Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles, Part 11

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub.
Number of Pages: 926

USA > New York > New York County> Harlem > Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles > Part 11

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The social festivities, few and simple at that day, the parting visits to the dear old homes at Leyden and Nieuwlant, and busy, thoughtful preparation at both places for their coming departure, could not but wear a tinge of sadness, in view of their long and perilous voyage, and uncertain absence from kin and country. The kind uncle, Gerard, engaged two persons to accompany them in the capacity of farmer and farmer's boy, each of whom entered into a formal contract to "serve said De Forest, or his agent, three successive years after arriving in New Netherland." The circumstances of Crispin De Forest's marriage, and the active part taken by his father in the preparations for the voyage, are

HISTORY OF HARLEM.

reasons for the belief, before expressed, that he also intended to be of the party. If so, something changed his purpose during the long delay before the others sailed, and Crispin stayed at Leyden.

The company yet consisted of Dr. La Montagne and his wife, and three children, Jesse, Jean, and Rachel; Henry De Forest and his bride, and Isaac De Forest, with the assistants, Tobias Teunissen and Willem Fredericks Bont, both natives of Leyden. The last was a sturdy lad of sixteen years, perhaps an orphan, for his education had been neglected, but of a surname common there, and even distinguished. Teunissen, by trade a woolwasher, had reached middle life, having married in 1618. An attendant of St. Peter's Church, where he had several children baptized, and being known to the curators of the University as a trustworthy person, he was employed in 1622 as a nightwatch- man at that institution, for which he received six florins a week. But time had brought him sad changes, and having been bereft of his family, he now resolved to leave behind his native land and kindred, and, as he vainly hoped, also his adversities.

Now arrived the long-expected day of embarkation, when hopes and fears, congratulations and farewells, smiles and tears, strangely commingled. The party (except the Montagne family, who for some reason deferred their going) set sail from the Texel for New Amsterdam, October Ist, 1636, in the yacht Rens- selaerswyck, of which Jan Tiebkins was skipper, and carrying colonists to Fort Orange, in the service of the Patroon, Kilian Van Rensselaer, of Amsterdam.

Interrupting for a space the story of these pioneers, let us note the movements of others in whom we are interested, who were led to follow upon the same adventurous voyage across the ocean.

CHAPTER V.

EMIGRATION.

A MSTERDAM, as the great commercial mart of Holland, and the seat of the principal business chamber of the Dutch West India Company, had become the great point of embarka- tion for colonists going to New Netherland. They came from all parts of the country : not only the native Dutch, and fugitives from France and the Catholic Netherlands, but also refugees from the German and Scandinavian countries; multitudes of whom, ren- dered miserable by the Thirty Years' War, were seeking a home and employment in the United Provinces. Of these refugees the historian of Holland has drawn the character in happy terms. Says Davies: "Nor was it more in the numbers than in the sort of population that Holland found her advantage. The fugitives were not criminals escaped from justice, speculators lured by the hope of plunder, nor idlers coming thither to enjoy the lux- uries which their own country did not afford: they were generally men persecuted on account of their love of civil liberty, or their devotion to their religious tenets. Had they been content to sacri- fice the one or the other to their present ease and interest, they had remained unmolested where they were; it was by their activ- ity, integrity and resolution that they rendered themselves ob- noxious to the tyrannical and bigoted governments which drove them from their native land; and these virtues they carried with them to their adopted country, peopling it, not with vagabonds or indolent voluptuaries, but with brave, intelligent and useful citizens."

Thus our Captain Jochiem Pietersen Kuyter, who had for- merly commanded in the East Indies for the king of Denmark, and who with his friend, Jonas Bronck, came out in 1639 by way of Amsterdam, was from Holstein; as were also our Nicholas De Meyer and Jan Pietersen Slot, who arrived a few years later : all these being sterling men, and, except the last, well educated. The small county of Bentheim,-a part of Westphalia bordering on Overyssel, diversified with mountain ranges, forests, and fer- tile plains, and yielding to a laborious people more than they

HISTORY OF HARLEM.

needed of cattle, wool, linen, honey, etc., all of which found in Holland a ready market, and whence had arisen a free intercourse between the two peoples,-furnished three colonists, whose sur- names yet survive with us, to wit, Adolph Meyer, Jan Dyckman, and Arent Harmans Bussing, the last named of a family not unknown to fame in that country ; and two bore prenomens popu- lar in their part of Germany,-as among the rulers of Bentheim none were such favorites as the late counts Adolph and Arent. Other Westphalians found their way to Harlem, as Hendrick Karstens, from Oldenburg, whose sons were called Boch, or Bouck; Jan Terbosch, from Tellust, or Delmenhorst, whose de- scendants are numerous; and Jan Meynderts, from Jever, in Oldenburg, and the father-in-law of Barent Waldron. Kier Wolters, the Kiersen ancestor, who had lived at Gees and at Aernhout, two obscure villages in the "Groot Veenen," or desert- like fens of Drenthe, came out via Amsterdam; as did also our Benson ancestor, who was originally from Groningen. From Workum, on the coast of Freisland, came Captain Jan Gerritsen De Vries, or Van Dalsen, progenitor of the Dolsen family, of Orange County, whose blood may be traced in those of Waldron, Kiersen and Meyer.

Amsterdam itself gave us of its resident families those of Waldron, Sneden and Verveelen, familiar names, yet found in this State and others, and to which the Slots and Bensons may be added. Dirck Benson, the ancestor, though himself from Groningen, as stated, had lived at Amsterdam, where he married Catalina, daughter of Samson Berck and Tryntie Van Rechteren ; whence the name Samson, so common in the Benson family. Benson came out about 1648.

Also from Amsterdam was Hendrick Jansen Vander Vin. Well educated, and a good accountant, he was commended to the notice of the West India Company, and went under their aus- pices to Pernambuco, in Brazil, where he acted as clerk to the High Council of Justice at Maurits Stadt, a town built by the Dutch near the Reciff. Some fragments of his minutes kept at that place in 1646 are yet extant. He was there during the dis- mal period of the Portuguese conspiracy to extirpate the Dutch,- happily discovered and thwarted,-but which was followed by many reverses to the Dutch arms, and then by the surrender of Brazil to the rival power in 1654. Vander Vin had left some years prior to the final catastrophe, and returned to Amsterdam, resuming his business as a notary. But in 1651 he went out to Manhattan Island to see the country. It pleased him so well that,

HISTORY OF HARLEM.

returning for a stock of goods to set up trading in New Amster- dam, he again repaired thither in 1653, taking his good vrouw, Wyntie, to share with him the blessings and privations of his new home. He subsequently served fourteen years at Harlem as voorleser, and twelve of these as town clerk.

Joseph and Resolved Waldron, sons of Resolved Waldron, of Amsterdam, were book printers. The family was English; the name, of repute in England from the time of the Conqueror, had spread through nearly all its southern tier of counties. But born and raised at Amsterdam, these brothers had acquired all the characteristics of Hollanders, having also married Dutch wives, the sisters Aeltie and Rebecca Hendricks, whose father, Hendrick Koch, was a respectable Amsterdam burgher. It is stated on pretty good authority that Resolved had made the voyage to Brazil, but of this we will not speak further here. Having the misfortune to lose his wife, he married again. on May 10th, 1654, a lady of thirty years, living near the West India House, Tanneke Nagel, daughter of Barent Nagel, deceased, of Groningen. Resolved was living at this time in the Teerketels- steeg, a short street just north of the Dam; but the same year sailed with his family for America. His brother, Joseph Waldron, had preceded him to this country by two years, according to his son's reckoning. He also was accompanied by a second wife, Annetie Daniels, but twenty-five when he married her, at Amster- dam, April 4, 1649, she and Resolved's wife being of the same age.

Near the time Resolved Waldron left for the Manhattans, the young John La Montagne, who had spent seventeen years at the latter place,-indeed had grown up there, where he was highly esteemed, and was now in business with Vincent Pikes, "both free traders in company,"-arrived at Amsterdam in the ship King Solomon. Not only to visit his native land and kindred,-alike as strange and new to his eye as though he were an alien,-he came to buy a stock of merchandise, and also to sell a lot of to- bacco, of which he was consignee, and to invest the proceeds in goods for his uncle, Isaac De Forest ; but what more deeply con- cerned him, was to choose a wife, the fair one selected being Peter- nella, sister of his business partner, and daughter of Jan Pikes, of Amsterdam. The nuptial knot being tied by Pastor Meursius, at Slooterdyk. a village a mile from Amsterdam, on March 14th following (1655), La Montagne sailed very soon on his return, he wife remaining till after the birth and baptism of her son John, which occurred late in the same year.

Jan Pietersen Slot, before named as from Holstein, and

1 1

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ancestor of the respectable family of Slott or Sloat, of Orange County, and of Rockland, and the Ramapo Valley, came out with his children, born and reared in Amsterdam, about the same time with Resolved Waldron; and Johannes Verveelen and Jan Sne- den followed them, in 1657. Sneden was descended from a family long at Amsterdam, and was accompanied to America by his wife Grietie Jans, two children, and brother, Claes Sneden. They sailed in the St. Jan Baptist, December 23d of the last- named year,-one which witnessed the departure of many colon- ists for New Amstel, on the Delaware, under the patronage of the City of Amsterdam, and among whom was Kier Wolters, father of the Kiersens, as before stated.

Verveelen was born in 1616, at Amsterdam, but of German stock, with an infusion of French, being a son of Daniel Ver- veelen, who, with his parents, Hans Verveelen and Catharina, daughter of John Oliviers, had some five years prior to the birth of Johannes removed to that city from Cologne, on the Rhine. Religious intolerance, which culminated in 1618 in the expulsion of all the Protestants from that town, had doubtless driven the Verveelens to Amsterdam. Here the son Daniel, born at Cologne in 1594, married in 1615, and became a "shopkeeper"; and here also his son Johannes, the eldest of six children, was reared and educated, and in 1637 married Anna Jaarsvelt, by whom he had, all born in that city, three children, Daniel, Anna and Maria. The first of these, when a mere boy, preceded his father to New Netherland, under the care, we believe, of Dominie Gideon Schaets, one of whose daughters he married. After several years his father followed, bringing his wife and daugh- ters, and widowed mother, Anna Elkhout, aged about sixty-six years.

Utrecht and Arnhem, cities on the Rhine, the latter within Gelderland, supplied settlers to Harlem. A hamlet near Amers- foort, in the province or diocese of Utrecht, gave us Jan Hen- dricks Van Brevoort, who came to this country in boyhood with his father, and from whom have sprung the reputable family of Brevoort. Several years later (about 1655) the head of the Van Tilburg family, Jan Teunissen, emigrated from Tilburg, in the Mayory of Bosch (or Bois le Duc), in Dutch Brabant; and from the same district afterward came two other colonists whose pro- geny are numerous and respectable, to wit, David Ackerman and Dirck Storm, names not unknown at Harlem. Ackerman was from Berlikum. These, with other families, sailed from Amster- dam, September 2d, 1662, in the ship Fox, Captain Jacob Huys,

HISTORY OF HARLEM.

which also brought Jan Terbosch and Robert Le Maire, already named and identified with Harlem.

The large emigration to New Netherland from the exposed borders nearest the Spanish possessions, and especially the insular district having on the south the river Waal, and on the north the Rhine and Leck, furnished Harlem with several substantial fam- ilies. Central of the district mentioned, upon the small river Linge, which empties into the Waal, stood the city of Leerdam, giving name to a county in which it was seated,-a level, graz- ing country, otherwise called the Prince's Land, because inherited by a son of William of Orange, from his mother, Anne of Eg- mont. To Leerdam had retired from the religious troubles in Flanders, as before noticed, the family of Sebastian, or Bastiaen Van Kortryk, about all we know of this Kortright progenitor, with his royal Spanish name. Two sons of Bastiaen, of whom we must speak, Jan and Michiel, were born at Leerdam; but Jan married and settled farther up the Linge, at a busy little village within sight of Wolfswaert Castle, as also of the ruined abbey of Marenwaert, and called Beest, its bailiwick of the same name adjoining westerly to the Prince's Land, but within the Gelder- land border. The spirit of emigration reaching this locality, many of its people began to pack up and leave for New Nether- land, in which they had a safe precedent in no less a person- age than the village pedagague, Master Gideon Schaets,-much reverenced was he and looked up to in those days,-and who, in the spirit of his deceased senior, Mathias Bartholomeus Schaets (late pastor at Leerdam, who died four years before Gideon was born), after a course in theology, had gone thither with his family in 1652, under license from the Classis of Amsterdam, to preach the Gospel, and to fill "the office of schoolmaster for old and young." Among those, accordingly, who at length set their faces to follow their old preceptor to the New World, were two brothers, of Beest, sons of Peter Buys. Aert, the elder, with wife and son Cornelis, joining some families from that place, and single persons of both sexes, his friends and neighbors, set sail from Amsterdam May 9, 1661, in the ship Beaver, reaching Manhattan July 29th .* Two years later Johannes Buys joined his brother at Harlem.

* Peter Marselis, his wife, four children and two servants; Frans Jacobson, wife and two children: Goosen Jansen Van Noort and Hendrick Bries were among those re- ferred to from Beest. The first two went to Bergen, N. J .; the others, I believe, to Albany. (See Pearson's Albany Settlers.) Bries must not be taken for Hendrick Volkert- sen Bries, from Jever, in Oldenburg, who married at New Amsterdam in 1655, and whence came the Breese family of Long Island, Staten Island and New Jersey. Marselis died September 4. 1681, leaving descendants. Jacobsen, having a son Jacob Franssen, born in 1664, died about that time, and in 1665, Cornelis Abrahams, from Deyl, near Beest,

HISTORY OF HARLEM.

SCHOONREWOERD.

Michiel, or, as often called, 'Chiel Kortright, the other son of Bastiaen, had also married and been living in "the Prince's Land, near Schoonrewoerd"; the latter a pretty village two miles northerly from Leerdam, whence there had been some emigrating to the Colonie of Rensselaerswyck, at the instance of the Patroon, who had a seat and estates at Vianen, but four miles from Schoon- rewoerd. Foremost in this service were Rutger Jacobsen, who went out in the vessel with the De Forests, and also his brother, Teunis Jacobsen, the ancestors of families since well known .* To the Colonie afterward Dominie Schaets had also gone. Each bit of news wafted home from time to time in friendly letters served to quicken interest in the new country which had caused so many vacant tenements and broken families about Beest and Schoonre- woerd. Yet 'Chiel Kortright tarried some years at the latter

married his widow, Geertie Gerrits. She died a widow, at Pemrepogh, in 1680, having the year before lost her eldest son Gerrit Franssen, and married her daughter, Marritie Frans, to Johannes Spier, son of Hendrick Jansen Spier, from Ascheward, in Bremen, common ancestor of the Spier or Speer family of New Jersey.

The same ship, the Beaver, took over Hugh Barents De Kleyn, from Buren; Aert Teunisz Middagh, from Heykoop (settled in Brooklyn) ; and Evert Pietersen Keteltas. returning to New Amsterdam as "consoler of the sick, chorister and schoolmaster;" also Etienne Geneau, a Huguenot from La Rochelle, his wife Lyria Metereu and three children. He lived at Harlem, I believe, in 1675, but went to Staten Island, and was the Gano ancestor.

* Rutger Jacobsen was the ancestor of the Rutgers family of New York, and also, through his daughter Margaret, who married, 1667, Jan Jansen Bleecker, from Meppel, a progenitor of the highly respectable family of this name. Teunis Jacob- sen's descendants, who have been numerous in Albany County, took name . from his birthplace, but shortened to Van Woert. (See Holgate's . Am. Gen., Pearson's Albany Settlers and O'Callaghan's N. Neth., i. 436, 439).

HISTORY OF HARLEM.

place, till blest with three or four children; when he and his elder brother, Jan Bastiaesen, whose three sons, born at Beest,-his humble home in a bend of the Linge,-were now fast approaching manhood, yielded to the flattering offers held out to colonists, and agreed to leave together for that distant land. The contagion had also seized some of the neighbors at Schoonrewoerd, one of whom was Jan Louwe Bogert, a young man with wife and two children, and whose kinsman, Theunis Gysberts Bogert, of Hey- koop, two miles northwest of Schoonrewoerd, had already been ten years in America. Proceeding to Amsterdam, they all em- barked, April 16th, 1663, in the Brindled Cow, Jan Bergen, mas- ter, in which ship there also sailed several French refugees from Mannheim, in the Palatinate, who will command further notice.

For years the streams of Huguenot emigration setting out of France and the Low Countries had been bearing to Holland, now a solitary wanderer, now a stricken family, some to abide here for a time, others seeking a passage to the New World, but destined ultimately to find at Harlem a resting-place. Coming by no general or concerted action, but only as a crisis in the affairs of each had indicated the time and the mode, it is not easy to fix the exact date of their flight, though the era has been sufficiently shown. We shall name them, as we have the Dutch colonists, in the order of their departure for New Neth- erland.

Daniel De Tourneur (so his name was sometimes written), leaving Picardy by a sudden necessity, as already related, and coming to Leyden, had here followed the business of a draper : and on September 5th, 1650, married Jacqueline Parisis, of a Walloon refugee family from Hesdin, in Artois, and a sister to Rev. Eustacius Parisis, then of Amsterdam. Nearly two years later, Tourneur sailed, with his wife and infant son Daniel, for New Netherland, probably in the ship with Dominie Samuel Dris- ius, of Leyden, which left Holland April 4, 1652. Jean le Roy, a kinsman of Tourneur, appears to have accompanied him with his wife, Louise De Lancastre, whose name implies an English birth.

Glaude Le Maistre, or Delamater, as usually written by his descendants, had sprung from an ancient house of Brittany, the Lords of Garlaye, whose chateau and estates lay in the parish of Derval, in the diocese of Nantes. It was eminent in the civil and military service, the church, and the law. Its members had held commands in Picardy, where one of its now scattered branches, in which the name Claude first appears, became allied

HISTORY OF HARLEM.

early in the sixteenth century to the lords of Caumartin. Claude Le Maistre, Sieur De Hedicourt, becoming a Protestant, was, with others, imprisoned and fined at Amiens in 1588, at the instance of the League. He was a man of talent and spirit, and showed great valor in opposing the entrance of the Spaniards into that city in 1597, when soldiers in the garb of peasants, selling apples and nuts, had gained admission. Our Glaude Le Maistre was no doubt of this family, members of which had re- moved to Artois, where he was born, as before said, in the town of Richebourg. After escaping the country he comes to notice at Amsterdam, in 1652, an exile and a widower, living in the Tan- ners' cross-street, having lost his wife, Jeanne De Lannoy. On April 24th of that year he married Hester, daughter of Pierre Du Bois, of Amsterdam, though late of Canterbury, England, where Hester was born. Some of the Le Maistres had also taken refuge at Canterbury, and circumstances make it nearly certain that Glaude was among them, and with the Du Boises had left England because of the civil wars then raging, or the threatened rupture with Holland, and, perhaps, in his case, to take ship for New Netherland, as he soon did, appearing with Tourneur first at Flatbush, and afterward at Harlem.

Marc Du Sauchoy, whose name will hardly be recognized by his worthy posterity the Disosway family, was a native of Picardy, and probably from Amiens. The lords Du Sauchoy came from the house of Clermont, in the Beauvoisis, and one of them went to the conquest of Britain with the Duke of Normandy. Perhaps our Marc, a man of worth and enterprise, was of that blood, but we know not. In his exile he worked as a wool-carder, but in search of something better, made a voyage from Holland to New Netherland in 1655. Sufficiently pleased with the country to make it his future home, he returned to Leyden, married; March IIth, 1657, Elizabeth, daughter of Guillaume Rossignol, and with his bride again sailed from Amsterdam for Manhattan, on April 2d ensuing, in the ship Draevat, Captain Bestevaer, taking with him two workmen, and two boys over twelve years of age, to aid him in farming. One of the adults was Johannes Smedes, from Harderwyck, in Gelderland, and one of the lads, Jean Guenon (now Genung), of Leyden, both of whom have many descend- ants .*

David Du Four, a native of Mons, in Hainault, upon this

· Tennis Kray (or Gray), from Venlo, on the Maas, returned in this ship to New Netherland, where he had already lived several years. He was now accompanied by his wife and children, one of the latter afterward the wife of Capt. Jan Van Dalsen, of Harlem, already noticed.

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place being threatened by the successes of the French in the Walloon districts, retired with others of his family to Sedan, and afterward to Amsterdam, where Du Four, though fitted by education for a better position, became an "opperman," or dray- man. Left by the death of his wife, Marie Boulen, with a young child, Jean, born during their stay at Sedan, he found another companion in Jeanne Frances, a lady of mature thirty-two years, from Queivrain, a little east of Mons, to whom he was married July 10th, 1657. That same year, with his new wife and his little son aforesaid, he sailed for Manhattan Island.

Jean Gervoe and Francois Le Suer went out at near the same date, the first being a young man from Beaumont, in Haln- ault, and who, choosing the congenial calling of the Walloon, afterward served the West India Company as a soldier at Har- lem. Le Sueur, the Lozier ancestor, was from Colmenil, in Normandy, and was accompanied by his young sister Jeanne, neither being married.

Jacques Cousseau, merchant at La Rochelle in 1653, and for four years later, when he returned to Amsterdam, took his de- parture soon after, with his wife Madeleine Du Tulliere, for America, evidently on the ship Gilded Beaver, which sailed May 17th, 1658. This need hardly be doubted; Cousseau paid the fare of Simon Bouche, who went in that vessel, and directly on its arrival at New Amsterdam, several of the passengers, and with them Cousseau, on July 18th, applied for and were granted the small burgher right.

Simon De Ruine, another refugee ( familiarly known as Le Ouallon,-that is, the Walloon), bore a name found at Valen- ciennes, near Landrecy, escaped to Holland, tarrying there for some years. He went out with his wife, Magdalena Vander- straaten, and several children, in the ship Faith, "a private trader going to the Manhattans," which sailed February 13, 1659, with nearly a hundred passengers, De Ruine* being the only French- man.

* Gillis Jansen De Mandeville, from Garderen, in the Veluwe, Gelderland, and ancestor of the American family of Mandeville, came out in this vessel; as did his neighbor, also a farmer, Wouter Gerritsen, from Koetwyck, some three miles from Garderen; and likewise Jan Meynderts, already named. The last two will appear at Harlem.

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Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles, Part 11

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889 Publication date: 1904 Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub. Number of Pages: 926

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub.
Number of Pages: 926