Category: Featured

Debating the Role of Women in the Dutch Golden Age – March 28,2023 A Walk Through Haarlem, New Netherland – June 6, 2023 The Vrooman Letters – June 13, 2023 Camerata Trajectina Concert with narration by Jaap Jacobs – October 11, 2023  

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 …

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 …