Meme: Immigrant Ancestor Lucas Dircksen Vanderburgh

There is a lot of discussion about immigration in America right now. Tempers have flared, and different groups hold various strong opinions. There is also Brexit, where immigration was a large focus of the vote which resulted in the U.K. leaving the E.U.

I've been following this for several months and it occurs to me that those of us in Canada, America, and Australia have immigrant ancestors. Have you researched yours? Do you know who they were, why they came to your country and when? Do you know how they fared once settled in their new land? Were they welcomed? Were they shunned? Was their discrimination based on their religion or ethnic origin? These are all questions that are important, and interesting to discover. With that in mind, I'm the dedicating Saturdays (as many as needed) as the day to join me in discussing your immigrant ancestors.

You will be able to read any you are interested in by using the keyword Immigrant Ancestors. I'm going to share each week what I know of my immigrant ancestors to North America (in both USA and Canada)

Lucas Dircksen Vanderburgh first appeared in New Amsterdam (in New Netherland) about 1652 and soon after his arrival he married Annetjie Cornelis, the daughter of Cornelis and Adriantje (Wallings) Shubber of Durgerdam, North Holland. He was one of the signers of the Lutheran petition1 in Oct 1657, so his origins may have been German rather than Dutch.  

Lucas was a Sergeant in the service of the Dutch West India Company as early as
1652. While still a member of the Company, he applied in 1654 at the New Amsterdam City Hall to become a tavern keeper.

That same year, Lucas was given a patent for land at Mespat, Long Island,  but never settled there. In 1655, he paid 60 guilders for Lucas Hendrickson, a drummer, to take his place in an expedition against the Swedes at Delaware.  In 1656 he submitted the following petition asking for his discharge from the Dutch West India Company:

"To the Noble, Very Worshipful, Honorable Director-General and High Council of New-Netherland. Shows with humble reverence Luycas Dircksen, Sergeant inthe service of the Honble Company here, that he, petitioner has served the said Honble Company for a period of about four years and that he would like now to transport himself with his family to the Southriver of New-Netherland, to settle there, where he has bought a house.  He requests therefore, that your Noble Worships will kindly please to discharge him from the service and consent to his removal thither, which doing etc."
[signed] Luycas Dircksen

Lucasí petition was approved.  He left for the South River Delaware, where he was granted a patent for land on 10 Feb 1657 near Fort Casmir.  However he was soon back in Manhattan where he remained. Lucas became a well known tavern keeper in New Amsterdam.  He initially operated his tavern from his home on 21 Broadway, but by the mid 1660s he kept a tavern called "The Signe of the Fort Orange" in Manhattan.

He was often being sued in court for debts owed and there are many court documents involving him throughout his lifetime. 

Lucas and 92 others appealed to their leaders of New Netherland in September 1664 to negotiate a peaceful agreement with the English. Their petition, in part, read 

"Right Honorable.  We ... cannot conscientiously foresee that anything else is to be expected for this fort and city of Manhattans (as your Honors must be convinced), than misery, sorrow, conflagration, the dishonor of women, murder of children in their cradles, and, in a word, the absolute ruin and destruction of about fifteen hundred innocent souls, only two hundred and fifty of whom are capable of bearing arms, unless you be pleased to adjust matters according to the conjecture of the time.

Your honors are ... better aware than we, that four of the English Kingís frigates are now lying in the road at Nyack, with six hundred soldiers, ... for the purpose of reducing New Netherland to his Majestyís obedience.  In compliance with that commission, the English General hath sent divers letters to your Honors, summoning this city and Fort Manhattan, promising, in case we voluntarily submit, that we shall not experience the least loss or damage ... ."

The English reached a peaceful accord with the Dutch and in Oct 1664, Lucas and many other New Amsterdam residents swore allegiance to the King of Great Britain. Lucas died in 1669. His long and turbulent life of struggle and debt was over. 
 

Our Immigrant Ancestors - Adriaen Crijnen Post of New Netherland & New Jersey

There is a lot of discussion about immigration in America right now. Tempers have flared, and different groups hold various strong opinions. There is also Brexit, where immigration was a large focus of the recent vote which resulted in the U.K. leaving the E.U.

I've been following this for several months and it occurs to me that those of us in Canada, America, and Australia have immigrant ancestors. Have you researched yours? Do you know who they were, why they came to your country and when? Do you know how they fared once settled in their new land? Were they welcomed? Were they shunned? Was their discrimination based on their religion or ethnic origin? These are all questions that are important, and interesting to discover. With that in mind, I'm the dedicating Saturdays (as many as needed) as the day to join me in discussing your immigrant ancestors.

You will be able to read any you are interested in by using the keyword Immigrant Ancestors. I'm going to share each week what I know of my immigrant ancestors to North America (whether that is USA or Canada)

Recife Brazil Early Settlement

My 9th great-grandfather, Adriaen Crijnen Post was most likely from The Hague, Netherlands. He and his wife Claartje Moockers, resided in Brazil in the West India Company's colony.

From 1630 to 1654 (24 years!) Recife, a Northeastern city in the Atlantic coast of Brazil, was held by the WIC (West India Company). Adriaen's daughter Maria (my 8th great-grandmother) was baptised in Recife Brazil in June 1649. By the time Brazil fell to the Portuguese in 1654, the family had left for the Netherlands. On 30 June 1650 the ship "New Netherland's Fortune" sailed, arriving in New Netherland on 19 December 1650 and it likely that Adriaen and his family were on this ship.

Adriaen and his family were on Staten Island by 1655. Adriaen was a representative of Baron Hendrick van der Capellen, the owner of one-third of Staten Island. As the superintendent of a group of twenty people who were to farm Staten Island, Adriaen set up a colony which flourished.

In the summer of 1655 the Peach Tree War began over Hendrick Van Dyke's shooting of a Native woman stealing peaches from his trees in his orchard in Manhatten. As a result, the settlements on the lower Hudson River and around New York were destroyed by Iroquois attackers. On 15 Sept. 1655, the colony on Staten Island was burned to the ground by the Natives from Hackensack. Twenty-three people were killed and sixty-seven taken prisoner, among them Adrien, his wife, five children, and two servants.

In Oct. 1655, Adriaen was released by the Hackensack chief Penneckeck to bargain with Petrus Stuyvessant for the release of prisoners. Adriaen made the journey between Manhattan and the Native headquarters at Paulus Hook, New Jersey several times before an agreement was reached. Fifty-six captives were released in exchange for powder, lead, guns, blankets and wampum. Among those freed were Adrian's wife and children.

Returning to Staten Island Adrian was ordered by Van der Capellan to gather survivors and erect a fort. Trying to keep the group fed, he found a few cattle that the Natives had overlooked roaming in the woods  That winter Adrian and his family camped in the company of some soldiers  in the burnt-out settlement.  They butchered some of the cattle they had found and obtained milk from others. Stuyvessant recommended to Post that he and "his people" and cattle move to the stockade on Long Island but Adrian stayed.

By Spring of 1656 Adrian was ill and unable to perform his duties, so Clara Moockers Post requested that someone else be appointed as van der Capellen's agent. In April of 1656 Clara petitioned Stuyvessant asking that the soldiers be allowed to stay, but Stuyvessant decided that since there were only 6 or 7 people on the island, a garrison was not required and they should all move to Long Island.

Adrian regained his health and between 1657 and 1663 he had three children baptized at the Reformed Church. He was in the New Amsterdam courts often, suing on behalf of his employer. He eventually left Staten Island and settled on the mainland of present-day Bergen, New Jersey.

Ship Journal De Bever 1661 Holland to New York Now Online

Page from De Bever Journal

Wonderful news for those of us with early Dutch ancestors in New Netherland (present day New York)!

Thanks to Terry Vanderhoof, a translation and transcript of De Bever Journal of May-July 1661 is now on line at The Vanderhoof Project.

You may also view the "passenger list" (the list of names of those who owed passage money) for De Bever at Olive Tree Genealogy Ships Passenger Lists to New Netherland (New York) 1624-1664

I asked Terry to tell us how this project to transcribe the ship's journal began. Here is his answer. Please note that I have taken the liberty of adding links to online passenger lists for any ships Terry mentions, as well as other relevant links.

The Voyage of De Bever
by Terry Vanderhoof

I guess that finding the key to the story of the voyage at 35,000 feet over mid-Atlantic is pretty appropriate, as I've often looked down at the ocean and wondered if De Bever ever sailed in the waters we could see below us.  I'd been reading Jaap Jacob's 2005 book "New Netherland: A Dutch Colony In Seventeenth-Century America" during the flight to New York and noticed an intriguing reference to the "Ship's Logs Gulden Bever, Gulden Otter, Hoop and Roseboom 1660-1663"  This was puzzling for, in the years I'd been researching the Vanderhoof family, no mention of a log for the Bever voyage had ever been mentioned.  The bibliography of Jaap Jacob's subsequent book "The Colony of New Netherland : A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-century America" (2009) gave more detail, giving as a source an article in De Halve Maen of January 1968 by Dr Kenneth Scott .

Scott's article was based on a partial translation of an original document held by the New York Historical Society "Journael Behouden opt'schip den Gulden Bever en t'schip den Gulden Otter" but, for reasons of space, Dr Scott only included a summary of each voyage in the article and omitted  much of the routine positional and weather details.

The NYHS were very helpful but were in the midst of a major refurbishment project and unable to provide any copies for several months.  So, we had to make do with an image of the first page of the Journal from their online catalogue and make a start decoding the handwriting and making sense of some of the abbreviations and nautical terms. Scott's article revealed that the original 37-page journal contained descriptions of four voyages based on notes kept by an unknown author, probably an employee of the Dutch West India Company

* First Voyage : The Vergulde Otter 10 Oct  4 Dec 1660 New Amsterdam to Texel.
* Second Voyage : The Vergulde Bever 9 May  29 Jul 1661 Texel to New Amsterdam (on which the party from Beesd travelled)
* Third Voyage : The Hoop 8 Sept - 26 Oct 1662 New Amsterdam to Texel.
* Fourth Voyage : The Rooseboom 30 Mar  3 June 1663 Texel to New Amsterdam

In early 2012, the scans of the part of the Journael describing the 1661 voyage of De Bever arrived and we were able to continue the  project. Helped by a number of Nederlands speakers from
the Historische Kring West Betuwe, the archivists at the Regional Archief Rivierenland at Geldermalsen/Tiel and the staff of the Sheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam, a transcription and translation of the account of the 1661 voyage of De Bever emerged.  The handwriting was pretty readable for the period - most likely copied at a later date from rough notes kept at sea - and we managed to decode most of the technical seafaring terms with a good deal of help.  As always, direct translations from Dutch to English aren't always possible and we hope we have reached a reasonable balance between readability and faithfulness to the original text.

One major revelation was that De Bever hadn't taken the 'traditional' route via the Caribbean but had first headed for the north of Scotland, attempting to reach the Atlantic via the straits north of the Orkney Islands. This decision was probably made because of the uneasy state of relations between Portugal and the Netherlands at the time but almost ended in disaster as De Bever and her companion the St Jan Baptist were caught in a storm in the Moray Firth.

As always, opening one door reveals a whole row of new doors to be opened and now that some details of the voyage are clearer, many further questions need to be asked.  How was the voyage planned? How did the 37 folks from Beesd get to Amsterdam? How long did they stay there?  What was the induction and boarding process? What was life on ship like?

Hopefully, some of these questions will be answered in the near future.