de Halve Maen Journal of The Holland Society of New York Vol. 94, No. 4 2021–2022
Copyright © 2022 The Holland Society of New York. All rights reserved. Holland Society medalists Carolyn McCormick and Bryan Jennings performing the balcony scene from Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” at the Society’s Annual Banquet at the Lotos Club in Manhat tan on October 30, 2021. Photo by Kate Oldham.
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 of the 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
Cover:
Winter 2021-2022 65 The Holland Society of New York 1345 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10105 President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III Vice President Secretary Richard Van Deusen Sally Quackenbush Mason Treasurer Domine David Conklin Rev. Paul D. Lent Advisory Council of Past Presidents Kenneth L. Demarest Jr. W. Wells Van Pelt Jr. Robert Schenck Walton Van Winkle III Peter Van Dyke William Van Winkle Charles Zabriskie Jr. Trustees Thomas Bogart Sally Quackenbush Mason Christopher M. Cortright Joseph Roosa Eric E. DeLamarter Andrew Terhune Sarah Lefferts Fosdick Lisa Bloodgood Weeden Andrew A. Hendricks Laurie Bogart Wiles Trustees Emeriti John O. Delamater David William Voorhees Robert Gardiner Goelet Ferdinand L. Wyckoff Jr. David M. Riker Stephen S. Wyckoff Kent L. Stratt Rev. Everett Zabriskie Burgher Guard Captains Sarah Lefferts Fosdick and Ethan Van Ness Vice-Presidents Connecticut-Westchester R. Dean Vanderwarker III Dutchess and Ulster County D. David Conklin Florida James S. Lansing International Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr. (Ret) Jersey Shore Stuart W. Van Winkle Long Island Eric E. DeLamarter Mid-West David Ditmars New Amsterdam Eric E. DeLamarter New NiagaraEngland David S. Quackenbush Old Bergen-Central New Jersey Gregory M. Outwater Old South Pacific Northwest Edwin Outwater III Pacific Southwest (North) Kenneth G. Winans Pacific Southwest (South) Paul H. Davis Patroons Robert E. Van Vranken Potomac Christopher M. Cortright Rocky Mountain Adrian T. Bogart IV South River Walton Van Winkle III Texas James J. Middaugh Virginia and the Carolinas James R. Van Blarcom United States Air Force United States Army Col. Adrian T. Bogart III United States Coast Guard Capt. Louis K. Bragaw Jr. (Ret) United States Marines Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr., USMC (Ret) United States Navy LCDR James N. Vandenberg, CEC, USN Editor David William Voorhees Production Manager Copy Editor Sarah Bogart Cooney Rudy VanVeghten Editorial Committee Peter Van Dyke, Chair Christopher Cortright David M. Riker John Lansing Laurie Bogart Wiles de Halve Maen Magazine of the Dutch Colonial Period in America VOL. XCIV Winter 2021-2022 NUMBER 4 IN THIS ISSUE: 66 Editor’s Corner 67 A Place of Inquiry by Elizabeth Moore 72 Queen Wilhelmina Beggars’ Badge─In Bits & Pieces by Harry Waterson 76 Here and There in New Netherland Studies 77 Society Activities 79 In Memoriam
66 de Halve Maen American liberty, yet both he and Van Dam owned Black slaves. “Black history” was not just somebody else’s story,” Moore writes. “It was always central to my family’s story, too.” It is this realization that she tries to resolve to answer how to “bring together the descendants of enslavers and enslaved in racial healing.” Social shifts in perceiving past events and relating them to the contemporary world are not new. In the second essay in this issue, numismatic researcher Harry Waterson looks at the story of a unique Holland Society badge located in the Museum of the City of New York. “At the beginning of the twentieth century somebody put together a very clever badge,” he begins his essay. It is an object that combined “a badge from here, a medal from there, and a hanging moon from somewhere else.” The three elements together create a most puzzling unity. “There is a lot going on with this badge,” Waterson writes, and he is determined to learn the story of each one of them and why they were combined together. His quest to discover the badge’s origin takes us on an engrossing journey through turn-of-the-twentieth-centu ry Dutch social, political, and diplomatic history and their connections with the Holland Society of New York.
Editor’s Corner
n Saturday evening , October 30, 2021, the Holland Society’s beaver was again carried aloft through a cheering gathering of elegantly attired diners at the Lotos Club in Manhattan. The Society’s 131st Annual Banquet was the first since 2016. It was also the first banquet that women attended as Society members and not merely as guests. The revival of this Society tradition, largely organized by female members, was indeed a so phisticated and glittering affair. Following state-regulated COVID-19 protocols, eighty-four Members, Fellows, and Friends gathered in-person for a truly memorable evening. The Society’s 2021 medalists, Broadway actors Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings, enhanced the cocktail hour with a reading of the balcony scene from Noel Cow ard’s play “Private Lives,” pictured on this issue’s cover.
All complex societies change with time. As a result, understanding the past and our role in it is constantly evolving. It is natural process that can seem quite fright ening and even painful. Epidemics often create a jolt that brings to the fore transformations already long occurring. That is what we are witnessing today. Such, for example, is the case with genealogical research, once the purview of elites to ensure their place in society. Today genealogy is a popular pursuit of all members of the public curious to trace the story of their ancestry or to understand genetic medical characteristics. By filling in the blank spaces, as Elizabeth Moore notes, we are “not infrequently . . . dis covering long-lost cousins.” Our understanding of the past will keep on changing. But looking at the younger members of the Holland Society and their contemporaries, I feel that we will be in good hands in the future. Nonetheless, we should never forget to honor those of our past. The Holland Society of New York has recently lost one of its most active and dynamic members with the passing of Adrian T. Bogart II, whose obituary appears in this issue’s In Memoriam. I cannot remember a Holland Society event or board meeting in which he did not play a prominent role. His legacy to the Society is broad, including our current President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III and Execu tive Director Sarah Bogart Cooney. He is fondly missed.
To answer these questions, Moore focuses on her an cestor Rip Van Dam, whose “venerated” chair had been passed down in her family. Van Dam, a leading merchant and voice in politics in early eighteenth-century New York City, is most remembered for a dispute with English gov ernor William Cosby that resulted in the 1735 John Peter Zenger libel trial. In this case, lawyer Andrew Hamilton deftly argued that without freedom of speech “men lost their liberty in general and became slaves.” Hamilton’s speech is considered an inspirational moment in the history of
O
The evening’s exuberance reflected the much needed and welcome release from the confinement of the pandemic quarantines that had curtailed all our lives for the past year and a Throughouthalf.history, epidemics and pandemics have been cultural turning points. The Antonine pandemic (165–180 C.E.) brought an end the long period of the Pax Romana; the Justinian Plague (541–549) saw the final demise of Classical Antiquity; and the Black Death (1346–1353) caused traditional cultural structures to crumble, as did the so-called Spanish Flu in 1918. The current COVID-19 pandemic is also bringing to the fore revolutionary changes yet to be fully grasped. Such is the case with the social hierarchies that have defined American culture for four cen turies. In this issue’s first essay, Elizabeth Moore provides a provoking personal reflection on her Dutch heritage’s place in that hierarchy. Moore originally presented her essay as a Holland Society PowerPoint presentation at St. Mark’s Church-inthe-Bowery on November 10. In her talk she reflected, “I was raised to be proud of the Dutch part of my own family history and hoped I might be able to engage with it in some way, some day. I never imagined it would be by sharing reflections on slavery.” The murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the New York Times 1619 Project arguing for the centrality of slavery in American history, however, trans formed her thinking about “who we are, and even how we became the United States of America.” In these pages she asks, “Who are the people left out of our family histories?”
David William Voorhees Editor
A Place of Inquiry who was the focus of so much of my fam ily’s pride—though we’re only descended from his youngest daughter—is Rip Van Dam, who was born in what is now Albany around 1660 and died in Manhattan in 1749. He was a leading merchant of the city and a leading voice in colonial politics including long service on the king’s council. Van Dam served as acting governor in 1731, but he would be most remembered for a financial dispute with the very unpopular new governor, William Cosby. Cosby tried to suppress embarrassing press coverage of their dispute by putting newspaper pub by Elizabeth Moore Elizabeth Moore is an award-winning jour nalist known for her political articles and feature writing. This essay was originally presented at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bow ery, Manhattan, on November 10, 2021. The author thanks the Holland Society for inviting her to share her personal story. A special thank you to St. Mark’s Church-inthe-Bowery, and to its Rector, Anne Sawyer, for making us welcome there.
IHAVE ALWAYS been interested in my Dutch heritage. I was raised to be proud of the Dutch part of my own family history and hoped I might be able to engage with it in some way, some day. I never imagined it would be by sharing reflections on slavery. But the murder of George Floyd and the 1619 Project have almost overnight transformed the way most Americans talk about who we are, and even how we became the United States of America. Like many of you, I already had been increasingly preoccupied by those questions over the past several years. And as with many of you, it is personal. Who are the people left out of our family histories? Maybe they’ve been left out of the pictures. Or maybe they’ve been there all along, but their stories went untold. Looking at our racial past is uncomfortable. It is messy, it hurts, language is treacherous, we make mistakes. But we have no choice. How can we celebrate a family history that implicates us in America’s legacy of slavery? This is an open question, and a pressing one. I am not any kind of expert, but simply one more pilgrim. I am a pretty middle-ofthe-road person who spent a lot of my life covering politics and government as a daily newspaper reporter. I had to avoid partisan ship and causes as a matter of professional ethics, and just stick to the facts. Now I am learning that there is nothing settled about the facts of history. The past changes every day, perhaps never more rapidly than now.
The particular New Netherland ancestor
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lisher John Peter Zenger in jail. Zenger’s libel trial was a landmark victory for press freedom in America. John Peter Zenger was jailed for publica tions that offended the governor because of the harsh opinions they expressed, taking Rip Van Dam’s side in this dispute. The mostly Dutch jury refused to consider Zenger’s publications libelous, because he hadn’t printed falsehoods. Many school books recounted the speech made by Ze nger’s attorney, the famous lawyer Andrew Hamilton (no relation to Alexander). He said: “No nation ancient or modern ever Rip Van Dam, 1660–1749. Our distinguished ancestor. Or was he?
68 de Halve Maen lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing or publishing their sentiments, But forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.” Hamilton himself had enslaved people in his own household. But that was not mentioned in the schoolbooks I read. Hamilton’s argument was considered an inspirational moment in the history of American liberty. Our family had no Ancestry.com in the 1960s obviously, or access to historical archives, but we did have a chair that had been passed all the way down from Rip Van Dam. When my grandfather died in 1963, my aunt arranged to donate the chair to the New-York Historical Society. She recalls that they were enthusiastic. They told her they had a Rip Van Dam room, she recalled, or maybe it was a Dutch room featuring
a portrait of Rip Van Dam. It would fit perfectly there, they said. But when the movers arrived to pick up the chair, my aunt got cold feet. She thought: “They won’t appreciate this chair quite the way we do.” She sent them away. Today, it can be hard for people to understand how completely even progres sive-minded white Northeasterners suc ceeded in suppressing conscious memory of the North’s own history with slavery. The denial was complete. In the schools, we learned that slavery was a southern phenomenon, that it was those southern states that had formed the Confederacy, run the cotton plantations, had Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan. We Northerners had fought for abolition, won the Civil War, sent Freedom Riders to the South to register people to vote, and fought for civil rights in Congress. My parents had helped lead the fight to integrate Stuyvesant Town, a large postwar apartment development near Petrus Stuyvesant’s home. I didn’t really think American slavery had much to do with me. I just tried to be a good person. That was more or less the way I thought about things through most of my life. But activities at my alma mater would change that perspective. In 2003, Brown Univer sity had undertaken the first thorough and honest reckoning of its own ties to the slave trade, under the leadership of President Ruth Simmons. She was the first Black president of an Ivy League institution. One tangible product of that work was a sculpture installed in front of the universi ty’s chapel in 2014, a quiet little disruption of the manicured historic grounds. It spelled out the central finding of the research in a few words that any passing visitor might read: “In the eighteenth century Rhode Islanders dominated the North American share of the African slave trade, launching We were descended from a great champion of American …Andliberty!we still had his chair.
Teresa had posted excerpts from Jill Lepore’s award-winning account of New York’s horrific 1741 slave conspiracy trial, New York Burning. That book noted among other things that Rip Van Dam’s diversified trading portfolio included human beings. Two of the people he had held in bondage were hanged in 1712 for their part in a slave uprising that year. Another was held in the city jail (really, a dungeon) for a year in the 1741 case. Thirteen Black men were burned at the stake after the 1741 trial, and another seventeen were hanged.
I had a little trouble breathing at first. Then I did what you do when there is a death in the family: I notified everyone— immediately.Personally, I was feeling shame, but also a strange sense of relief. I felt sick to my stomach, but also, more fully American.
Winter 2021-2022 69 over a thousand slaving voyages.” This was an awkward intrusion into the pretty story of Roger Williams and the tradition of religious tolerance that had been the dominant narrative in Brown’s home state all these years. But there it was. The sculptor, Martin Puryear, one of America’s most celebrated contemporary artists, was determined, as he put it, “to avoid blame and moralizing.” The sculp ture “simply had to present the facts.” My family strolled past it when my daughter graduated in 2015, and on that happy day I found myself attracted to the warm surface of the giant ball, and the bright gleam of the broken ends of the chain. They turn out to be a mirror. I thought that was so clever. “I can see myself!” I announced to everyone. It took a year and a half for the coin to drop in my brain. But finally the gentle challenge posed by that sculpture ripened into a conscious question: Did Rip Van Dam own slaves? Naturally, I took that question where we take every other ques tion these days: to Google. And this is when I encountered the power of the genealogy movement that has transformed the telling of our country’s story—a kind of grassroots wildfire powered by the Internet. My Goo gle search brought up a website called “Ra diant Roots, Boricua Branches: Musings on My Tri-racial Black and Puerto Rican Ancestry.” This website is maintained by a remarkable woman named Teresa Vega who, it turns out, is a neighbor of mine. She is a gifted and tenacious genealogist whose family tree is bursting forth in all directions with the multiracial history of the Western Hemisphere. And boy, does Teresa know about search engine optimization. She had stuffed the page with links. One of them was my ancestor’s name. Her blog would force me to face some unpleasant facts.
Suddenly “Black history” was not just somebody else’s story. It was always central to my family’s story, too. In my bewilderment, I wrote to Teresa Vega and thanked her. She comforted me.
“It’s a lot to take in for sure,” she said. “But you don’t ever need to carry the burden of the past. No one alive today is responsible for acts of their ancestors.” Her reassurance was kind, but I didn’t really agree, then or now. For starters, we are all responsible for the stories we tell. The Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell talks about the tipping point, when ideas suddenly become viral and transform society, as COVID-19 did the world. George Floyd’s death was a tipping point. But there had been an earlier, more limited one in the early 2000s, when sud denly everyone was talking and writing about slavery in New York—including the New-York Historical Society, which in 2005 broke a long silence to mount its first exhibition on slavery in the city. I quickly discovered it no longer has that Dutch room to house Rip’s old chair. Instead, Van Dam’s portrait now hangs in a permanent exhibit on slavery, suspended over a necessary chair—a stool with a built-in chamber pot.
The Slavery Memorial by Martin Puryear, dedicated in 2014, at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
Emptying it was a typical part of the duties of the city’s enslaved servants. But maybe the historical society was being too hard on Rip Van Dam, I thought, and went hunting to learn more about him. I was startled to realize how much easier this kind of work has become within the last generation. There’s Ancestry.com, 23 and Me, and dedicated rooms in public libraries everywhere. Colonial records that used to be locked away in university rare-book rooms are now digitized to read in your pajamas at home. Rip Van Dam’s seven teenth-century marriage records and the baptisms of his many children turned out to be just a few clicks away on my desktop, thanks to the Dutch national archives. The New Netherland Institute has its own trans lation and digitization work opening a new world of information for those interested in the region’s early history. And rapidly growing searchable databases offer easy access to the details of slaving voyages, listing their ports of call, ship captains and the names of their investors.
Some of the old documents can be hard to look at, like the one-time “Department for Registration of Pedigrees” at the Gene alogical and Biographical Society. It makes plain the way in which, so recently, family background was used as a way of deciding who was “respectable,” that is, entitled to be treated with respect, and who was not. What I learned has not softened my un derstanding of Rip Van Dam in the least. He was an investor in at least thirty-three voyages on which at least some people were transported for sale. In most cases these were trading ships to the Caribbean that returned home with a few people who had already been held in slavery there. But on other voyages, such as one he helped finance in 1715, thirty-eight people arrived in New York alive out of the forty-six who had been boarded in chains on the sloop Anne and Mary on the Coast of Africa. In other documents, I saw where Van Dam had referred to people forcibly transported from the Caribbean as “refuse.” After his two enslaved men were hanged in the 1712 slave revolt, Rip Van Dam was reimbursed “One hundred ounces” of gold plate as court reimbursement for his “lost property.” Those hanged men were the lucky ones. The rebel named Tom, who killed Adrian Beekman with a handgun in the 1712 rebel lion, was ordered by the court to be “burned with a slow fire that he may continue in torment for eight or ten hours & Continue burning in the said fire until he be dead and consumed to ashes.” Tom was the property of Nicholas Roosevelt, the ancestor of two U.S. presidents. In 1731, a print was dedicated to then-Governor Van Dam on the occasion of the completion of a new Dutch church. A copy of this print hung in a place of honor in our front hall throughout my childhood, but I never noticed the detail in the foreground until I started researching him and read something about the print. See the carriage? That’s Van Dam’s carriage, I learned, with three Black men in livery, one running in front, one driving and one in the rear. Those were enslaved members of his household. The truth was right there in the picture. And if I hoped to learn that he had suffered a change of heart as a result of his experiences, that hope was laid to rest when I found the inventory of his estate, still on file with the New York courts. It showed that several people were sold out of his household after he died. A “boy” named Abraham, age unnoted, went to my own ancestor, Rip Van Dam’s grandson Sovereign Sebrandt. The document also notes that a “Negro whench” (sic) named Sue was sold by the executors but “returned on account of a bad distemper.”
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So, does this obliterate everything I thought I knew about Rip Van Dam? He was respected as the leader of New York’s Popular Party without ever becoming flu ent in English. He helped shape the public opinion that led to the Revolution. He was the last Dutch New Netherland native to preside at the king’s council. And he was preoccupied with getting fair treatment from the English colonizers, who made fun of him behind his back. A memoirist said, “He appears… to have retained his simple, primitive habits, even in his extreme old age. He was emphatically Dutch.” Van Dam was apparently such an icon that a humorous 1820 pamphlet describes his gold-headed cane as the “SCEPTRE of New-York Historical Society: the revised view of Rip Van Dam.
Descendants of New York’s Dutch settlers carry centuries of pride in the founders’ hard work and ingenuity nurturing a thriving commercial center on the “Island at the Center of the World.” How could those achievements be simply nullified, as they seem to be when shadowed by the moral stain of slavery? Yet you don’t have to look far for the evidence that there is nothing sacred about New York’s Dutch heritage to the city’s rising generation. These bumper stickers reading “John Van NOSTRAND was a SLAVE OWNER,” . . . “John BER GEN was a SLAVE OWNER,” were placed on street signs by an organization called Slavers of New York, which is compiling a database of place and street names—most of them Dutch—linked to slavery in the city. The past will keep on changing. I con tinue to be confronted with information and encounters that bring shock, shame, and deep pain. But in all honesty, there is nothing more beautiful than the community you find when you go looking for the whole story. As Teresa insisted in one of our first exchanges:Weareboth the descendants of people who have colonial roots in New York City, and that is something to be cele brated . . . I can’t change anything about the past, although I would like to. All I can say is to breathe, and seek truth.
Winter 2021-2022 71 the New-York Historical Society.” The his torical society convened a special ceremony for the dedication of his portrait. Now, that portrait hangs on their wall of shame, over a toilet.Thegood news in all this is that there are an awful lot of Americans out there grap pling with this kind of legacy today. One fruit of that awareness is an organization called Coming to the Table. That group has brought together the descendants of enslavers and enslaved in many cities to engage together in racial healing work. Our New York chapter has been led by one of the descendants of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, as well as others who trace their heritage to enslavers of New Netherland. It meets on the second Saturday of every month. It’s not always comfortable. I don’t agree with everything I hear. But it has introduced me to a vibrant and rapidly growing network of people, ideas, and ongoing racial healing work of all kinds. One of their most helpful tools is a set of principles they call Touchstones, to guide participants in the work of deep dialogue on race. The Touchstones advise: Speak your truth. Listen deeply. Respect silence. And when things get difficult, turn to wonder. As in, “I wonder what brought them to this place?” Or “I wonder what my reaction teaches me?”
Then the President shall arise from his seat, and the Hon. William P. Van Ness, followed by six other members whose names incipient in Van, shall advance, and, gravely bowing, shall present unto Dr. Busby the SCEPTRE of the Society, or the gold-headed cane of Rip Van Dam.
In America in 2022, citizens of all colors now are using all the tools of genealogical research to trace their family trees all the way back. And not infrequently, they are discovering long-lost cousins. As for me, the work going forward includes continuing to research Van Dam’s life and times. To this work, I bring wonder, as in, I wonder what brought him to that place? I’m look ing for the blank spaces in the documents: Who were these people on the inventory, for instance, and what happened to them? Meanwhile, I have joined the Collegiate Church, where Rip Van Dam was married and where his many children were baptized. His neighborhood church is long gone but I am a member of Fort Washington Col legiate, a multiracial, multicultural, open and affirming congregation in Washington Heights. I am not ashamed to say that my Christian faith is the part of my cultural legacy that enables me to face the rest. (Psalm 139: Lord, you have searched me, and known me. . .)
—Procès Verbal of the Installation of the President of the New-York Historical Society, As it Will Be Performed, February 8, 1820.
by Harry Waterson
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QUEEN WILHELMINA BEGGARS’ BADGE ─ IN BITS & PIECES
A T THE BEGINNING of the twentieth century somebody put together a very clever badge. That somebody used a badge from here, a medal from there, and a hanging moon from somewhere else. This badge is in the Holland Collection of the Museum of the City of New York #40.108.87 and is a unique construction. There is a lot going on with this badge and the first thing to do is identify the bits that go into making it up. There are three pieces; a pin-back header with a backing ribbon, a medal, and a moon drop. The Header: The pin-backed plate and ribbon are from the members’ badge of The Holland Society of New York Harry Waterson is a numismatic researcher and cataloger. A member of the American Numismatic Society, he has contributed numerous scholarly articles on medals including on American Legion medals, and has compiled a catalog of the medal engraver Julio Kilenyi. (HSNY). The Society was organized in 1885 to collect and preserve information respecting the early history and settle ment of New Netherland by the Dutch, and to discover, collect and preserve all still existing documents, etc., relating to their genealogy and history. Member ship was limited to 1,000 men, all direct descendants through the male line of a Dutchman who was a native or resident of New York or of the American colonies prior to 1675. It was 2016 before women were admitted to full membership in the Society.OnMarch 30, 1887, a special com mittee presented a badge design to the trustees. The design was based on an cient geuzenpenningen (Beggars’ Medal) derived from plasters procured from originals in the Museum of Antiquities of Amsterdam, Holland. The design was prepared by Tiffany & Co. and the trustees adopted this form of the Beggars’ Medal as the insignia of the Society.
The front has a left-facing portrait bust of Philip II of Spain surrounded by the motto: EN TOUT FIDELLES AU ROY. The back depicts two beggars’ wallets, with two hands clasped in the 1890 Gold example of a Holland Society member’s badge with close-ups of the front and back.
PROTECTION ACCORDEE PAR LE REINE DE HOLANDE AU PRESIDENT DU TRANSVAAL – S. E. PAUL KRUGER – LORENḈO MARQUEZ – MARSEILLE 1900. Kruger stands facing out, with his hat in his right hand and a scroll in his left hand bearing the word JUSTICE. Behind him is a female figure representing Hollandia supporting him and holding a palm branch over his head. Beneath her feet is the incised word GELDERLAND (Hollandia). It is signed HIP. LE ROY on both sides. The medal is 30 millimeters wide and struck in gilded silver, silver, silvered bronze and bronze.
The Medal: At the center of the con struction is a medallic portrait of Wil helmina, Queen of the Netherlands (1880–1962).Wilhelmina ascended to the throne in 1890 at the age of ten and was sworn in as Queen in 1898. The Boer War started one year later. It was a con flict between the British Empire and the South African Republic (the Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. The Boers are descendants of the Dutch-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in southern Africa during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The Dutch East India Company controlled this area from 1652 to 1795, and then it was rolled into the British Empire in 1806. The catalyst for the war was the
final skirmish before the onset of the war. The Holland Society Medal Committee thought the Beggars’ Medal—arguably the first political medal—the most sig nificant medal ever struck in Holland and considered it a fitting memorial to the first steps toward civil and religious liberty in which the men and women of the Netherlands led the world. It was an appropriate emblem for a member of the Holland Society to wear in recognition of the benefits he received from the heroic struggles of his Dutch forebears.
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discovery of diamonds and gold in the two Boer republics. The Boers launched successful attacks against British out posts at the start of the war before being pushed back by British forces. By 1900, the 180,000–strong British Expedition ary Force occupied the two territories, taking administrative control. The Boers could not face such a large force and took to the hills fighting a relentless guerrilla war for the next two years. The British countered with a devastating “scorched earth” policy, and the war finally ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in 1902. Reflecting popular opinion in the Netherlands, Queen Wilhelmina had se rious disdain toward the British for their annexation of the Orange Free State on May 28, 1900, and the takeover of the South African Republic and name change to the Transvaal on the first of September.
Paul Kruger (1824–1904), the third president of the South African Republic, left the Transvaal eleven days later by train for Lourenḉo Marques, Mozam bique, where he planned to take the first boat out. Instead, he was put under house arrest. Within a month Queen Wilhelmina successfully negotiated a deal with the British to get Kruger out of Africa. She sent a Dutch warship, HNLMS Gelder land, to pick him up. The ship left with
The name did not go unnoticed. In a speech at a great feast held by some 300 confederates at the Hotel Culemburg three days later, Brederode declared that if need be they were all ready to become beggars in their country’s cause. Thereafter the name stuck. The patriot party adopted the emblems of beggary, the wallet and the bowl, as trinkets to be worn on their hats or their girdles, and a medal was struck having on one side the head of Philip II, on the other two clasped hands with the motto “Loyal to the King, up to carrying the beggar’s pouch.” The original league of Beggars was short-lived, crushed by the Duke of Alba, but its principles survived and were to be ultimately triumphant. The Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), the Dutch War for Independence, officially began two years later. The 1566 Request was the Souvenir Medal commemorating Queen Wilhelmina welcoming South African President Paul Kruger to The Hague by Hippolyte Le Roy (1900). The back reads SOUVENIR DE LA COURAGEUSE
center. Between them is the date 1566 surrounded by the motto JUSQUES A PORTER LABESACE. The mottos from the front and back are continuous and need to be read together: “Faithful to the king, even to carrying the wallet.” The edge is looped at the top, with projecting rings left and right from which are hung miniature porringers. A final loop at the bottom holds a tiny gourd. This oval gold medal, one-inch by three-quarters of an inch is suspended from an orange ribbon attached to a horizontal pin-back header with HOLLAND SOCIETY / OF NEW YORK on the face. The reverse of the header is marked TIFFANY & CO. The whole badge is three-inches by one-inch plusTheporringers.Beggars of this medal are the Calvinist Dutch nobles who signed a solemn pledge in 1565 known as the Compromise of Nobles. They bound themselves to defend the rights and lib erties of the Netherlands against the civil and religious despotism of the Phillip II of Spain. On April 5, 1566, permission was obtained for the confederates to pres ent a petition of grievances, called the Request, to Margaret, Duchess of Parma, King Phillip’s regent in the Low Coun tries. About 250 nobles marched on her palace in Brussels accompanied by Louis of Nassau and Hendrick van Brederode. The regent was at first alarmed at the appearance of so large a body, but one of her councilors allegedly remarked “N’ayez pas peur Madame, ce ne sont que des gueux.” (“Fear not madam, they are only beggars”).
The Queen’s marriage in 1901 to Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was another occasion where medals were to be worn. It could easily have been worn Kruger on October 20, 1900, and took him to France without ever entering Brit ish waters. Kruger landed in Marseilles on November 22nd to tumultuous ac claim. In December, Queen Wilhelmina and her family welcomed Paul Kruger to The Hague with a warm reception. The Brussels newspaper Petit Blue commis sioned Hippolyte Leroy (1857–1945) to sculpt a souvenir medal for the occasion.1
Above to the left are the two views of the Beggars’ Penny as worn by the Sea Beggars. To the right is a 1907 reproduction commissioned by the Holland Society of New York. Four hundred and fifty members and guests received the HSNY Beggars’ Penny as a souvenir at the Annual Dinner of the Society on January 17, 1907, at the Waldorf Astoria. The reproduction is so inscribed in a semicircle behind the right ear had there been one: HOLLAND SOCIETY OF N. Y. SOUVENIR 1907. The crescent is 35 by 30 millimeters with no maker’s mark. The Society added a link to the eyelet on the penny so it could be worn as a fob or pendant.
The Sea Beggars had previously worn these Beggars’ Pennies at the capture of Den Briel in 1572. The Sea Beggars ferociousness in battle was only exceeded by their hatred for the Pope and the Catholic Church. This silver penny was in the shape of the Turkish Crescent. The Dutch inscrip tion on the side facing right is “Better Turkish than Papist.” These “Beggars of the Sea” maintained that the Turks did not force anyone to go against their conscience as the Pope did and they kept their word better than the Pope did. The French inscription on the left facing side says “In spite of the Mass.” These phrases are meant to express solidarity with the Turks who were also fighting the Hapsburgs at the time. This drop is not a modern reproduction. It could possibly be from the fourteenth century or more probably a later replica. It was certainly made before New Amsterdam became New York. These, then, are the elements that went together to make up the badge in the Museum of the City of New York collection. The maker took the Holland Society pin-back header and ribbon, a silver example of the Queen Wilhelmi na / Paul Kruger medal and a very old Beggars’ Penny and set to work. He put the medal in a vise (the mark of the vise’s jaw is under the Queen’s chin.)
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Queen Wilhelmina was quick off the mark. On July 30, 1914, just two days after Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia, she declared the Neth and drilled one hole into the top edge to anchor a metal loop. The loop was whipped with yellow thread to a hook attached with a piece of metal hidden behind the ribbon that was folded back from the top of the medal with its end tucked behind the header. The whipping would have made a scoutmaster proud because the first thing a Tenderfoot scout is taught is how to whip the ends of a rope with thread to prevent it from unraveling. Wilhelmina’s portrait is now suspended from the ribbon by its whipped connector. The backing ribbon is also turned back on itself at the bottom creating a pocket to hold a piece of metal wire bent in the center to make a half-circle. This semicircle is exposed through a small slit at the bottom of the backing ribbon. The maker removed the eyelet from his Beggars’ Penny and replaced it with a loop at a 90-degree angle to the plane of the penny. He then threaded the wire at the bottom of the ribbon until the loop of the penny rested at the bottom of the semicircle. This completes the construction of this Queen Wilhelmina wearable badge. There are many reasons for the cre ation of this badge. It could have been put together to show support for the Queen at the Royal reception of Paul Kruger at The Haque in December 1900.
1 Greg D. Ruby, “Numismatic Remembrances of the Boer War,1899–1902. The Fourth Garrideb, Numismatics of Sherlock Holmes,” posted 4/15/2015, accessed 5/13/2020. (Source of the illustrations, size and metallic information).
2
The Drop: A concordant half-moon pro file hangs face down from the bottom of the Queen Wilhelmina medal. It is some times known as the half-moon of Boisot because 800 Sea Beggars under the command of Admiral Louis de Boisot, wore the medal on their hats during the relief of Leiden. To break the siege, Wil liam of Orange suggested breaching the dikes around the city, flooding the land and allowing 200 flat-bottomed scows crewed by Sea Beggars to advance on the city and vanquish the Spanish. This was done under terrible conditions in the face of arbitrary winds and thick mud.
https://fourthgarrideb.com 2015 2membrances-of-the-boer-war-1899-1902//04/05/numismatic-reBarbaraTuchman,“TheSeaBeggars,” Leben, A Journal of Reformation Life (January 1, 2006; reprinted from Tuchman, The First Salute, 1998). https://leben.us/the-sea-beggars/ accessed 4/4/2022. to celebrate the birth of Princess Juliana on April 30, 1909. After two miscarriag es and a still-born, thankfully, there was an heiress to the throne. There is one other reason for this prototype that touches all the bases. A member of the Holland Society of New York wanted to show support for Queen Wilhelmina during World War I. Contemporaneously known as the Great War, it was an international conflict that began on July 28, 1914, and ended on November 11, 1918. It involved much of Europe, as well as Russia, the United States, and Turkey, and was also fought in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, an estimated nine million were killed in combat, while over five million civilians died from occupation, bombardment, hunger, or disease. The genocides perpetrated by the Ottomans and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic spread by the movement of combatants during the war caused millions of addi tional deaths worldwide.
Queen Wilhelmina Beggars’ Badge fell squarely into that category. There was no souvenir for the 1917 Annual Dinner even though this badge was waiting in theTherewings.is a hint as to who made the medal. The prototype badge was donated to the Museum of the City of New York by Estelle de Peyster Hosmer in 1940. The photograph of the medal is the one in their collection. She donated it in mem ory of her sister Mary Justina de Peyster Martin who died in a head-on automobile collision in 1939. There is a Frederic Ashton de Peyster who joined the Hol land Society in 1909. He was a member until 1921. Both he and Mrs. Martin were born circa 1875 in New York to separate branches of the de Peyster family. The de
The Medal front shows the Queen the wearer is supporting and more subtly applauds her willingness to stand up to a major belligerent who was abusing its power.
3 “Sale of Souvenirs,” de Halve Maen XVII, No. 4 (No vember 1942): 2 4 “Banquet Souvenirs,” de Halve Maen XXVIII, No. 4 (January 1954): 2. This is an updated and expanded version of an article published in the Journal of the Orders and Medals Society of America 73, No.1 (January–February 2022): 21–24.
erlands a neutral country and did every thing she could to protect her land from the ravages of war. The Netherlands suffered economic hardship from her neutrality but not the devastation that befell Belgium, just across the Dutch border.This is an analysis of the badge by a Holland Society member in support of the neutral Queen. It has much to say. The badge was probably put forward as an Annual Dinner souvenir candidate at the start of the Great War. Beginning in 1915 the Society at their annual meeting voted on and sent a letter to President Woodrow Wilson giving him their full backing. The Society was very wary of showing partisan support for any Euro pean leader during the Great War and the Peysters were a large influential family going back generations in the history of New York and New Amsterdam and it would take an experienced genealogist to identify the degree of kindred between Mary Justina and Frederic Ashton. He outlived Mary Justina by twelve years, so this badge is not something that went through his estate to reach its donor. Estelle de Peyster Hosmer did well to pass this badge on to a major collection of the history of New York. The photo credit line from the Museum of the City of New York required for the use of the Queen Wilhelmina Beggars’ Badge image only refers to the Queen Wilhelmina medal in the center. See credit botom center. Neither the Tiffa ny header nor the Beggars’ Penny are cited. The truly remarkable thing is that it had been automatically assumed that the Beggars’ Penny was one of the 1907 Holland Society reproductions. In 1942 the Holland Society published a list of all fifteen souvenirs they had issued. “For it was determined to sell at a flat rate of 50 cents each the Society’s stock of metal Banquet souvenirs before donating the balance as scrap to promote the (WWII) war effort.” 3 They went begging. The scrap donation, however, never took place. In 1954 the Society quarterly pro moted another souvenir sale. Thirteen of the fifteen souvenirs were still available at 50¢ each including the Beggars’ Pen ny.This4 is not the case here. The drop is not a 50¢ reproduction. The badge maker used either an Eighty-Years War original or more likely a later seventeenth century restrike. In any case it is a valuable bit of history and numismatics. The truly awful thing is that the unseen side of the de Peyster Beggars’ Penny is carefully labeled with the 1940 museum acquisi tion number 40.108.87 in bright red nail polish. Ouch! Lauren Robinson, Manager of Collections Licensing and Digital As sets, Museum of the City of New York wrote that this labeling is no longer the Museum’s practice. The Queen Wilhelmina Beggars’ Badge is unique, and it is remarkable that it has been preserved. The Header identifies the organization the wearer belonged to and by extension their support for the Queen.
The Drop is in the Hollander tradition of hanging bits off medals to make a further point. Here the inference is that the Queen will even beggar herself for the good of her people. Photo credit: Hippolyte Le Roy (1857–1944) and Paul Fisch. Museum of the City of New York. 40.108.87.
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“The Black Experience in Dutch New York” explored the recent explosion of re search into the lives of the Black inhabitants in the New Netherland Dutch colony. This virtual event, which on October 23, 2021, took the place of the annual New Nether land Institute conference, brought together scholars who are at the cutting edge of this research. How did Blacks live in New Amsterdam? What was “slavery” in the colony? When did the first Africans arrive? Andrea Mosterman, associate professor of history at the University of New Orleans, gave the keynote address focusing on the topic of her newly released book, Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York. A panel discussion followed featuring Nicole Maskiell, assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina, author of the forthcoming Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry; Jaap Jacobs, honorary reader at the University of St. Andrews, author of a forthcoming article about the first Blacks in New Amsterdam; and Debra Bruno, author of a recent Washington Post article about her search for her slave-owning ancestor. Lavada Nahon, New York State Bureau of Historic Sites interpreter of African Amer ican history, moderated. The event was sponsored by the New Netherland Institute in collaboration with the New Amsterdam History Center and the New York State Office of Cultural Educa tion. “The Early Dutch in Brooklyn,” an in-person event, took place on November 9 at the Brooklyn Public Library. The New Amsterdam History Center collaborated with the Center for Brooklyn History on this program. The program focused on the history of the Dutch settlement in the area between the Narrows and Coney Island in Brooklyn and on the tensions that arose between the Dutch and English, and also updated the story of Antony van Salée, the first New Netherland resident of Muslim faith, and his feisty wife Grietje. Speakers included Alan Mikhail of Yale University and Professor Eric Plat of St. Francis Col lege in Brooklyn.
THE NEW AMSTERDAM History Center planned several events to top off 2021: “The Black Experience in Dutch New York” at the end of October and an in-person event, “The Early Dutch in Brooklyn,” in November.
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New Netherland Institute Voyages of New DatabaseNetherland
B
ETWEEN 1609 AND 1664 more than 150 ships undertook roughly 250 voyages between the Dutch Republic and the colony of New Netherland. These ships crucially connected colonial nodes across the North Atlantic Ocean. Transporting administrators and colonists, delivering provisions, supplies, and essentials, and conveying missives and other correspon dence as the only means of communica tion, these ships were the link between the Dutch Republic and its overseas holdings. Viewing history through the lens of ships adds a critical component to understanding the rich and complex Dutch North Atlantic colonial network, whose very existence depended on maritime support.
Julie van den Hout has a B.A. in linguis tics and Dutch studies from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in history from San Fran cisco State University. She is author of Adriaen van der Donck, A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America (2018). The database will continue to be updated and refined as new information comes to light. It can be accessed at WendellshrMDlcIOR41hG2hh.https://airtable.com/ThisprojectistheresultofaCharlesW.ResearchGrant.
THE NEW NETHERLAND Institute has announced the 2021 winners of its two most prestigious awards.
Julie van den Hout has produced a da tabase of voyages to New Netherland that integrates the activities of ships into the larger story of the colony. She provides an extensive resource for the reconstruction of maritime activity at the foundation of, and essential to, the development of New Netherland. The database offers accurate, up-to-date details about voyages and cor rects misinformation, often reprinted from secondary, outdated, or misinterpreted sources. Structured for searching, correla tion, and analysis, the database consists of more than 10,000 data points derived from primary sources that points researchers to the stories of these voyages and provides a framework on which to build. To give context to and supplement the data, voyage notes are included for pertinent information that fall outside the data structure.
New Netherland Institute Announces 2021 Awards
The Hendricks Award, endowed by Dr. Andrew Hendricks, is an award of $5,000 given annually for the best book or booklength manuscript relating to the Dutch co lonial experience in North America before the American Revolution. The 2021 award went to D. L. Noorlander, Heaven’s Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World (Cornell University Press, 2019).
The Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize is named in the memory of this brother and sister and given in honor of their New Netherland ancestry. The annual $1,000 prize is for the best published article relating to the Dutch colonial experience in the Atlantic world, with special sensitivity to New Netherland or its legacy. There were two winners: Dennis Maika “To ‘experiment with a parcel of negros’: In centive, Collaboration, and Competition in New Amsterdam’s Slave Trade,” Journal of Early American History 10 (2020), 33–69; and Susanah Shaw Romney “Reytory Angola, Seventeenth-Century Manhattan (US),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas, and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 58–78.
New Amsterdam History Center
Here and There in New Netherland Studies
Holland Society Walking Tour visiting Federal Hall on Wall Street.
Winter 2021-2022 77 Society Activities ON SATURDAY MORNING , Oc tober 30, 2021, Holland Society of New York Members and friends, including Society President Colonel Adrian Bogart, Catherine Bogart, Sarah Babcock, Sally Quackenbush Mason, Elizabeth Moore, Joe Haberstroh, Sarah Lefferts Fosdick, Sam Fosdick, Abbie McMillen, Christopher Cortright, Andrea DeLeon, Ken Zeliff, and Kelly Van Wormer, gathered outside Fraunces Tavern in downtown Manhattan, site of George Washington’s November 2, 1783, farewell to his troops, for a guided walking tour of Dutch New York. Joyce Gold, dubbed the “doyenne of city walk ing guides” by The New York Times, led theJoycetour. Gold did not disappoint as she introduced the Dutch roots of the oldest part of New York City, walking briskly amid streets commemorating the seven teenth-century Dutch settlement: Beaver Street, where the merchants of the Dutch West India Company loaded pelts onto ships in the harbor; Pearl Street, the original coast line, filled with oyster shells; Stone Street, paved in 1655 using ballast from ships to reduce the muddy horse trail to and from the local brewery; and Wall Street, where the settlers built a wall to protect them from the Manhattan wilderness north of their new home.
Walking Tour viewing H.A. Van den Eyden’s sculpted flagstaff pedestal. The flagstaff was a gift from the people of the Netherlands to New York City in 1926 “in testimony of ancient and unbroken friendship.”
The tour group visited Peter Minuit Plaza in Battery Park, where a monument commemorates that West India Company director’s legendary 1626 purchase of Manhattan Island for $24 worth of trading goods. Nearby was a plaque commem orating the 1634 Manhattan landing of twenty-three men, women, and children who founded the first Jewish community in North America. Also there, the tour group saw sculptor Simon Verity’s 3D ren dering of the 1660 Castello Plan, wherein early resident surveyor Jacques Cortelyou mapped the streets, houses, forts, and windmills of New Amsterdam. Nearby at 85 Broad Street the group saw where the excavation to build a massive skyscraper for Goldman Sachs’ world headquarters in the 1980s unearthed the oldest structure yet discovered in Manhattan, Lovelace Tavern, built in 1670, whose foundation is preserved next to a yellow rectangle of bricks on the nearby sidewalk marking the site of the Stadt Huis, the early Dutch State House.The tour ended at the Stock Exchange on Wall Street, looking up toward the spire of Trinity Church, founded in 1697 by the English successors to our Dutch ancestors, and outside Federal Hall, site of the nation’s first capitol, where a statue of George Washington commemorates his inauguration there as the new nation’s first President. From that vantage, we could clearly see that our earliest Dutch roots remain indelibly inscribed in the vibrant greatness of New York City today.
Society Walking Tour
O
Below right: President Adrian Bogart, Medalist Carolyn McCormick, Holland Society Director Sarah Bogart Cooney, and Medalist Byron Jennings.
Below: the gathering enjoying Carolyn McCormick and Bryan Jennings’ reading of the balcony scene from Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.”
"Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beaver!"
Following state-regulated COVID-19 protocols, eighty-four Members, Fellows, and Friends joyfully gathered to be able to enjoy each other’s company in person for what was a truly memorable evening. The glittering affair began with a cocktail reception in the Lotos Club’s library. The club was built in 1900 as a wedding gift for Maria Vanderbilt Shep ard and William Jay Schieffelin, and the tastefully restored setting reflects the elegant opulence of New York’s Gilded Age. Members mingled with such guests as the Jason Bernhard, president of the Huguenot Society of America, Charles MacKenzie, president of the Saint Nich olas Society, and Rob Snyder, Manhattan Borough historian, as well as the Society’s 2021 medalists, Broadway actors Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings. During the cocktail hour, McCormick and Jen nings performed the balcony scene from Noel Coward’s play Private Lives . Their sophisticated rendition received great applause.Inadvance of dinner, the traditional toasts were made. Following the toasts, the Reverend Paul Lent read the invo cation. The Holland Society annually awards a Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement for civic, cultural, or social contributions to New York. Holland So ciety Director Sarah Cooney welcomed members and guests and introduced the medalists, highlighting that “theatre is an integral part of New York culture, and Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings are integral parts of New York theatre.” Carolyn McCormick presented their acceptance speech, noting the Holland Society’s focus on celebrating New York stories.
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Above right: cocktail hour at the Annual Banquet in the Lotos Club Library. Right: Lisa Weedon, Catherine Van Ness, Ella Rivers, and Chrisopher Weedon.
Following dinner, Holland Society President Colonel Adrian Bogart III (Ret.) shared his plans for the Society’s future, including greater collaboration between societies that focus on the history of New York and the reopening of the Society’s library. He then introduced the long-running Holland Society tradition of the Parading of the Beaver, carried by Ethan Hasbrouck Van Ness and Jonathan Doucette. Bouquets of flowers were presented to Director Sarah Cooney and Banquet Committee members Sarah Lefferts Fosdick and Sally Quackenbush Mason, who had created a truly magical and memorable event. Dancing followed dinner, with music by the Lester Lanin Orchestra. An af ter-party was held at the Lotos Club Grill.
Annual Banquet N SATURDAY EVENING, Octo ber 30, 2021, The Holland Society of New York held the Society’s 131st Annual Banquet at the Lotos Club in Manhattan. The Society’s last Annual Banquet had been held in 2016, and the revival of this Society tradition was indeed a gala event.
In Memoriam
Mr. Van Tassel was in a long-time rela tionship with Daniel Sullivan, who lived near Sheriff’s Meadow, Martha’s Vineyard. Mr. Sullivan predeceased Mr. Van Tassel in 1983. In his later years Mr. Van Tassel suffered from more than a decade of dementia and other health complications. His niece Alison Shaw and her wife, Sue Dawson, oversaw his care, along with a dedicated, patient staff of caregivers and helpers— most recently, with the family’s thanks and gratitude, by Greg and Leo. Mr. Van Tassel is survived by two nieces and five nephews: Alison, Stephen, and Michael Shaw; Christopher, Jonathan, Pe ter, and Megan Wuerth; and their families. His niece Megan Wuerth died in December 2020. Mr. Van Tassel’s ashes were interred in the Tower Hill Cemetery, Edgartown, alongside his parents, sisters, and brothers in law, and near his partner Dan, in a private family ceremony. Richard John Riker Holland Society of New York Member Richard John Riker died on July 28, 2021, in Naples, Florida, at the age of eightynine. Mr. Riker was born on February 15, 1933, son of Dr. John Lawrence Riker and Helene Beaudrias. He claimed descent from Abraham Rycken, who emigrated probably from Lent, Gelderland, in 1638. Mr. Riker was elected to membership in the Holland Society on December 13, 2012. Mr. Riker graduated from Phillips Ando ver Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, in 1950, Harvard University in 1954, and Co lumbia University Law School in 1960. He was admitted to the New York bar in 1961, thus becoming an attorney and entrepreneur of businesses. He served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force; later he flew his own plane. Mr. Riker had a daughter, Anne Rose Riker; and three sons, William Riker, Richard Story Riker, and John BL Riker. Mr. Riker was predeceased by his son Wil liam. Mr. Riker married Ronnie Spencer in Manhattan on July 2, 2001. Mr. Riker was a member of many clubs, societies, and charitable organization. He participated in sports and had many hobbies. He summered and lived in New Jersey as well as other environs. He retired to Naples, Florida.
Peter Bogue Van Tassel
Holland Society of New York Member Peter Bogue Van Tassel died on June 1, 2020, at his home on South Water Street in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, Mas sachusetts. He was ninety-one years old. Mr. Van Tassel was born in White Plains, New York, on December 29, 1928, son of Chester Burroughs Van Tassel and Alma Ruth Bogue. Mr. Van Tassel claimed de scent from Cornelis Jansen van Texel from Schoonderwoert, near Leerdam, Holland, who arrived in New Netherland prior to 1628. He married Catonerus, a daughter of Monatuk sachem Wyandance. Mr. Van Tassel was elected to membership in the Holland Society in 1957.
Mr. Van Tassel’s sisters Gretchen and Ka trina were considerably older, so in many respects he was raised as an only child. Mr. Van Tassel graduated from the Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Connecticut, in 1946. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 1950. He attended the Royal Institute of British Architecture in London, then returned to Yale, earning a master’s degree in architecture in 1955. Upon receiving a degree in architecture, Mr. Van Tassel relocated to Manhattan, where he resided on the Upper East Side. He spent much of his career at the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill working on commercial buildings. Mid-century modern was the style of the time, characterized by clean simple lines and integration with nature. Mr. Van Tassel spent two years living in Brussels, Bel gium, working on SOM’s Banque Lambert project. He ended his professional life in Manhattan working in an administrative capacity for the fabric and design firm Scalamandré.Mr.VanTassel was an avid reader, his li brary was full of literature, history, Europe an and British architecture, and art. Reading the daily New York Times cover to cover was a lifetime ritual. One of his passions as a young man was travel, specifically to Europe, and judging from his letters and diaries from when he was in his twenties and thirties, he did so as often as possible, traveling by ocean liner (including the Queen Elizabeth and SS Rotterdam). His days and nights were packed with touring, museums, art, architecture, concerts, plays, and an active social life. He was also an avid opera buff. One highlight of his student days in London was attending the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. After his death, it was discovered that, as the last of his Van Tassel line, he had been keeping up a family diary that was started generations ago—a precious record for generations to come.Mr. Van Tassel’s connection to the Vineyard dated to the late 1930s, when his parents initially rented in Edgartown. In 1943, they purchased the Sanford House on Dunham Road, affectionately named “Pinkletink” by the Van Tassel family. In 1955 the family bought the Earle House on South Water Street, which the Vineyard Ga zette called at the time one of Edgartown’s oldest houses. The house was in extreme disrepair, and Mr. Van Tassel served as architect for a complete renovation. When the work was completed, his parents retired to the house from New York. Following his parents’ death, Mr. Van Tassel inherited the house. In 1988, he retired to the Vineyard. During his retirement years, he kept busy with a variety of paying and volunteer jobs. These included the Granary Gallery, Book Den East, the Edgartown Library, MV Preservation Trust, and fifteen years in the library and archives of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum (formerly the Dukes County Historical Society).
Adrian Thomas Bogart Jr. Holland Society of New York Life
Mr. Van Tassel was raised in a rambling eighteenth-century farmhouse named “Farm End” in Scarsdale, New York. The property, now known as the “Fisher-Van Tassel House,” included the first private ly-owned paddle tennis court in the country.
Mr. Riker is survived by his wife, Ron nie; daughter Anne Rose Riker; sons Rich ard Story Riker, John BL “Jackson” Riker and his wife, Kirsten; nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren; and brother John Riker. A Christian graveside burial was private. A memorial service was held on February 17, 2022, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Southport, Connecticut.
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president of the Locust Valley Chamber of Commerce from 1997–1998, and the Mat inecock Neighborhood Association from 1975. In addition to the Holland Society, Mr. Bogart was a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, Union League Club of New York, Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club of Oyster Bay, New York, and Rotary International. He was a volunteer tour guide at Sagamore Hill, the estate of President Theodore Roosevelt, and was an acolyte at St. John’s Episcopal Church of Lattingtown.Mr.Bogart enjoyed walking and swim ming daily during the summer, and sailing his yacht. He was Republican in his poli tics.Mr. Bogart is survived by his second wife, Emma; his children, Laurie Bogart Wiles and her husband, John Wiles of Pinehurst, North Carolina; Cynthia and her husband Bill Wladyka of Newport, Rhode Island; Colonel Adrian T. Bogart III, U.S. Army and 76th president of the Holland Society; and Clinton F. Bogart of Houston, Texas, and his wife, Danya McIntyre; and his step-daughter Viktoria Bogart; ten grandchildren and nine great-grandchil dren. A wake was held on December 3, 2021, at the Oyster Bay Funeral Home, Oyster Bay, New York. He will be interred at the Locust Valley Cemetery.
His son Col. Adrian T. Bogart III is current president of the Holland Society and his granddaughter Sarah Bogart Cooney is the current executive director.
Member
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Mr. Bogart was an active member of the Holland Society. He served as a member of the Society’s Burgher Guard, as the Long Island Branch vice-president, and as a trustee of the Society from 1991 to 2010, and trustee emeritus. He was also active in starting the Holland Society yachting events. In addition, Mr. Bogart also wrote a chatty Society newsletter for several years.
Adrian Thomas Bogart Jr. of Locust Valley, Long Island, passed away at his home on November 25, 2021, of natural causes at the age of ninety-four. A lifelong New Yorker, he was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, on May 6, 1927, the son of Adrian T. Bogart Sr. and Anna Mysuik. Mr. Bogart claimed descent from Tunis Gysbert Bogaert, who settled in New Amsterdam in 1652, and was a twelfth-generation direct descendant of Sarah Rapalje, the first European child born in New York State on June 7, 1625. Mr. Bogart was elected to membership in the Holland Society in October 1959. Mr. Bogart attended public schools in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. He graduated from Fort Hamilton High School in 1945. He served as a third-class petty officer in the United States Navy in the Pacific theater at the end of World War II in 1945–1946. Following military service he studied at Clarkson College of Technology, graduat ing with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1951. After graduation from Clarkson, Mr. Bogart joined his father’s firm of A.T. Bo gart and Son. In 1953 he worked for A.T. McFarlan Co. in industrial contracting sales and engineering in air conditioning and heating. In 1956 he opened his own engi neering firm on Long Island, New York, working until he was ninety years old. Mr. Bogart married Letizia “Lee” A. Corigliano, in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, New York, on April 19, 1952. The couple had four children: Lorraine Ann Bogart, born on April 14, 1953, Cynthia Ellen Bogart, born on February 9, 1956, both in Brooklyn, New York, and Adrian Thomas Bogart III, born on August 2, 1959, and Clinton Francis Bogart, born on February 22, 1962, both in Freeport, New York. Lee predeceased her husband in 2004. Mr. Bo gart married for his second wife, Ludmilla “Emma” Afonina.
Mr. Bogart was a member of the Amer ican Society of Refrigeration Engineers, American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, Delta Lodge No. 451 Free and Accepted Masons,
Records of The Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Flatbush, Kings County, New York Please send check or money order payable to: Jacob Leisler Institute PO Box Hudson,86NY 12534 Tel: OrFax:518-567-6490212-758-2232visitourwebsite and pay with PayPalemail:info@jacobleislerinstitute.orgweb:www.jacobleislerinstitute.org The Jacob Leisler Institute is a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization; no sales tax is required. Ship VolumeCity/State/ZipStreetNameto:IQuantity_______Amount $______ Volume II Quantity_______Amount $______ Volume Volume1677-1720III Deacons' Accounts 1654–1709 Translated by David William Voorhees Published under the auspices of The Holland Society of New York, these two volumes translate the records of the consistory minutes, baptismal and marriage records, and membership lists of the Dutch Reformed congregations located in the present-day New York City borough of Brooklyn. Special features include transliterated Dutch text and English line-for-line translation. — Hard cover — Illustrated — $60.00 per volume (includes shipping)
