairs. As political tensions in the Dutch Republic reached boiling point in the summer of 1650, with the country on the brink of civil war, the reforms of New Netherland lost urgency.

The tension subsided when stadtholder Willem II suddenly died in November 1650.19 This turn of events had major consequences for Adriaen van der Donck. Alexander and Hendrick van der Capellen were unable for much of 1651 to further the cause of the New Netherland delegates. So the death of the stadtholder lifted the political pressure on the Amsterdam chamber. The 14 Jacobs, New Netherland, 146–49; Breeden-Raedt aende Vereenichde Nederlandsche Provintien: Gelreland, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Vriesland, Over-Yssel, Groeningen, gemaeckt ende gestelt uyt diverse ware en waerachtige memorien door I.A.G.W.C. ([Antwerpen], 1649); “Remonstrantie van Nieu Nederlandt ende gelegentheden aldaer”, 28 July 1649, inv.nr. 12564.30A, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 271–18); [Van der Donck], Vertoogh.

15 “eene bequaeme borgerlijcke regeringhe, soodanich als haer Ho: Mo: raetsaem sullen achten dese provincie toe te passen, eenigsints gemeenschap hebbende met de loffelijcke regieringhe onses vaderlants,” 26 July 1649, inv. nr. 12564.30A, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 266). O’Callaghan translated “borgerlijcke” as “municipal,” which in my view is a distortion.

16 Amsterdam chamber to Amsterdam burgemeesters, December 1649, archive burgemeesters (5028), Stadsarchief Amsterdam. On the political dominance of Amsterdam, see John H. Grever, “The Impact of the City Councils of Holland on Foreign Policy Decisions (1660–1668), Parliaments, Estates and Representation, Issue 1 (June 1994), 31–46; J.G. van Dillen, “Amsterdam’s Role in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Politics and Its Economic Background,” in J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossmann, eds., Britain and the Netherlands II. Papers delivered to the Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference (1962) (Groningen, 1964), 133–47; Remonstrance of the delegates of New Netherland, 12 March 1650, inv.nr. 12564.30A, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 376–77); resolution of the States General, 23 March 1650, inv.nr. 4845, fol. 545v (DRCHNY 1: 380); private notes of Jacob Stellingwerff, 24 March 1650, Oud Archief Medemblik, Westfries Archief.

17 Provisional Order, 11 April 1650, inv.nr. 12564.30A, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 387–91). See also Jacobs, New Netherland, 148-49.

Observations of the Amsterdam chamber on the Provisional Order, 11 April 1650, inv.nr. 12564.30A, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 391–95). See also Jacobs, New Netherland, 149.

18

19 Amsterdam directors to director general and council, 24 July 1650, NYCM 11: 22, p. 3–4, NYSA (Gehring, Correspondence 1647–1653, 93); Van der Capellen, Gedenkschriften, 2: 250–54. On the political situation in 1650, see Frijhoff and Spies, 1650: Bevochten eendracht, and Israel, Dutch Republic.

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Amsterdam directors became so confident that they could afford to ignore requests from The Hague for more information. For instance, the committee for West India affairs, spurred on by Van der Donck, wanted to interrogate Jan Jansz Damen, who happened to be in the Dutch Republic at the time. Damen had been one of the primary agitators in the attack on the native Americans in 1643 that initiated “Kieft’s War,” and would thus be a prime witness against the West India Company. The committee wrote to the Amsterdam chamber asking them to send Damen to The Hague. But the Amsterdam chamber replied that Damen had already left for New Netherland. Amsterdam notarial documents make clear that this was in fact not the case. The Amsterdam directors willfully misinformed the committee in The Hague and deliberately obstructed its proceedings, another dirty trick. They did the same when they allowed Secretary Cornelis van Tienhoven to return to New Netherland, despite the fact that the States General committee for West India affairs wanted to interrogate him in The Hague.20 The obstruction of the Amsterdam chamber and the absence of Alexander and Hendrick van der Capellen meant that Adriaen van der Donck had to bide his time.

After months of being absent, Hendrick van der Capellen returned to The Hague on 10 February 1652 and immediately assumed the chair of the committee. There is no doubt that Van der Donck had kept in close contact with the Van der Capellens during their absence, for that very same day he entered another petition, urging a final disposition of the previously submitted plans.

As he planned to return to New Netherland shortly, he asked for a speedy decision.21 As soon as this news reached the Amsterdam chamber, the directors took the usual action: they informed the Amsterdam burgomasters. There was still time to block pending resolutions, as Hendrick van der Capellen had to travel back to Gelderland to attend the meetings of the estates of that province. But in April 1652, his brother Alexander was in The Hague, and that allowed Van der Donck the opportunity for a final push. On the 27th of April, the committee for West India affairs submitted a draft resolution for the recall of Stuyvesant to the plenary session. The chair that week was Johan van Reede van Renswoude. What dirty trick he employed is unknown, but he managed to get the job done: Stuyvesant was ordered to return immediately.

Van der Donck was granted a letter to that effect, which he was to hand to Stuyvesant personally. The Amsterdam chamber would be informed of the resolution by letter.22 This plan could have worked, if Van der Donck had been able to arrive in New Netherland before any counter-orders reached the colony. Time was of the essence and therefore the Amsterdam chamber needed to be kept in the dark as long as possible.

Another dirty trick was used: after the plenary session of the States General on the 27th of April, Johan van Reede van Renswoude drafted a short letter to the Amsterdam directors. A copy of the resolution was to be enclosed. Usually, a letter from The Hague to Amsterdam took just two or three days to reach its destination.

In this case, the letter and the copy of the resolution, both signed by Johan van Reede van Renswoude and dated the 27th of April did not arrive in Amsterdam until two full weeks later, on either Saturday, May 11, or Sunday, May 12. Clearly Van Reede van Renswoude or someone else had deliberately delayed it. The directors in Amsterdam immediately noticed the dangerous predicament they were in and took three countermeasures. First, they tried to block Van der Donck’s return by sending their bookkeeper to the two ships about to leave for New Netherland. The skippers were ordered not to allow Van der Donck to board. Second, they sent a letter to Stuyvesant, informing him of the situation. They

wrote that the decision to recall had been taken without their prior knowledge and consent, so Stuyvesant should not hasten back to the Dutch Republic.23 The third countermeasure was to dispatch director Jacob Pergens to The Hague. Van der Donck submitted a last request to the States General on Monday, May 13, informing them of his intention to depart 20 Resolution of the States General, 14 March 1650, inv.nr.

4845, fol. 657v, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 434); States General to chamber Amsterdam, 14 March 1651, inv.nr. 11939, fol.

65, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 434); resolution of the States General, 21 March 1651, inv.nr. 4845, fol. 660 (DRCHNY 1: 435); Amsterdam chamber to director general and council, 21 March 1651, NYCM, vol. 11: 29b, p. 5, NYSA (Gehring, Correspondence 1647–1653, 106); resolution of the States General, 21 April 1651, inv.nr. 3211, fol. 270v, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 435); States General to Amsterdam chamber, 21 April 1651, inv.nr. 11939, fol. 113v, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 435); Amsterdam chamber to director general and council, 26 April 1651, NYCM vol. 11: 37, p. 1, NYSA (Gehring, Correspondence 1647–1653, 122).

21 For the chairmanship of the committee, see resolutions of the States General, 18 November 1650–10 February 1652, inv.nr. 4845, fol. 616v–759, inv.nr. 4846, fol. 1–3, SG, NA; Memorial of Adriaen van der Donck, inv.nr. 12564.36, 10 February 1652, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 438–40); Letter of Hendrick van der Capellen to Alexander van der Capellen, 10 February 1652, Van der Capellen family archive (467), inv.nr. 89, Gelders Archief, Arnhem.

22 Resolution of the States General, 27 April 1652 SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 471). States General to Stuyvesant, 27 April 1652, inv.nr. 5763, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1:472). States General to chamber Amsterdam, 27 April 1652, inv.nr.

5763, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 472).

23 Resolution of the Chamber Amsterdam, 12 May 1652, notarial archives (5075), inv.nr. 1373, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; Amsterdam chamber to Stuyvesant, 17 May 1652 (mistakenly dated 17 April 1652), NYCM, vol. 11: 59, NYSA (Gehring, Correspondence 1647–1653, 166–67).

Portrait of Jacob Pergens (?-1681), Director of the West India Company, Chamber at Amsterdam, attributed to Salomon Mesdach. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Wikipedia Commons.

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with the ships lying ready at the Texel and asking for some last safeguards. But after his request was read in the plenary session, the delegates of Holland requested time to consult with the full meeting of the States of Holland. This was a measure of ill portent for Van der Donck. He decided to leave without the requested papers, but still had time to go to a notary and obtain a proxy from Alexander van der Capellen to represent him in the founding of a new patroonship on Long Island. Then he left for Amsterdam, where on May 15 he hired a few servants for his patroonship. But it was too late. After arriving in The Hague, Pergens had contacted several members of the States General and the States of Holland.

The next morning, May 16, 1652, the Amsterdam Burgomaster Cornelis de Graeff, the former Burgomaster Cornelis Bicker (a sworn enemy of the late stadtholder Willem II), and six or seven other gentlemen from the States of Holland went over to the plenary session of the States General and asked for the resolution of April 27, the resolution to recall Stuyvesant. After this was read to them, they announced to the meeting that this decision had required the approval of the States of Holland. As a result, the resolution was withdrawn and Van der Donck was ordered to return the letter he had been handed. That was the final defeat for Adriaen van der Donck.

It has been suggested that the decision of the States General was motivated by the expected war with England. Instead it was powerplay by Amsterdam and Holland that thwarted Van der Donck’s last chance.24 Meanwhile Stuyvesant had acted decisively in New Amsterdam. In December 1650 he ignored the nominations made by the incumbent members of the Nine Men and appointed new members more favorable to the West India Company. Of the Nine Men in office from 1647 through 1650, none were left by 1652. In addition, Lubbert Dinclagen was forcibly ousted from his position as vice director. These purges changed the political constellation and resulted in the opposition becoming divided: despite their initial indignation, many former supporters of Van der Donck among the merchants of New Amsterdam gradually dropped their hostility towards the West India Company and Stuyvesant.

Meanwhile the hardcore members of the patroon faction (such as Dinclagen in New Netherland and Van der Donck and Melijn in the Dutch Republic) were marginalized.

This made it safe to grant New Amsterdam

city rights, as Stuyvesant and his council suggested to the Amsterdam chamber in late 1651.25 After permission had been granted early in 1652, Stuyvesant proceeded to install the city government of New Amsterdam on February 2, 1653. This was the earliest possible moment as the day of the institution of the city government of New Amsterdam had to conform as much as possible to that of Amsterdam. Candlemas, February 2, was the customary day to install new burgomasters in Amsterdam, a tradition dating back to the late fourteenth century. Five of the members of the purged Nine Men were appointed to the city government, none of them enemies of the Company, thus providing the foundation for a good relationship with director general and council.26

Putting the struggle between the Leiden Lawyer and the Franeker Fox within its Dutch political context of its time yields a revised interpretation of the role of participants, events, and decisive factors. The conflict may have found its starting point in colonial events, but its trajectory was determined by the shifts in the balance of power in Europe. It was a transatlantic struggle for political power between the Amsterdam Chamber, assisted by the Amsterdam city government and aided by its officers in the colony on the one hand, and a changing coalition of different groups that included colonists, merchants, as well as patroons supported by the stadtholder faction in the States General on the other.

Over the course of the struggle, the coalition began to break up. Discontented settlers only played a significant role in the first phase of the struggle, from 1643 to 1647, when some of their number were members of the Eight and Twelve Men. Small and large merchants and traders were part of the opposition throughout and contributed significantly to the membership of the Nine Men. By late 1650, the opponents of the Company in New Amsterdam were purged from the Nine Men and replaced by men more inclined to collaboration. The patroon component of the opposition lasted longest. This included Cornelis Melijn, Vice Director Lubbert Dinclagen, and of course, Adriaen van der Donck. Due to the First Anglo-Dutch War, Van der Donck could not return to New Netherland. He spent his time in the Dutch Republic writing his description of the colony, and obtaining

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his doctorate in law at Leiden. Before he returned, Van der Donck had to promise not to meddle in politics any more. He probably intended to make his patroonship Colendonck and the planned patroonship on Long Island a success. But he was never able to do so and tragically died in a war with the Native Americans. There is a sad irony here, as his conflict with Stuyvesant found its origins in an earlier war.

So what then was the main cause of the clash between Van der Donck and Stuyvesant? There is no evidence that suggests a difference of ideology or religion caused the men to fall out. Rather, it was a political struggle for hegemony: who would rule over New Netherland? Would it be the mercantile elite of Amsterdam, the West India Company officials and Petrus Stuyvesant, or the nobility in the Dutch Republic, the patroons of New Netherland, and Adriaen van der Donck? There is no reason to doubt that Stuyvesant and Van der Donck both wanted the Dutch colony to grow and prosper, and that gives a tragic tinge to the tale of the Leiden Lawyer and the Franeker Fox. 24 Petition of Adriaen van der Donck, 13 May 1652, inv.nr., 12564.36, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 473); Power of attorney of Alexander van der Capellen to Adriaen van der Donck to represent his interest in his colony on Long Island, previously taken care of by Lubbert Dinclagen, 13 May 1652, notarial archives (372-01), inv.nr. 264, fol. 164-164v, Haags Gemeentearchief; labor contracts between Adriaen van der Donck and several people, 15 May 1652, notarial archives (5075), inv.nr. 2279 V, p. 24, Stadsarchief Amsterdam; letter of the Amsterdam chamber to Stuyvesant, 17 May 1652 (mistakenly dated 17 April 1652), NYCM, vol. 11: 59, NYSA (Gehring, Correspondence 1647–1653, 166–67); Resolution of the States General, 16 May 1652, inv.nr. 4846, fol. 21r, SG, NA (DRCHNY 1: 475). For a different view on the impact of the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War, see Shorto, The Island at the Centre of the World, 243–49.

25 For the wetsverzetting in New Netherland, see the extract of a letter from the gemeenslieden to Van der Donck, 12 September 1651 (DRCHNY 1: 452), inv.nr. 12564.36, SG, NA. For the ousting of Dinclagen, see the extract of a letter from Dinclagen to Van der Donck, 19 September 1651 (DRCHNY 1: 453), extract from a protest from Dinclagen, 28 February 1651 (DRCHNY 1: 454–56) and extract from an attestation of Brant van Slichtenhorst, 2 May 1651 (DRCHNY 1: 456–57), all in inv.nr. 12564.36, SG, NA. See also Jaap Jacobs, “‘To Favor This New and Growing City of New Amsterdam with a Court of Justice’: The Relations between Rulers and Ruled in New Amsterdam,” George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam, eds., Amsterdam-New York. Transatlantic Relations and Urban Identities Since 1653 (Amsterdam, 2005), 17–29.

26 Amsterdam chamber to director general and council, 4 April 1652, NYCM, vol. 11: 53, NYSA (Gehring, Correspondence 1647–1653, 149); Official promulgation of New Amsterdam as a municipality, 2 February 1653, Bontemantel Collection, New Netherland Papers, New York Public Library (I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (New York, 1915–1928), 4: 133–36). See also Jaap Jacobs, “‘To Favor This New and Growing City of New Amsterdam with a Court of Justice.’” For a different interpretation, see Merwick, Stuyvesant Bound, 24–31.

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Accessories and Ornaments in New Netherland

by Mary Collins

T

HE COLONY OF New York, and New Netherland which proceeded it, was a place of variety.

The settlement was concerned with trade and commerce, tolerant, to some degree, of religious differences and welcoming, if begrudgingly, to people from different places. Many aspects of the colony and the lives of its residents have been examined, but little attention has been given to the finer details of the personal items that decorated the people living there in the years before 1700.1 Through the lens of accessories and ornaments, ideas about tradition, sentiment, and status are highlighted, and the legal world in which colonists operated is made visible, their lives as real, complex people are revealed.

As archaeologists Anne-Marie Cantwell Mary Collins is a librarian and genealogist, with research interests in New York and expertise in the colonial era. This article originated as a paper for a course on European fashion of the early-modern era at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she was recently awarded an M.A. degree.

Formerly with the Holland Society, Ms. Collins is now the librarian at the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History in Hudson, New York.

and Diana diZerega Wall note: “They used material culture to forge links with each other in their new communities and with those in distant patria.”2 There are few portraits of citizens of New Netherland, and the number of objects from the era in museum collections is also very small. The archaeological evidence offers up something, buttons for example, and a few other kinds of objects, but the view is still screened.3 In the absence of other evidence, records made by colonial courts and various governmental bodies, and a smaller number of personal papers, can provide a glimpse into the ways colonists employed and considered accessories and objects of ornament in their daily lives. These records include wills and administrations of estates, inventories of personal and business holdings, court proceedings, contracts, like the indentures of apprentices, church records, and letters.4 They have been translated, transcribed, and published, though not always with a strict adherence to current editorial standards or an understanding of the objects in question.

Knowing what kinds of items were in the colony, it is possible to look at collections in the “old world” for similar objects, to locate examples that will give visuals to the texts. What kinds of objects would be

described as an accessory or ornament?

Clearly jewelry, from necklaces and rings to earrings, would be included. Hats, both useful for warmth and stylish, might also have a decorative band; lace and braids might be added to garments. Buttons, like hats, are functional and occasionally flashy.

Anything that is supplemental to the basic garments worn by the colonists might be of interest. Beyond simply decorative, accessories and ornaments are personal; they hold meaning and memory for their owners and for the community at large.

I

Persons, whom I have designated.

n 1632, Killiaen van Rensselaer wrote to his nephew Wouter van Twiller, who was in route to Van Rensselaer’s patroonship in New Netherland. He sent several items with his nephew, things that were intended for the leading men of his settlement as signs “New Netherland Bibliography” www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/research/new-netherland-bibliography.

1

Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall, “Landscapes and Other Objects: Creating Dutch New Netherland,” New York History 89, no. 4 (Fall 2008), 344.

2

Emilie E. S. Gordenker, “The Rhetoric of Dress in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Portraiture,” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 57 (1999), n103.?https:// www.jstor.org/stable/20169144.

3

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Figure 1. Bartholomeus van der Hulst, The Banquet at the Crossbowsmen’s Guild, 1648. The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. of their prominence: a silver-plated rapier with baldric (the belt or sash across the chest) and a black hat with a plume to be presented to Rutger Hendrixsz van Soest in his capacity as officer and schout of Rensselaerswijck, four black hats with silver bands to be presented in his name to the schepens and councilors of Rensselaerswikck.5

A few years later, when a new schout was selected, he was instructed to visit the colony director, “to take the oath of fidelity and the receive the silver-plated rapier with baldric and the hat with a plume” which were waiting for him.6 Apparently, these accessories went with the office and were passed from one man to the next. They were also, it would appear, a common set of items for a man of position to have, as several paintings of the era show groups of men in these signifiers of status. Consider The Banquet at the Crossbowsmen’s Guild by van der Hulst (figure 1). The painter has captured the riot of the party, crowds of men, with rapiers and elaborate baldrics and hats of black and gray, some worn, some held aloft, each with a plume or decorative band to distinguish the owner and his rank.

Camaraderie and community came through in more somber events as well. In July 1679, the will of Henry Clark, “late of Poynig Creek, Va., [now] of New Yorke” was filed. First, “a pair of large buttons shall be put in the pocket of my best suite” which should be sent to his brother in England.

After other matters are settled, Clark directs that scarves and gloves be given to the men who carry him to his grave “as the usual custom is.”7 The gift of items, often gloves and scarves, to funeral attendees was common in colonial America, especially in New England, for a period of about one hundred years. Mr. Clark’s note of this custom is an early example and somewhat unusual for New York, though not without parallel. Before it fell out of favor, the practice became rather extreme, with some family members giving away thousands of pairs of gloves to memorialize a lost loved one.8

special items and traditions surrounding a wedding or marriage is certainly familiar.

This may be what Grietie Warnaers was counting on when she sued Daniel d’Stille in 1654, asking that he “be condemned to lawfully marry her.” She had his signet ring and letters proclaiming his affection. He had made a promise, and because of that she had felt it acceptable to have relations with him. There was apparently some confusion, with d’Stille unwilling to agree to marry.

After Grietie Warnaers announced that she was pregnant, the court officers decided to ask the clergy for advice.10 What happened

Subjects of my affection and haste.

4 John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, 2007), 327.

“The need to employ a wide range of sometimes neglected written sources is a consequence of the major evidential obstacles that confront historians of clothing worn by ordinary people.”

O

ther ornaments are less understood.

A curious back-and-forth occurs in a series of court documents from Albany in December 1658. The wife of Abraham Vosborch sued Annetien Lievens, the wife of Goossen Gerrittsen, for four and a half beavers, “for the decorated crowns which the defendant borrowed from her and which have not been returned.” The defendant said that she borrowed them jointly with Maria Wesselsen, “as they were both bridesmaids” and she maintained that she should only pay one half of the replacement cost.9 It is unclear what these crowns, or headdresses, would have looked like, but the idea of

84

5 A. J. F. Van Laer, trans., The Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts (Albany, 1908), 205.

6

Ibid., 250.

“New York Probate Records, 1629–1971,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/) New York County, wills liber 1 (1665–1683) estate of Henry Clark, 216; William S. Pelletreau, ed., Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate’s Office, City of New York (New York, 1892), 54.

7

Steven C. Bullock and Sheila McIntyre, “The Handsome Tokens of a Funeral: Glove-Giving and the Large Funeral in Eighteenth-Century New England,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 69, no. 2 (April 2012), 305–46.

8

A. J. F. Van Laer, trans., Minutes of the Court of Fort Orange and Beverwyck, 1652–1660, 7 vols. (Albany, 1923), 2: 169

9

Berthold Fernow, ed., The Records of New Amsterdam: From 1653 to 1674 Anno Domini, 7 vols. (New York, 1897) 1: 235, 238. [hereafter cited as RNA].

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Figure 2. Posy ring with inscription “God’s Providence is our Inheritance,”

made by Thomas Horne, 1661–1691.

The British Museum, London.

after that is unknown, but no marriage record appears for the couple in the local church register.11 Rings are perhaps the most common item of jewelry in the early records. New Netherland historian Jaap Jacobs suggests that most were likely wedding bands.12 This is a fair assessment, especially considering the large number of rings that are described as “gold ring” or with a similar generic phrase.

A few rings are more precisely described, and one is very specific.

On October 7, 1668, the will of Captain Thomas Exton was entered in the liber

in New York. He left to Richard Nicoll, the son of Mr. Matthias Nicoll, “my gold seale ring” and to Mrs. Anna Broadhead, the widow of Captain Daniel Broadhead, “a gold ring with the poesie on it ‘God’s Providence is our Inheritance.’”13 This style of ring was a popular token of affection in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The inscription, usually on the interior of the band, was intended to convey not just personal feelings but a spiritual connection.

The example, above, has the same phrase as Captain Exton’s, a Biblical reference, and is likely similar in form (figure 2).

Figure 3. (left) Mulier Svevica vel Augustana, Wenceslaus Hollar printmaker, 1643.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The will of Mary Jansen, the widow of Govert Loockermans, provides another display of the sentimental, familial connection of jewelry. Filed in 1678, Mary Jansen left several pieces to her children and grandchildren, including a golden earring given to her by her grandmother, a diamond rose ring, and a “silver chain with a case and cushion.”14 This last piece, a chain with other items, like keys, scissors, or a pin cushion, attached, appears several times in the records. They might be called girdles, chatelaines, or simply “chaynes.”

This was a practical object and a decorative one that held its original meaning as an object associated with women, specifically the woman of house (figures 3 and 4).

In 1641, the inventory of the “goods and effects belonging to the estate of Vroutje Ides” included, “one gold hoop ring, one silver medal and chain, one ditto under girdle with key ring” along with a list of clothing and household items.15 In 1661, Samuel Purple, ed., Records of the Reformed Church in New Amsterdam and New York: Marriages from 11 December, 1639 to 26 August, 1801 (New York, 1890), 18–20. Records from 1653–1656 searched.

11

12 Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY, 2009), 217.

13 “New York Probate Records, 1629–1971,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/) New York County, wills liber 1 (1665–1683) estate of Thomas Exton, 27.

Pelletreau, Abstracts of Wills, 8.

14 “New York Probate Records, 1629-1971,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/) New York County, wills liber 1 (1665-1683) estate of Mary Jansen, 197, 239.

Pelletreau, Abstracts of Wills, 60-1.

Figure 4. (right) Portrait of Gillis Hooftman, shipowner, and his wife Margaretha van Nipsen, by Maerten de Vos, 1570.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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the “Items brought in belonging to the widow of Hendrick Pietersen van Hasselt” included: “A pair of rusted knives. A silver chain with a silver hook. A silver girdle (gordel) with a silver key hook (rym) and another silver hook. A velvet purse with silver chain and ten small pearls in the purse.”16

Matters outstanding

A

s might happen with any article of value, items of ornament were used as collateral for credit or to settle debts.

“A fine hat” might be requested for back rent or a “good grey hat” as payment for services.17 In New Amsterdam in 1655, Madeleen Vincent sued Jacob Willemsen for a balance of fl. 11 for brandy drawn at her house. While she could not furnish written proof of the debt, she said he “sent his hat-band as a token.”18 Objects described as ear ornaments or ear irons (oorstricken and oorijzers) were offered as collateral for debts in a handful of records. In Albany, Folkert Jansz put forth items including two pairs of gold ear ornaments and one pair of crescents as a pledge toward the debts of Rutger Jacobsen. For several years in the 1670s, a promissory note was recorded in the church’s account books for gold items associated with ear ornaments.19 These curious items were misunderstood by some early translators of the records, but are in fact objects of traditional Low Country women’s headwear. The main part is a metal band that goes around the head to hold the cap in place, and generally remains hidden under the cap. In Rembrandt’s Portrait of Christina Hooghsaet the oorijzer is uncharacteristically visible, perhaps because of its fine quality (figure 5). In Rembrandt’s Study of a Women in a White Cap, only the ends of the oorijzer can

be seen (figure 6). This part, close against the face, may have a decorative finial or a dangling ornament, often half-moons or rosettes. The craftsmanship ranges from a plain, thick wire to elaborate bands made of precious metals with gems, likely with associated values (figure 7). In 1669, Janettje Jacobs was accused of stealing a pair of ear ornaments. She claimed that she had purchased them. Unable to prove this however she was ordered to return the objects.20 She was not the only resident to have trouble in court.

T

Contrary to law and reason

heft was a serious problem in the colony, and jewelry and accessories, often small and precious, were easy targets.

In 1655, Catalyntie Verbeeck, wife of Aryaen Woutersen, complained that Barentie, Gerritt Fullewers’ wife, had insulted her and “stole from her a certain gold ring.” After some deliberation, the ring was produced, and through certain marks was confirmed as the property of Catalyntie Verbeeck. Barentie had been in error.21 There was no mistake however in 1661, when two women, Annetje Minnen the widow of a soldier, and Neeltje Pieters, the wife of a carman, both

twenty-three, were arrested and brought before the court. The charges against them included the theft and then later sale of items belonging to Symon Jansen Roymen.

The items included stockings, slippers, silk ribbons, and lace, specifically black lace.22 Witnesses came forward, the missing items were found in the home of Neeltje Pieters, and the women were jailed.

Unlike colonial Massachusetts, New Netherland and English New York had no sumptuary laws.23 However, clothing and accessories could still be a subject of legal action, or at least part of its application.

In 1673, the residents of Manhattan found 15 A. J. F. Van Laer, trans., and Kenneth Scott and Kenn Stryker-Rodda, eds., Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638–1660. New York Historical Manuscript Series (Baltimore, 1974), 1: 323.

Berthold Fernow, trans. and ed., Minutes of the Orphanmasters of New Amsterdam, 1655–1663, vol. 1 (New York, 1902), 185.

16

17

RNA 4: 38; 5: 6.

18

RNA 1: 323.

Janny Venema, ed.. and trans. Deacon’s Accounts, 1652–1674, First Reformed Church Beverwyck/Albany, New York (Rockport, ME, 1998), 211, 222, 232.

19

20

RNA 6: 206, 212.

21

RNA 1: 382, 387.

22

RNA 3: 316.

“Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1651,” www.constitution.org/primarysources/sumptuary.html 23

Figure 5. Detail from Portrait of Christina Hooghsaet, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1657.

Private collection.

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Figure 6. Study of a Women in a White Cap, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1640. The Leiden Collection New York.

themselves under a new penalty. Should their children be “caught on the street playing, racing and shouting, previous to the last preaching” the authorities were allowed to confiscate the hat or upper garment from the child. Parents could retrieve the items by paying a fine.25 This law shows both the ubiquitous nature of hats and their importance, as well as the power of shame and inconvenience.

A troubling exchange concerning a hat caused the Reformed Church minister of New Amsterdam, the Reverend Megapolensis, to write back to his church elders with some alarm in the fall of 1657. Quakers, recently expelled from nearby colonies, arrived in New Netherland. As was their custom, the Quaker men did not remove their hats to greet the local leaders. Perhaps not understanding, and certainly not

agreeing with the practice, Megapolensis complained, the man, “stood still with his hat firm on his head, like a goat.”25 Beyond conveying status or making a personal statement, hats and caps were important accessories for protection from the elements, and most people would have owned at least one. It is not a surprise then that hats appear in the court records of New Netherland with some frequency. People were charged with knocking the hat off the head of a foe during a fight, cutting the hat of another, and taking the hat from the head of a sentry outside the director’s door, and nailing it to a post.26 Merry Terry got in trouble for assaulting Jan Evertsen and stealing his hat.27 He was ordered to return 24

RNA 6: 405.

E. T. Corwin, ed., Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, vol. 1 (Albany, 1901), 399.

25

Figure 7. An oorijzer made of silver with gold ends, 1600–1699. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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the hat and pay a fine of six guilders. Hats were common but also unique and could be used to identify individuals. In 1656, after the disappearance of the fiscal, Cornelis van Tienhoven, the discovery of his hat and cane floating in the river was proof enough for the court to confirm this death.28 A few years later Messack Martens was branded and banished for stealing cabbages while drunk. His neighbors knew he was the thief because he left his hat behind in the garden.29

Figure 8. Inventory of the estate of John Winder, merchant, New York, 1678.

On account of the style

I

n 1657, Jeremias van Rensselaer, son of the original Patroon, wrote from New Amsterdam asking his mother for things “badly needed.” Specifically, he wanted, “a red cloth waistcoat with solid silver buttons, a pair of chamois breeches and a large lace [ruff] or two.”30 So, it would appear he was unable to obtain these in the colony at that time, or perhaps not to his standards. But, as the colony grew, and time passed, the arrival of craftspeople meant that residents did not have to rely on trade for their personal decoration needs. Indeed, by 1660 the following people were living in the colony: Samuel the hatmaker, Albert Albertsen the ribbon weaver, and Roeloff Jansen the lacemaker.31 An active system of apprenticeship was flourishing by the end of the century. Many of the indenture contracts include language describing the clothes and accessories due the apprentice at the end of his or her service. This was common enough that most do not list the exact items expected, but some do. In January 1698, William Evans, age fourteen years, was indentured to Abraham Splinter, cordwainer, tanner and currier, for five and a half years. The terms included: the above said Abraham Splinter at the expiration of the above apprenticeship is to finde and provide to the said William Evans two new suits of apparel one braod cloath and one of stuffer searge six shirts six neckcloaths three paire of stockings two paire of shoes and two hats.32 Hannah Buckmaster, aged twelve years in 1699, was placed with Joseph Latham, shipwright, and Jane, his wife, “seamstress and manto maker” for five years. She was to be taught “to make mantos, pettycoats, sew and make plain worke. . . . ” Her pay

would include room and board and the “usual provisions.”33 Merchants in seventeenth-century New York flourished as well, and inventories of their goods appear in estate records, from the earliest liber. As one example, consider the legacy of John Winder (figure 8). In 1678 his shop contained a variety of dry goods, yards of every kind of fabric, ribbons and buttons of every sort and description, also combs, page after page of clothing, stockings and hoods, hats, caps, thirty-four “payre” of gloves, necklaces, pendants, sewing things like thimbles, pins and needles, forty-three pounds of brown thread, laces but no lace, ready-to-wear items, and shoes.34

personal, the haze of centuries clears. It is possible to imagine the pride of the schepen donning his new hat with a silver band, or the sorrow of Mary Jensen’s granddaughter, holding the golden earring brought to the new world decades before, and passed through generations. The lack of material examples is a hindrance to research in New Netherland, but the richness of the records makes it possible to see, at least glimpse, the lives of its residents.

26 E. B. O’Callaghan, trans., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State, Albany, NY. vol. 1 (Albany, 1865), 85.

27

29

Conclusion

E

xamining the lives of seventeenthcentury New Yorkers through their accessories and ornaments provides a glimpse of both the mundane and the precious.

It is an imperfect lens, perhaps, offering impressions that are incomplete or fuzzy, as a seventeenth-century camera obscura might. However, because the materials are

88

Ibid., 80.

Ibid., 178. Tienhoven may have faked his death to avoid prosecution. His brother fled the colony.

28

RNA 3: 405.

A. J. F. Van Laer, trans, Correspondence of Jeremias van Rensselaer, 1651–1674 (Albany, 1932), 48.

30

31 O’Callaghan, Calendar of Historical Manuscripts,vol.

1, various.

32 “Burghers of New Amsterdam and the Freemen of New York, 1675–1866.” New-York Historical Society Collections for the Year 1885 (New York, 1886), 578.

33

Ibid., 582.

“New York Probate Records, 1629–1971,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/) New York County, wills liber 1 (1665–1683) estate of John Winder, 275+.

Pelletreau, Abstracts of Wills on File, 32, 67.

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Book Review Jeroen Dewulf, The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo: The Forgotten History of America’s Dutch-Owned Slaves (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017).

J

EROEN DEWULF’S The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo: The Forgotten History of America’s Dutch-Owned Slaves is a deep dive into the history and origins of Pinkster, a celebration with Dutch roots that became the most important holiday of the year for enslaved Africans and African Americans living in New Netherland and New York during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More than a single study of the Pinkster holiday, Dewulf’s book is also a welcome and intriguing addition to the history of slavery in New Netherland and New York. Previous historians have examined Pinkster in their work, but Dewulf’s study is undoubtedly the most comprehensive study of the subject to date.

What’s more, The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo provides a strikingly new interpretation of Pinkster’s history, an interpretation grounded in the author’s firm grasp of religious history, Dutch, Iberian, and African history, and the seventeenthcentury Atlantic World.

Historians have generally understood African American celebrations of Pinkster as the outgrowth of New World conditions and circumstances. In these histories, the seventeenth-century Dutch brought Pinkster to New Netherland, and free and enslaved people of African descent transformed it into a celebration of African cultural traditions during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pinkster is, in fact, a shortened version of the Dutch word Pinksteren, a celebration of the Christian holiday of Pentecost, which has a long history in Dutch-speaking areas of Europe.

What’s more, Pinkster celebrations did take place in New Netherland during the period of Dutch control and settlement. The Reverend Jonas Michaelius referred to Pinksteren in a1628 letter from New Netherland, and in 1655 a tavern owner in Beverwijck (today’s Albany) received permission to engage in a traditional Pinkster game of “shooting the parrot” on the third day after Pentecost [p.

27]. These seventeenth-century references to Pinkster indicate that the holiday and its traditions had not only come with the Dutch

settlers to New Netherland, but that it continued to follow a familiar European form in the New World, and Dewulf acknowledges as much. Indeed, his careful and meticulous mining of sources indicates that the Dutch Pinkster celebrations in New Netherland resembled their European counterparts.

After the mid-1600s, Pinkster does not reappear in the historical record until the eighteenth century, and numerous descriptions of the Pinkster celebrations in New York City and in Albany survive in mideighteenth and early twentieth-century texts. In these accounts, Pinkster-goers and spectators described enslaved and free people of African descent gathering for a weeklong festival immediately after Pentecost.

The writers who observed the festivities took special note of dances, parades, and processions which were all accompanied

by West African drums and instrumentation. That these traditions survived long into the nineteenth century testifies to the cultural resistance and resiliency of free and enslaved people of African descent in New Netherland and New York.

Based on the few accounts of Pinkster that survive and in light of a long period between the mid-seventeenth and mideighteenth century when Pinkster does not appear in the historical record at all, most historians conclude that the African American Pinkster festivals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries evolved over time from the early Dutch celebrations. This was not so, according to Dewulf. “The American version of Pinkster cannot be reduced to simply an offspring of a Dutch tradition,” the author writes [pp., 33–34]. To make this case, Dewulf begins The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo by examining the Dutch Pinkster tradition in the Netherlands and New Netherland. He then turns his focus to the African American Pinkster celebrations of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dewulf’s analysis reveals significant differences between seventeenth-century Dutch Pinkster celebrations and the African American variant of the holiday. Traditionally, Dutch Pinkster celebrations included a procession featuring a young, unmarried woman called the Pinkster Bride (pinksterbruid) or the Pinkster Flower (pinksterblom) [p. 15]. The woman typically wore a wreath and crown of flowers and symbolized both fertility and

the coming of spring. By contrast, African American Pinkster festivals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries highlighted no such maiden; instead, a Pinkster King presided over the festivities.

Significantly, the Pinkster King was a man characterized by physical strength but also political and social standing within the slave community and in his dealings with white enslavers.

The role of the Pinkster King is central to Dewulf’s reinterpretation of the African American celebrations of Pinkster. In his third chapter, “In Search of the Pinkster King,” Dewulf offers an extensive analysis of black procession culture and holiday celebrations throughout the colonial Atlantic world. In numerous locations including New England, New Orleans, and throughout the Caribbean, Dewulf points to similar instances of slave communities selecting and organizing around a figure similar to the Pinkster King. Pinkster celebrations and the role and authority of the Pinkster King, Dewulf tells us, were a “manifestation of a well-organized cooperative structure” among enslaved populations throughout the Atlantic world [p. 8].

The striking similarities in the social structures of geographically disparate enslaved communities leads Dewulf to conclude that Pinkster was a “specific variety of a much broader cultural phenomenon,” and the origins of that cultural phenomenon can be found on the West Coast of Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries [p.

13]. More precisely, during the sixteenth century large sections of West and Central Africa were either under Portuguese control or influence, and Portuguese Catholic missionary efforts had been especially effective in the Kingdoms of Kongo and Angola.

The reach of the Portuguese Catholic missionary effort hinged on the appointment of Kongolese and Angolan lay ministers and the formation of religious fraternal organizations or “brotherhoods” among the converted [pp. 110–113].These lay brotherhoods served various social functions, and often incorporated indigenous West-Central African belief systems and rituals. This fusion, Dewulf argues, included processions and celebrations with a “syncretic character that combined Iberian and indigenous African elements,” potentially including “traditional king election ceremonies in the

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Kingdom of Kongo” [p. 116]. Furthermore, because the “vast majority of members of the charter generation in New Netherland originated from the Kingdom of Kongo and Angola,” Afro-Portuguese brotherhood organizations and rituals may have been the founding model for Pinkster, the Pinkster King, and cooperative structure of the enslaved community in New Netherland and New York more broadly [p. 116]. Dewulf's extensive examination of the Afro-Iberian Catholic brotherhoods and the similarities to the procession culture at Pinkster leads him to conclude that long “before arriving on the American East Coast, the essence of what came to be known as the African American Pinkster festival already existed.” [p. 8].

The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo is a valuable contribution to the history of New Netherland and New York in more ways than one. The central argument that African American Pinkster celebrations grew out of a “well-organized cooperative structure” that originated from Afro-Iberian Catholic brotherhood organizations in the Kingdom of Kongo and Angola is both intricate and innovative. Subsequent studies of Pinkster will have to consider and contend with Dewulf’s work, made more impressive because of the dearth of records dealing with Pinkster and the enslaved in general. As a result of this poverty of records, he admits that certain parts of his interpretation can be “speculative to a certain degree,” and critics will likely focus on those more speculative aspects of his work [p. 6]. Ultimately, Dewulf’s

argument is a convincing one though.

The comparative analysis of colonies and enslaved communities across the Atlantic World is as impressive as the wide range of linguistic sources, a list that includes Dutch, Portuguese, African, and English ones.

Beyond Dewulf’s primary argument about the formative role of the Afro-Iberian Catholic brotherhoods in the enslaved communities in New Netherland, the book has other fascinating characterizations and important implications. Dewulf synthesizes the various late eighteenth-century descriptions of Pinkster, providing a comprehensive and definitive historical account of the festivities. Also, in a closing chapter, he discusses to the formation of African American mutual-aid societies after the end of slavery in New York. Previous historians have puzzled over the speed with which African Americans formed community organizations and mutual-aid societies immediately after slavery’s end.

In a particularly astute assessment, Dewulf connects the formation of these mutual-aid organizations with Pinkster, suggesting that a self-organized cooperative social structure among the enslaved community was at work in both instances.

Finally, the implications for what Pinkster meant and means today may in fact be the greatest contribution of The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo: The Forgotten History of America’s Dutch-Owned Slaves. Previous historians have assessed and appreciated African American Pinkster celebrations in a variety of ways. Some have celebrated the West African cultural

influences as evidence of African cultural influence on American culture as well as a testament to the cultural resistance and resilience that was required by the enslaved to maintain and preserve those traditions.

Other historians have a dimmer view of the celebrations. These historians contend that Pinkster provided only a temporary release from the brutality and horror of enslavement, which in fact served the interests of enslavers who tolerated and endorsed (even tacitly) the celebrations as a way to maintain control and stave off the risk of slave revolts.

Jeroen Dewulf makes a different case, writing that even if Pinkster was “perceived by slaveholders as a safety valve for their slaves, it meant something different to the slave community itself” [p. 10]. Pinkster and the election of the Pinkster King, according to Dewulf, was an instance of highly effective cooperation within the enslaved community that “implied black group solidarity as well as tactical negotiations with slaveholders,” which aimed “to secure and gradually expand a set of minimal rights and human dignity” [p 1]. Contrary to some previous accounts of Pinkster’s meaning, Dewulf’s study looks for the meaning of the Pinkster celebrations among the people of African descent who made the holiday what it was. In The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo, we are the beneficiaries of his search.

—Sam Huntington Crailo State Historic Site

The New Netherland Institute .

For over three decades, the New Netherland Institute has helped cast light on America’s Dutch roots. In 2010, it partnered with the New York State Office of Cultural Education to establish the New Netherland Research Center, with matching funds from the State of the Netherlands.

The New Netherland Research Center Housed in the New York State Library, the New Netherland Research Center offers students, educators, scholars, and researchers a vast collection of early documents and reference works on America's Dutch era. In July 2017, The Holland Society of New York donated its library to the New Netherland Research Center.

Find the New Netherland Institute on Facebook and Twitter.

Shop Now Visit the New Netherland Institute shop for books, maps, notecards, and more at https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/ Subscribe to New Netherland Institute’s monthly e-newsletter and email list to receive information about New Netherlandrelated events, activities, conferences, and research.

Members’ support allows the New Netherland Research Center to undertake research and educational programs. The New Netherland Institute is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent permitted by law.

For further information: New Netherland Institute, P.O. Box 2536, Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY 12220-0536

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Here and There in New Netherland Studies New Amsterdam History Center Lecture

T

HE NEW AMSTERDAM History Center hosted a presentation by Shaun Sayres on Mohawk-Dutch relations on Wednesday evening, February 5, 2020, at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in Manhattan. St. Mark’s church dates to 1660, when West India Company New Netherland Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant built a chapel on the site near his country farm, then two miles from the city. Although the original chapel has been replaced, Stuyvesant’s remains lie in a sealed vault at St. Mark’s.

The title of Sayre’s PowerPoint presentation was “A Dangerous Liberty: Mohawk-Dutch Relations and the Colonial Gunpowder Trade, 1639–1665.” Mr. Sayres discussed how the Mohawks and Dutch engaged in cross-cultural interactions centered around the exchange of furs and gunpowder that culminated in the formation of a mutually beneficial partnership. According to Mr. Sayres, the resulting encounters and negotiations reveal a distinct arc of intertwined fates, outlining their shared rise, peak, and decline within a world embroiled in conflict. Ultimately, he suggests the Mohawks survived but the Dutch did

Legal Scholar and retired New York State Justice Albert Rosenblatt.

not, relinquishing New Netherland to the English without a shot in 1664.

Mr. Sayres is a doctoral student at Clark University specializing in colonial American history, the Atlantic world, and the age of revolutions. His dissertation research focuses on intercultural encounters, exchanges, and partnerships in the Atlantic world with special attention to New Netherland and seventeenth-century North America. The lecture was followed by a lively question-and-answer period and refreshments.

Jacob Leisler Institute Receives Rosenblatt Book Collection

F

ORMER NEW YORK State Supreme Court Justice and noted legal scholar Albert Rosenblatt is donating his collection of books relating to the colonial history of New York to the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History. Mr. Rosenblatt is a retired judge of the New York Court of Appeals, a Judicial Fellow at New York University Law School, and former president of the Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York. He has written extensively on the history of law in New York. His works include The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals: A Biographical History (2007) and, with his wife Julia, the critically acclaimed Opening Statements: Law, Jurisprudence, and the Legacy of Dutch New York (2013).

The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History is a research center devoted to colonial New York under English rule. From 1664 to 1773, New York Province’s diverse European settlements fused with American Indian and African populations into a cosmopolitan colonial territory with ties throughout the Atlantic World. The Institute focuses on this underexamined 109-year period in American history. The Institute’s library contains extensive genealogical records, original manuscripts, over 4,000 document photocopies written in Dutch, German, French, English, and Latin, microfilms, rare

Shaun Sayres speaking at the New Amsterdam History Center event in St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery. books, prints, maps, and photographic and digital materials that cover the full extent of New York Province and go well beyond the Hudson River Valley.

In addition to a library and collection of material objects, the Institute contains a number of discrete collections relating to colonial New York and New Jersey. Among these collections are the papers of rebel New York governor Jacob Leisler, including administrative papers from Leisler’s government as well as family-related correspondence, Eric Nooter’s papers relating to the colonial history of Kings County, New York, the Kees-Jan Waterman Collection of materials relating to the EuropeanAmerican Indian fur trade of the colonial Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the Antonia Kolb Collection of materials relating to the Leisler family in Europe, and the Mary Hallenbeck Collection relating to colonial Claverack, New York. Judge Rosenblatt’s donation substantially adds to the Institute’s holdings of books, papers, and illustrative materials.

The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History is located in Hudson, New York. It is open to the public by appointment. For further information contact info@jacobleislerinstitute.org.

Winter 2019–2020

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Society Activities Holland Society’s Hugo Grotius Collection

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OLLAND SOCIETY Executive Director Sarah Bogart Cooney and de Halve Maen Editor David William Voorhees met with Jane Siegel, librarian for the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, in Columbia University’s Butler Library on February 5, 2020, to check on the status of the Holland Society’s Hugo Grotius Collection. The collection was purchased

by Robert Barnwell Roosevelt from Bom and Bom Book Dealers in Amsterdam in 1890 and donated by Mr. Roosevelt to The Holland Society in that year. The collection consists of 137 historical, legal, theological, and literary works published in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, some early editions by Hugo Grotius’s works and others published after

From left to right: David Conklin, Holland Society President Andrew Terhune, Dr. Daniel F. Van Riper, Daniel S. Van Riper, and James Lansing. his death. There is an additional supplement of 146 assorted seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century Dutch books. This collection has been on a deposit loan at Columbia University from the Holland Society Library for many decades. It is there classified in Dewey with the letter “H” preceding the call number and is indexed in the card catalog. The collection is well cared for and available to view upon request.

Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Butler Library, Columbia University, Manhattan.

Florida Branch Meeting

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HE FLORIDA BRANCH of The Holland Society of New York met on February 8, 2020. A business meeting and luncheon were held at the magnificent Naples Lakes Country Club in Naples, Florida. Naples also is the community in which Holland Society president Andrew Terhune resides. Following luncheon, President Terhune gave an update on the current state of the Holland Society and reviewed upcoming changes and developments. Discussion, suggestions, and reminiscences followed.

In Memoriam Donald Lucas Burhans II Holland Society of New York Member Donald “Skip” Lucas Burhans II of Peoria, Illinois, died on Sunday, October 20, 2019, as the result of a traffic accident. Mr. Burhans was born on August 14, 1950, in Peoria, Illinois, son of Dr. Donald Burhans and Bobette Lyon. He claimed descent from Jacob Burhans, who emigrated to New Netherland from Einingen, Brabant, as a West India Company solider and settled at Wiltwijck, present-day Kingston. Mr. Burhans joined the Holland Society on April 6, 2019.

Mr. Burhans attended Richwoods High School in Peoria, Illinois. He received a B.A. with a major in classics from Wabash

College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, and a master’s in library science from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois. He spent 1970–1971 studying abroad as a College Year in Athens student.

Mr. Burhans was a librarian during his career. He specialized in electronic and digital library technologies. He was employed as Access Services/Education Librarian with the rank of Assistant Professor at CullomDavid Library, Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. Among his publications is “Serving the Information Need of the International and Minority Students at the Small College Library: A Librarian’s View,” in Resources in Education 27, vol. 1.

Mr. Burhans married Roberta Anne Davilla on August 3, 1985, at the Episcopal cathedral in Peoria. The couple has a daugh-

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ter Kaitlin Burhans, born on September 28, 1986, in Galesburg, Illinois.

In addition to his interest in genealogy, Mr. Burhans was a gun collector and a member of the Galesburg Gun Club. An avid swimmer. He was a lettered member of the Richwoods High School and also a member of the Wabash College swim team.

Mr. Burhans is survived by his daughter Kaitlin Beaumont of Denver, Iowa, who is also a member of The Holland Society of New York, and four grandchildren. A visitation was held at The Wilton Mortuary, Peoria, Illinois, on October 26, 2019. A graveside service took place at Springdale Cemetery on November 16, 2019, with a celebration of life following at Lariat Steakhouse in Peoria.

de Halve Maen

The Holland Society Archives serve as a repository of institutional memory, serve with records, publications, photographs, audiovisual recordings, and other materials that document the history of the Society, and collections that may be useful to members in their research.

This collection contains 918 items comprising 34,767 images.

Have you registered for an account for our online archive? We have been working with Hudson Archival to digitize our extensive Society and historical archive. We have maps, deceased member files, banquet photos, Society records, historic documents such as indenture certificates (pictured), and much more. You can go through and transcribe documents, tag family members or friends in old banquet photos, and create lists for your own research. You can access the online archive at hsny.localarchives.net. If you do not have an account, please email the office at info@hollandsociety.org.

Left: A page from Adriaen van der Donck's Description of New Netherland, published 1655.