Dutch archive news roundup: January 2008

News from the Dutch archives.

• The provinces Zeeland and Zuid-Holland have added records to Genlias. This includes for the first time records of The Hague.
• The National Archive announced several documents from its collection will be on display in New York next year, in an exhibition celebrating the 400th birthday of Henry Hudson's voyage on what is now the Hudson river. One of the documents on display will be the famous 1626 letter describing the purchase of Manhattan for 60 guilders (24 dollars). This letter is also on permanent display on the website of the National Archive
• The Groningen archive announced a new website with records from the province Groningen: Alle Groningers. We will soon have a look at this website in the series Online records.

The Dutch roots of New York City

"Wulingren" of The Mandate of Heaven天命 posted an interesting review of Russell Shorto's book The Island at the Center of the World.

Shorto's book tells "the epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America", and Wulingren uses the book to compare Manhattan (where he grew up) with Taiwan (where he lives now). The Dutch bought land from indigenous tribes and founded colonies in both places almost at the same time, and Wulingren draws some interesting parallels.

Both Shorto's book and Wulingren's blog post are worth reading if you're interested in 17th century Dutch history and early Dutch settlements, even though there are some factual errors in both - Shorto is more interested in telling a fascinating story than in factual correctness.

Should New York become Dutch again?

Found this little gem on the website of the Downtown express, a Lower Manhattan weekly newspaper:

Dutch treat, trick or takeover threat?: Are the Dutch none to happy with the way our fair city is being governed? A small group of enterprising Dutchmen have started a Web site demanding New York return to its Dutch roots and change its name back to New Amsterdam, a.k.a. the Big Orange.

Nico Akkerman started Give Us Back New York after he heard Bill O‘Rielly say his worst fear was that America would become like Holland. Akkerman, a 34-year-old advertising executive, decided New York needed to get closely reacquainted with its history.

"After remaining silent for centuries of injustice, that was just a bit too much to take, even for tolerant people like the Dutch," Akkerman wrote in an e-mail to Downtown Express. "We felt we had to take a stand and demanding back The Big Orange, which is rightfully ours to begin with, seemed like the logical thing to do."

The website this article refers to is Give us back New York:

For over 200 years, we’ve watched our proud city evolve the wrong way. But the bell has chimed! The time has come for New York to be returned to its righteous owner: The Netherlands!

Highs and Loew's of Flatbush history

Flatbush, Brooklyn, was once a Dutch settlement, and for a long time had a sizeable Dutch-American community. The New York Daily News ran an article yesterday about a new book about the history of Flatbush, Brooklyn's Flatbush: Battlefield to Ebbets Field:

New York Daily News - Boroughs - Denis Hamill: Highs and Loew's of Flatbush history: "just page through this marvelous new book and before your eyes a city is born, learns to creep, toddle, run and then explode to life. Flatbush was one of the original six Dutch towns and this special book provides all the glossy maps, drawings, lithographs and photos with a fine condensed history that traces this neighborhood from its first settlers, to the first farmhouses, mansions, modest homes, legendary schools like Erasmus Hall and Brooklyn College, churches, grand boulevards, railroads and iconic theaters like the Albemarle, Kenmore, Flatbush, Rialto and the Loew's Kings - sadly sealed these days, and not even showing the words, never mind any pictures."

"Brenda from Brooklyn" wrote about the same book on Crazy Stable, but from quite a different angle:

Crazy Stable - Journal - My little town: "My Flatbush is Trinidadians, Yuppies, Haitians, Bangladeshis, and the occasional Hasidim on a long stroll from Borough Park. It's roti and Jamaican meat pies and soca music and soccer players. Head east a few blocks, and it's also liquor stores with Lexan shields, African hair-braiding parlors, 99-cent stores, a police 'Impact Zone,' and once-grand Gothic-turreted apartment buildings with prison-style grey steel entry gates and busted mailboxes and buzzers. The Loew's Kings movie palace, where Barbra Streisand was an usherette, is shuttered and rotting; Erasmus Hall, the historic high school with its long list of illustrious alumni, sunk into such dysfunction that the Board of Ed broke it up into 'smaller schools' (which are, I hear, still no great shakes). An aging housing project sits atop the site of Ebbetts Field."

Brooklyn's Flatbush: Battlefield to Ebbets Field, by Brian Merlis and Lee A. Rosenzweig, is available from Brooklyn Collectibles.

Dyckman Farmhouse

In my previous post I mentioned the Dyckman Farmhouse. Their website states:

dyckman farmhouse: "The Dyckman Farmhouse Museum is a visual treat for everyone who looks up and sees it perched above Broadway at 204th Street. The Dutch Colonial style farmhouse was built on this site by William Dyckman c. 1784 and was originally part of several hundred acres of farmland owned by the family. Today, nestled in a small park, the farmhouse is an extraordinary reminder of early Manhattan and an important part of its diverse Inwood neighborhood."

It was build in 1784, well after the Dutch colonial time, so the Dyckman Farmhouse is not really a "Dutch Colonial farmhouse", as the Charlotte Observer states, but a Dutch Colonial style farmhouse.

William Dyckman's grandfather Jan Dyckman came from Westphalia (now Germany) a century earlier. The Dyckman family tree is also on the website.

Judging from their website, it seems well worth a visit if you have Dutch colonial roots.

Charlotte Observer | 10/22/2006 | West Virginia: 100 miles of fishing, paddling

Found in the online edition of the Charlotte Observer, a Chatlotte, North Carolina, based newspaper:

Charlotte Observer | 10/22/2006 | West Virginia: 100 miles of fishing, paddling: "New York: See New Amsterdam in Manhattan Manhattan's only remaining Dutch Colonial farmhouse is eight miles and a world apart from Times Square and costs just $1 to visit. The Dyckman Farmhouse Museum at 4881 Broadway at 204th Street lets visitors see the parlor, dining room and farm office; the Relic Room features photos and artifacts of Inwood from the past two centuries. Many of the objects date from the Revolutionary War period, when the Hessians -- German soldiers serving with the British -- camped there.Details: 212-304-9422; www.dyckmanfarmhouse.org. -- boston globe"

Courier News Online - Preservation group gives past homes a future

From the Courier News, a newspaper from New Jersey (U.S.A.):

Courier News Online - Preservation group gives past homes a future: "Preservation group gives past homes a future By PAMELA SROKA Staff Writer FRANKLIN (SOMERSET) -- It all started with the Van Wickle House, which might have become a strip mall if a nonprofit organization had not stepped in to save the structure 30 years ago. It was the vision of the Somerset-based Meadows Foundation founders who started the nonprofit organization in 1976 to give the past a future by preserving and restoring historic sites with an emphasis on early Dutch and American heritage, said Mark Else, executive director of the foundation. The Van Wickle House, a Dutch house on Easton Avenue, could have fallen into the hands of developers looking to build a strip mall after out-of-state owners offered it for sale in 1976. The property was known as 'Bogan Meadows,' and Simon Van Wickle built the house in 1722."

Read the full story.