Newcomers -The Story of Anthony and Grietje and the Founding of New York

A man thought to be Muslim from Morocco and a German barmaid are hardly the image we have of America’s founders. In Newcomers, Alan Mikhail upends the traditional story of American beginnings through the tale of Anthony “the Turk” and Grietje Reyniers. Married in Amsterdam, they arrived in 1630s Dutch New Amsterdam, hoping to forge a new life.

Alan Mikhail is the Chace Family Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of six books that have been translated into ten languages.

Alan will be joined in conversation with Susanah Shaw Romney.

Susanah Romney is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at NYU. She teaches courses on Atlantic history, early America, and Women and Gender. She earned her Ph.D. at Cornell University and her BA at the University of California Santa Cruz. She is the author of New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America, which was the winner of the Jamestown Prize, the Hendricks Award, and the First Book Prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians.