From Emigrants’ Daughter to Landed Matriarch, 1641-c. 1730 Margrietje (Margaret) Cosyns, AKA Grietje Gerrits, was baptized in the New Amsterdam Reformed Dutch Church on May 5, 1641. She was the first child of Cosyn Gerritsen van Putten and his wife Vroutje, who had arrived in New Amsterdam in around 1636 …
Asser Levy’s long road to Manhattan began in Vilna, his birthplace in seventeenth-century Poland. He moved to Schwelm, a town in the Ruhr Valley near Dusseldorf, probably as a result of the Cossack pogroms, and then travelled to Amsterdam, where like so many others, he learned about new opportunities in …
On a cold day in January of 1641, Manuel de Gerrit de Reus climbed the ladder that would be his place of execution. Before him stood New Amsterdam’s population, ready to bear witness to the court’s ruling. Behind him stood the West India Company’s executioner, another enslaved African, who secured …
Sailing across the Atlantic Ocean was an exciting adventure of a poor sixteen-year old boy from Turnhout, a small commercial town in what was then known as the Spanish Netherlands. Young Govert Loockermans made his way to Amsterdam, then spent two months travelling as a cook’s mate before arriving in …
The Global / Atlantic Context: To understand the origins of early New York, we must understand the culture that created it. In the seventeenth century, the Netherlands was Europe’s leading commercial power. This was the “Golden Age” of Dutch commerce and culture, when merchants from the Netherlands traded with all …
First Permanent Jewish Resident of Manhattan Learning of new opportunities in New Amsterdam, Asser Levy left Amsterdam and arrived in Manhattan on 22 August 1654, one of the very first Jews to do so. New Amsterdam was not a wholly welcoming place to Jews, and Levy would lead the struggle …
From Slavery To Freedom On a cold day in January of 1641, Manuel de Gerrit de Reus climbed a ladder to be executed for murder. Although one of nine slaves who confessed to the murder, Manuel was chosen by the drawing of lots to pay the ultimate penalty for the …
From Ship Boy to Founding Father Govert Loockermans didn’t stay in the small Spanish Netherlands town where he was born in 1612. Instead, as one of the first of the millions who dreamt of new opportunities in a new land, he set out and became a founding father of New …
Origins of a Global City From its earliest beginnings as a ragged outpost of the Dutch commercial empire, New York was a city driven by global commerce. Trading voyages began immediately after Henry Hudson’s voyage of discovery in 1609, initially backed by Dutch private investors and later controlled by the …
