USA > New York > Kings County > Flatbush > The social history of Flatbush : and manners and customs of the Dutch settlers in Kings county > Part 3
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THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLATBUSH.
Male, these diminutives are applied to women." As these diminutives were also expressive of endearment, in view of the strength of family ties among the Dutch, we find a stronger reason in the expression of affection by father and husband, rather than in attributing their use to an arrogation of superiority.
The following names of our grandmothers and great grandmothers appear upon the baptismal records of the past century :
Aaltje (Aletta or Alida), Annetje (Anne), Arriantie (Adrianna), Beletje (Bella), Dirkje or Dortie (Doro- thea), Elsie (Alice), Evau (Eve), Femmetia (Phebe), Gertje (Gertrude), Grietje or Margarietje (Margaret), Engeltie (Ann), Helena (Helen), Jannetje (Jane), Lam- metje (Lemmian), Lysbet (Elizabeth), Katrina or Tri- entje (Catharine), Morritje (Mary), Neeltje (Cornelia, sometimes Nelly), Pieterneltje (Petronella), Willimentje (Wilhelmine), Leentje (Magdalena), Seytia (Cynthia), Yda (Ida), Motje (Martha). Hieltie, also spelled Hil- letie, is probably the abbreviation of Hildegonda, Tiesie (Letitia), Gashie (Garrita).
There are some names which are nearly obsolete, if not entirely so ; these are : Hildegonda, Geradina, Pe- tronella, Wilhelmina, Lemmian, Alida, Garetta, Adri- anna, Blandina. There are other names which have gradually fallen into disuse, such as Phebe, Cynthia, Dorothea, Catalina.
Family names were strictly adhered to, and the eld- est son was given either that of his father or one or the other of his grandparents. Thus it happened that cer- tain names were found descending from father to son through many generations ; there are names in this county always to be found in certain families. Some of
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41
DUTCH NAMES.
these appear in the documentary history of this State at a very early period, and are repeated upon the town records through successive years to this present time. The Van Brunt family have never been without a Rut- gert or Rulif ; Wynant is the family name in the Ben- nett family ; Coert and Lucas in the Vorhees family.
As early as 1700 the names of Domenicus and Cor- nelius appear among the Vandeveers ; there is the rec- ord of Englebert Lott in 1666 : these names are not yet extinct.
Jacques has been a family name in the Cortelyou family since the first settlement of New Utrecht.
Gerret has been the family name in the Stryker fam- ily ; Hendrick has been in the Suydam family since 1663, when the ancestor of that name came to this country ; Adrian, Marten, and Gerret have been names in the Martense family for an equal length of time. Jan, and formerly Douwe, were names generally found in the Ditmas family.
The unusual name of Leffert occurs constantly in the family bearing that surname ; wherever the family name of Lefferts is found, there may be seen its repetition, in the old family custom of calling one of the sons Leffert Lefferts.
This name also appears frequently in connection with other families : as early as 1700 it was used in the Waldron family ; in 1720, in the Martense family ; in 1768, in the Ryerson family ; in 1776, in the Polhemus" family ; in 1783, in the Lloyd family ; in 1789, in the Bergen family ; in 1792, in the Gerretson family ; in 1807, in the Schenck family. The above names were probably given through intermarriage, but, as Leffert Pieterse was the name of the ancestor of this family who
42
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLATBUSH.
settled in Flatbush in 1661, it is probable that, origi- nally, Leffert was a given and not a surname.
There are names on the assessment roll of 1676 which still appear in Flatbush :
Jan Jansen van Ditmersen (ancestor of Ditmas family), Pieter Loott (ancestor of Lott family), Leffert Pieterse (ancestor of Lefferts family), Jan Streycker, Hendrick Streycker, Aris Jansen Van de Bildt, Jacob Janse Van de Bildt, Abraham Hegeman.
From a record of the heads of families in Flatbush in 1687, we select the following names of those whose descendants are still living in the town, many of them bearing the same names as their ancestors :
Englebert Lott, Pieter Strycker, Pieter Lott, Joseph Hegeman, Lefferd Pieterse (in the next generation, called Peter Lefferts), Jan Van Ditmaertz (now spelled Ditmas), Aris Vanderbilt, Jacob Vanderbilt, Marten Adrianse (Marten de Boer, ancestor of the Martense family), Jan Oake, Jacob Remsen, Pieter Williamson, Jan Cornelissen Vander Veer, Gerret Janse Strijker.
In the year 1698 there were in the whole of Kings County : men, 308; women, 332; children, 1,081. There were also at this time 296 negroes in the county.
From "a list of the inhabitants of the township of Flatbush," in the year 1738, we give the following names, still represented by families in the town :
Dominicus V. D. Veer, Peter Leffertz, Jan Van der Bilt, Abraham Lott, John Vanderveer, Cornelis Sudam, John Sudom, Adrian Hegeman, William Bennett, Hen- drick Wickoff, John Lot, John Striker, Laurens Detmas, John Detmas, Isaac Oakey, Dom. Antonidus, Rem Mar- tense, Adrian Martense, Gerret Van Duyne.
43
DUTCHI NAMES.
There is great difficulty in tracing names of our Dutch ancestors, from the fact that on the earliest rec- ords the names were not fixed. Thus, Peter's son being named Jan, he wrote his name as Jan Petersen, but, he in turn calling his boy after his father, the boy's name in time came to be Peter Jansen. Also, the same name is spelled in so many different ways, by members of the same family not only, but by the same person, that it is at times difficult to identify it.
As an example of the first, we may refer to the an- cestor of the Lefferts family, who appears upon the record of 1676 as Lefferd Peterse, and in the next gen- eration it was changed again to Peter Lefferts, ever since remaining as Lefferts. The same change was made with the name of the Martense family.
In the old family Bible in the possession of the de- scendants is the record that " 1659, July 29, es Adrian Reyerz getrout met Annetje Martense."
1660, Marten Adrianse (son of Adrian) was born, and his children were called Marten's sons, which name, at first as Martensen and afterward under the contrac- tion of Martense, has continued to be the patronymic of the descendants of Marten Adrianse, son of Adrian Reyerze.
As to the spelling of names we find the following changes in the same family name :
Stryker, Striker, Strycher, Streycker, Strijeker, Streicker ; Martens, Martense, Maertense, Maerthense ; Loot, Loott, Lot, Lott ; Conover, Couwenhoven, Kou- enhoven, Von Couwenhoven, Von Couwenhooven, Cou- venhoven, Koowenoven ; Vanderbilt, Van Der Bilt, Van- derbildt, Van de Bildt ; Cortelyou, Corteljou, Cortelliau, Corteljouw ; Vorhees, Voris, Van Voorhuys, Von Voor-
44
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLATBUSH.
huijs ; Wyckoff, Wijkoff, Wickhof, Wycoff ; Lefferts, Loffert, Leffertt, Leffertze.
The birthplace has in many cases furnished the name of the family. The prefix Van, like the German Von, undoubtedly refers to the place whence the family came. In some cases it has become incorporated in the name, as : Vanderveer, Vanderbilt, Vandervoort ; in other cases it was more properly written with distinctive reference to its derivation, as : Van Deventer, Van Arsdalen, Van Dyck.
Mr. Teunis G. Bergen says that the name of Van Brunt is an exception, and that a family, and not a place, is referred to.
Barkeloo, Deventer, Wyck, Antwerp, Buren, and many other towns, in and near the Netherlands, have furnished names to the families who, leaving there, have settled in America. The name of Ditmas was derived from the place in Holland whence the family came ; for the early settler is recorded upon the assessment roll as Jan Van Ditmarsen.
In a list of those coming over in 1657, is Claes Pou- welson from Ditmarsum, and Jan Petersen from Dit- marsen, showing it to be the name of a place.
The letters "se " which, in many of the Dutch names were the final letters, are an abbreviation of "sen." Thus, Martense is the the son of Marten ; Lefferts was the son of Leffert ; Denyse was the son of Denis ; Janse was the son of Jan.
There are probably very few towns in this country, if any, in which the farms have been held in the same names so long as they have in Flatbush. Living in a land where everything seems in almost perpetual change, the old homesteads yet shelter the families by whom
45
DUTCH NAMES.
they were built, and the farms belong to the children of those by whom they were settled, while before the bap- tismal bowl in the old Dutch church the same names have been repeated from father to son for two hundred years.
We copy the following from a letter published in 1859 by Hon. H. C. Murphy, of Brooklyn. It was written during his stay in Holland, and is dated from the Hague : *
"In order to show what difficulties the peculiar systems adopted in this country [Holland], and continued by the settlers in our own, have thrown in the way of tracing genealogies, it is to be observed that the first of these in point of time was the patronymic, as it is called, by which a child took, besides his own baptismal name, that of his father with the addition of Zoon or Sen, meaning son. To illustrate this: if a child were baptised Hendrick and the baptismal name of his father were Jan, the child would be called Hendrick Jansen. His son, if baptised Tunis, would be called Tunis Hendricksen. The son of the latter might be Willem, and would have the name of Willem Tunissen. And so we might have the succeeding generations called successively Garret Willemsen, Marten Garretsen, Adrian Martensen, and so on through the whole of the calendar of Christian names; or, as more frequently happened, there would be repetition in the second, third, or fourth generation of the name of the first; and thus, as these names were common to the whole people, there were in every community different lineages of identically the same name. This custom, which had pre- vailed in Holland for centuries, was in full vogue at the time of
* We were not aware at the time of taking this letter from the newspaper in which it was published that it had been copied in Stiles's " History of Brooklyn." We shall not withhold the portions of it selected for use here, however, on that account, as it verifies much that we have said, and may interest those of our readers who have not seen it else- where.
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THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLATBUSH.
the settlement of New Netherland. In writing this termination sen, it was frequently contracted into se or z or s. Thus the name of William Barentsen, who commanded in the first three arctic voyages of exploration, in 1594, 1595, and 1596, is given in the old accounts of those voyages Barentsen, Barentse, Ba- rentz, Barents; sometimes in one way, sometimes another, in- differently. Or, to give an example nearer home, both of the pa- tronymic custom and of the contraction of the name, the father of Gerritt Martense, the founder of a family of that name in Flat- bush, was Martin Adriense, and his grandfather was Adræn Ryerse, who came from Amsterdam. The inconveniences of this practice, the confusion to which it led, and the difficulty of tracing families, led ultimately to its abandonment both in Hol- land and in our own country. In doing so, the patronymic which the person originating the change bore, was adopted as the surname. Most of the family names thus formed and exist- ing among us may be said to be of American origin, as they were first fixed in America, though the same names were adopted by others in Holland. Hence we have the names of such families of Dutch descent among us as Jansen (anglice Johnson), Garretsen, Cornelisen, Williamsen or Williamson, Hendricksen or Hendrickson, Clasen, Simonsen or Simonson, Tysen (son of Mathias), Arendsen (son of Arend), Hansen, Lam- bertsen or Lambertson, Paulisen, Remsen, Ryersen, Martense, Adrian, Rutgers, Everts, Phillips, Lefferts, and others. To trace connection between these families and persons in this country, it is evident, would be impossible, for the reasons stated, without a regular record.
" Another mode of nomenclature intended to obviate the diffi- culty of an identity of names for the time being, but which ren- dered the confusion worse confounded for the future genealogist, was to add to the patronymic name the occupation or some other personal characteristic of the individual. Thus Laurens Jansen, the inventor of the art of printing, as the Dutch claim, had affixed to his name that of Coster, that is to say sexton, an office of which he was in possession of the emoluments. But the same addition was not transmitted to the son; and thus the son of
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DUTCH NAMES.
Hendrick Jansen Coster might be called Tunis Hendricksen Brouwer (brewer), and his grandson might be Willem Tunissen Bleecker (bleacher). Upon the abandonment of the old system of names this practice went with it; but it often happened that while one brother took the father's patronymic as a family name, another took that of his occupation or personal designa- tion. Thus originated such families as Coster, Brower, Bleecker, Schoonmaker, Stryker, Schuyler, Cryger, Snediker, Hegeman, Hofman, Dykman, Bleekman, Wortman, and Tieman. Like the others, they are not ancient family names, and are not all to be traced to Holland as the place where they first became fixed. Some of them were adopted in our own country.
" A third practice, evidently designed, like that referred to, to obviate the confusions of the first, was to append the name of the place where the person resided-not often of a large city, but of a particular limited locality, and frequently of a particu- lar farm or natural object. This custom is denoted in all those family names which have the prefix of Van, Vander, Ver (which is a contraction of Vunder), and Ten, meaning, respectively, of, of the, and at the. From towns in Holland we have the families of Van Cleef, Van Wyck, Van Schaack, Van Bergen, and others ; from Guelderland, those of Van Sinderen, Van Dyk, and Van Buren ; from Utrecht, Van Winkel ; from Friesland, Van Ness ; from Zeeland, Van Duyne. Sometimes the Van has been dropped, as in the name of Boerum, of the province of Friesland ; of Co- vert, of North Brabant; of Westervelt, of Drenthe ; of Brevoort and Wessels in Guelderland. The prefixes rander, or ver, and ten were adopted where the name was derived from a particular spot, thus : Vanderveer (of the ferry), Vanderberg (of the hill), Vanderbilt (of the bildt, that is, certain elevations of ground in Guelderland and near Utrecht), Vanderbeck (of the brook), Van- dervoort (of the ford), Vanderhoff (of the court), Verplanck (of the plank), Verhulst (of the holly), Verkerk (of the church), Ten Eyck (at the oak), Tenbroeck (at the marsh). Some were derived, as we have observed, from particular farms ; thus, Van Conwenhoven (also written Van Cowdenhoven-cold farms). The founder of that family in America, Wolphert Gerrissen Van
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THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLATBUSH.
Cowenhoven came from Amersfoort, in the province of Utrecht, and settled at what is now called Flatlands, in our county, but what was called by him New Amersfoort. Some names in the classification which I have attempted have undergone a slight change in their transfer to America. Barculo is from Borculo, a town in Guelderland; Van Anden is from Andel, in the prov- ince of Groningen ; Snediker should be Snediger; Bouton, if of Dutch origin, should be Bouten (son of Boudwijn, or Baldwin), otherwise it is French. Van Cott was probably Van Cat, of South Holland. The Catti were the original inhabitants of the country, and hence the name. There is one family which has defied all my etymological research. It is evidently Dutch, but has most likely undergone some change, and that is the name of Van Brunt. There is no such name now existing in Holland. There are a few names derived from relative situation to a place ; thus Voorhees is simply before, or in front of, Hess, a town in Guelderland, and Onderdonk is below Donk, which is in Brabant. There are a few names more arbitrary, such as Middagh (midday), Conrad (bold counsel), Hagedorn (hawthorn), Bogaert (orchard), Blauvelt (blue field), Rosevelt (rosefield), Stuyvesant (quicksand), Wyckoff (parish court), Hooghland (highland), Dorland (arid land), Opdyke (on the dike), Hasbrook (hares' marsh), and af- ford a more ready means of identification of relationship. The names of Brinkerhof and Schenck, the latter of which is very common here, may be either of Dutch or German origin. Mar- tin Schenck was a somewhat celebrated general in the War of Independence.
" Ditmars is derived from the Danish, and Bethune is from a place in the Spanish Netherlands near Lille. Lott is a Dutch name, though it has an English sound. There is a person of that name from Guelderland residing in the Hague. Pieter Lots was one of the Schepens of Amersfoort in 1676, and I infer from the patronymic form of his name that Lott is a baptismal name, and is derived from Lodewyck or Lewis, and that Pieter Lots means Peter the son of Lodewyck, or Lot, as the former is often contracted. Some names are disguised in a Latin dress. The practice prevailed at the time of the emigration to our country
49
DUTCH NAMES.
of changing the names, of those who had gone through the uni- versity and received a degree, from plain Dutch into sonorous Roman. The names of all our early ministers were thus altered. Johannes or Jan Meckelenburg became Johannes Megapolensis ; Evert Willemse Bogaert became Evarardus Bogardus; Jan Do- ris Polheem became Johannes Theodorus Polhemius. The last was the founder of the Polhemus family of Brooklyn. The rec- ords here show that he was a minister at Meppel, in the prov- ince of Drenthe, and in 1637 went as such to Brazil under the auspices of the West India Company, whence he went to Long Island. Samuel Dries, who, by the way, was an Englishman, but who graduated at Leyden, was named Samuel Drisius. It may, therefore, be set down as a general rule that the names of Dutch families ending in us have thus been Latinized.
" There were many persons who emigrated from Holland who were of Gallic extraction. When the bloody Duke of Alva came into the Spanish Netherlands, in 1567, clothed with despotic power over the provinces by the bigoted Philip II, more than a hundred thousand of the Protestants of the Gallic provinces fled to England under the protection of Queen Elizabeth, and to their brethren in Zeeland and Holland. They retained their language, that of the ancient Gauls, and were known in England as Wal- loons, and in Holland as Waalen, from the name of their prov- inces, called Gaulsche, or, as the word is pronounced, Waalsche provinces. The number of fugitives from religious .persecution was increased by the flight of the Protestants of France at the same time, and was further augmented five years later by the memorable massacre of St. Bartholomew. When the West In- dia Company was incorporated, many of these persons and their descendants sought further homes in New Netherland. Such were the founders of the families of Rapelye, Cortelyou, Dubois, Debevoise, Duryea, Crommelin, Conselyea, Montague, Fountain, and others."
4
CHAPTER VII.
USE OF THE DUTCH LANGUAGE.
DR. STRONG states in his history that the first school established in Flatbush was in 1659. Mr. T. G. Bergen places the date at one year earlier. There is also a dif- ference of opinion as to the person who first filled the office of schoolmaster. Dr. Strong heads the list with the name of Adrian Hegeman ; Mr. Bergen says it was Rynier Bastiansen van Giesen who first accepted the position at an annual salary of two hundred florins. O'Callaghan says that in 1683 the schoolmaster in Flat- bush was paid his salary in wheat, " wampum value."
The instruction given at that time was entirely in the Dutch language. Petrus Van Steenburgh, who was appointed schoolmaster in 1762, was the first who taught English ; he had pupils in both languages. An- thony Welp, his successor in 1773, was the last teacher who was required to teach Dutch. We have found two of the original school bills of these teachers ; it is not often that school bills are preserved for more than one hundred years. The handwriting of Master P. V. Steen- burgh is very distinct, and abounds in flourishes, par- ticularly in his signature.
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USE OF THE DUTCH LANGUAGE.
EVERT HEGEMAN, Dr.
To P. V. STEENBERGH.
1773, August 5th.
To schooling from the 15th March to this day ... 98. 5d. For half a load of wood 2 6
£0 11 11
Received the full contents :
P. V. STEENBERGH.
The following, from Mr. Anthony Welp, is perfect as to its penmanship, which is as regular and legible as print ; but we find that Mr. Welp, who, in Article 2d of his agreement, engages to teach English spelling, is himself a little careless in that respect :
FLATBUSH, March ye 24, 1774.
Mr. HEGEMAN,
To ANTHONY WELP, Det.,
To Teaching of Polly Sebree, 3 ms.,
The English spilling To one load of wood. 6s.
4.8.
.£0 10 0
Received in full per me :
ANTHONY WELP.
The load of wood referred to in each bill is in ac- cordance with the requisition in Article 3d, that "a load of firewood shall be bought for each scholar every nine months for the use of the school."
The price of tuition, according to the agreement Mr. Welp signed, amounted to the sum of four shillings for three months' instruction in low Dutch spelling, read- ing, and writing ; five shillings for the same in English ;
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THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLATBUSH.
six shillings for instruction in ciphering. The position of schoolmaster was no sinecure in those days. Let us hope that he faithfully discharged his duty ; but if, in its multitudinous requirements, he sometimes proved delinquent, the most exacting must surely have forgiven him.
The children were to be instructed in the ordinary branches of a Dutch education, although we confess ignorance as to what may have been comprised therein. In addition, there was to be a thorough course of cate- chism ; and the schoolmaster was required, when these little ones were publicly catechised, to encourage them "to be friendly in appearance." We regret that the method for accomplishing this is not designated. He was to keep the church clean and ring the bell. Before the sermon he was to read a chapter out of the Bible, the ten commandments, the twelve articles of faith, and then take the lead in singing.
The afternoon duties were of a similar nature. When the minister preached in some other village he was re- quired " to read twice before the congregation, from the book commonly used for that purpose, and also to read a sermon on the explanation of the catechism." He was to provide the bread and wine for the celebration of the Lord's Supper and the water for the administra- tion of baptism. He was to invite to funerals, being paid extra if required to go to New York for that pur- pose ; he was to dig the grave and toll the bell. As at that time the practice of burying under the church was quite general, the schoolmaster was to see that the grave was seven feet deep, and he was required " to remove all the dirt out of the church."
The person who was capable of accomplishing all
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USE OF THE DUTCH LANGUAGE. .
this must have been a most energetic schoolmaster. Such a position at the present day would involve the use of multipled talents. He would relieve the minister of half the church service ; he would supply the place of choir, organist, and organ-blower ; he would fill the place of the principal of Erasmus Hall ; he would as- sume the responsibilities of all the Sunday-school teach- ers, and would perform the duties of the sexton. This was required of the schoolmaster a hundred years ago. But even these were not all his duties ; for, during the session of the court, he was employed for the service of "court messenger for the village of Midwout, to serve citations," etc., for which, however, he was "entitled to proper compensation," in addition to his ordinary pay.
In 1776, in order to oblige the children to learn English, they were compelled to converse in that lan- guage in school, and were punished if they spoke Dutch.
At home, however, where no compulsory measures were used, they naturally fell into the old familiar words, and their language there was still that of the fatherland. At the fireside, on the farm, in the street, they spoke Dutch ; the colored people in the kitchen, the master and mistress in the house, neigh- bor to neighbor and friend to friend, all conversed in Dutch. Business was transacted in that language, wills were written and agreements made in that familiar tongue ; and on the Sabbath-day they read from their Dutch Bibles, sang from their Dutch Psalm-books, and listened to sermons in Dutch from ministers who, as late as 1746, came from Holland. ~ They had their store of old Dutch books, bound in parchment, and meant to last, as they faithfully have done. We have some of
-
54
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FLATBUSH.
.
them still on the upper shelves and in the old chests of the capacious garrets. Many of them are illustrated with quaint old plates.
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