Welcome to the eMarcurius, NNI's e-newsletter and brought to you in part by the generous sponsors featured below. 

Something to share? Interested in becoming a sponsor? Reach us at nni@newnetherlandinstitute.org.

It is a distinct pleasure that I announce the appointment of Dr. Deborah Hamer as Director of the New Netherland Institute (NNI), effective November 1, 2021. Deborah is no stranger to NNI. Deborah was a recipient of NNI's Hendricks Award for the best manuscript on New Netherland and the Dutch world. Deborah has recently been working with Dr. Gehring developing a timeline for 1621-1629. Since receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia, Deborah has been and continues to be a strong advocate for the significance of New Netherland to New York State and colonial American history.

 Deborah has served as the editor of the Gotham Blog for New York City History and also solicits, develops, and edits contributions from historians that focus on the rich history of New Amsterdam and its connections to the 17th century Dutch Atlantic world. Deborah has close connections and professional relationships with other institutional players, such as the Omohundro Institute and the McNeil Center of Early American History. This past summer Deborah established and convened a new seminar series for NNI to disseminate knowledge about the colony of New Netherland and its intertwined history with indigenous peoples of the Hudson River Valley. Deborah has received numerous awards and fellowships during her career.

 Deborah received a Bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University (Summa cum laude with high honors), and her Master's degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Deborah will have numerous responsibilities as Director of NNI. These responsibilities (at minimum) include NNI operations, fund raising, programs and events, and working with Mike Vande Woude on the opportunity to expand the Dutch American Group (DAG) membership and recruiting guest speakers to participate in our quarterly calls. She will work with Charles Gehring, director of the New Netherland Research Center and other members of the NYS Education Department, Office of Cultural Education (OCE) and the NNI Team to promote, expand, and develop access to resources in OCE, the nation’s largest repository of documents, artifacts and special collections that document New Netherland.

 We are excited to make this announcement and look forward to Deborah's knowledge and energy. Please join me in welcoming Deborah to NNI.

 Marilyn E. Douglas, President

Your contributions this past year allowed us to continue some of our most important programs despite the upheavals of a global pandemic. We brought our annual conference online, we continued to support the translation and publication of Dutch documents in the New York State Archives, and our fellowship and grant winners pursued brilliant projects that are expanding the ways we think about New Netherland.

 With 2022 nearly upon us, I would like to share some exciting news with you. We are surveying archives and repositories in New York and beyond in order to begin new translation projects. Preserving and translating documents are consuming, painstaking work, and making documents accessible to the public costs money. With your year-end gift, you ensure that these precious documents are available now and in the future.

 The next decade will be a crucial one for the New Netherland Institute. As we approach the four hundredth anniversaries of the capitalization of the Dutch West India Company in 2023 and the arrival of the first colonists in New Netherland in 2024, we have an unprecedented opportunity to bring New Netherland to the forefront of American history.

The New Netherland Institute’s Board of Trustees and I are grateful for your previous support. We ask that you give generously this year to support our mission of increasing awareness of New Netherland and its legacy. You may contribute online here or by mail at P.O. Box 2536, Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY 12220 (checks payable to New Netherland Institute).

 Sincerely,

Dr. Deborah Hamer

Director

Our annual conference was held October 23rd in a virtual setting. The program was sponsored by the New Netherland Institute and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society with financial support from the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York and in collaboration with the New Amsterdam History Center and the New York State Education Department, Office of Cultural Education. Master of Ceremonies, Russell Shorto, renowned international author and NNI Senior Scholar, opened the program that brought together scholars who are at the cutting edge of this work. Lavada Nahon, interpreter of African American History, NYS Parks and Recreation, Historic Preservation, and Bureau of Historic Sites and a culinary and cultural historian moderated the program. Speakers included Andrea Mosterman, Associate Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, author of the newly released book, Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York. A lively panel discussion featuring Nicole Maskiell, Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, author of the forthcoming Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry; Jaap Jacobs, Honorary Reader at the University of St. Andrews, author of a soon-to-be-published article about the first Blacks in New Amsterdam; and Debra Bruno, author of a recent Washington Post article about her search for her slave-owning ancestors followed Professor Mosterman’s presentation. Online invitations were sent to over 3500 members of the New Netherland Institute, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and the New Amsterdam History Center communities. 275 people pre-registered and 595 unique page views on October 23rd and 527 views of the livestream program. In addition to the livestream program, additional printable resources are available on the NNI website.

The New Netherland Institute has begun a seminar series for scholars to share works in progress. Meeting once a month during the academic year, we have had four meetings to date and have discussed excellent article length work from Evan Haefeli (Texas A&M University), Erin Kramer (Trinity University), Mark Thompson (Groningen), and Wim Klooster (Clark University). Topics have ranged from the Lenape in the Delaware River Valley to the Dutch response to the English takeover of the colony in 1664. The seminar is designed to support academics in the publication of works that will advance knowledge of New Netherland and the Dutch Atlantic world within the context of Colonial America and the early modern world. We will be continuing to meet in the spring semester and beyond, and we look forward to updating NNI members on the publications that emerge from the series.

On November 9, the New Amsterdam History Center hosted a conversation between Alan Mikhail of Yale University and Eric Platt of St. Francis College in Brooklyn. The topic was “Diversity, Strife, and Toleration in 17th-Century Breukelen,” and the program is available to watch here.

On November 22, Andrea Mosterman gave a talk in cooperation with the Gotham Center, "A History of Slavery and Resistance in New Amsterdam".  Much as she did in the NNI conference, she introduced her new book, Spaces of Enslavement, and addressed the practice of slavery in New Netherland. She was joined by Nicole Maskiell, another NNI conference participant. The book is available to NNI Friends at a discount via Cornell University Press.

From January 5-8, 2022, the Society for Historical Archaeology is hosting its annual Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology in Philadelphia, with a theme of "Enduring and Elusive Freedoms".  The focus of two paper sessions is work recently published in The Archaeology of New Netherland: A World Built on Trade (available from the University Press of Florida here).  The edited volume and session presentations focus on conflict, gender, race, ceramics, pipes, architecture, and other aspects of material culture from Connecticut to Delaware (but also Iceland and Scottish isles). In an introductory paper, NNRC director Dr. Charles Gehring will provide context for the establishment of New Netherland and trade in the colony. More information is available here.

On January 27, 2022 from 6 to 7:30 pm (ET), the New Amsterdam History Center is hosting Toya Dubin for a presentation on 17th-Century Manhattan. “Mapping Early New York: A Demonstration” emphasizes the use of maps in visualizing the population and demographics of the young city. More information is available here.

From February 7-10, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society is hosting the Empire State Exploration. This in-person program will be held in New York City and designed to orient participants to the resources of the NYG&B, NY Public Library, NY Historical Society, Center for Jewish History, the National Archives at New York City, and other repositories. Consultants will be available to guide participants through the genealogical process. More information is available here.

This site, supported by Dutch Culture USA, is an introduction to the settlement that became Albany, NY.  It was made for 4th and 7th grade teachers and provides five lessons on the town and colony of New Netherland. The lessons include “digital images of archaeological collections, interviews with content specialists, and digital copies of archival material and artwork”. For more information, visit herehere.

Donna Merwick (1932-2021) passed away on August 22, 2021. She was an Associate Professor of American History at the University of Melbourne and the author of numerous books and articles on New Netherland including Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), and Stuyvesant Bound: An Essay on Loss Across Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Stuyvesant Bound won the New Netherland Institute’s Annual Hendricks Award in 2015.

 Erin Kramer (Assistant Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX) offers some personal reflections on what Merwick’s work meant to her and the New Netherland community.

 I did not know Donna Merwick, so what I know of her are her words, which turn through my mind every day. I cannot think of a person or a moment from the history of New Netherland without her words. No one had words like hers.

 When I imagine Arent van Curler, Merwick’s claim that “The English took van Curler’s name even before death took him” rings in my ears. Like many of her claims, I disagree with this one, yet her words are haunting and inescapable. Her scholarship demanded that we take notice, “zeg het voort” as the ordinance proclamations she was so taken by declared, and in sharing her delight with that turn of phrase in her writing, she drew us into the world of New Netherland as she saw it in the sources. In Possessing Albany, she was charmed by the orderliness of trade and how it changed time and place, but as years passed and she published The Shame and the Sorrow, she had come to a deeper understanding of the consequences of Dutch empire.

 The contrast between those two books is so striking, in part, because it is a reflection of her journey as a historian and as a person. The title of the book, an homage to “The Sorrow and the Pity,” was meant to be a reckoning. She wanted us to reckon with Kieft’s War, with destruction. She wanted us to face the past in all its ugliness and mourn, and build from our grief, as the French did after Vichy. She gave us “The Indian War Seen” and “The Indian War Given Words,” chapter titles that will forever define Kieft’s War for me, but that perhaps revealed a bit her unwillingness to let go of the New Netherlanders who had charmed her so much in the sources she used in Possessing Albany. Surely, they were “alongshore,” and, surely, being “alongshore” could not harm in the manner of Kieft’s War because that war was a betrayal. But Merwick was an honest writer who was never afraid to tell us readers where she struggled, where she was lost, where she found bittersweet joy in the stories from the archives. The Shame and the Sorrow could not be a full or final reckoning—one book cannot be—but it was among the first to address the extermination and horror that were also a part of New Netherland’s history.

 Into that effort, I believe, she poured her most careful phrases and most beautiful words. It mattered to her that we be captivated, disgusted, and grieved by these stories. “Words were not there when the massacre happened—or when soldiers fired into American villages or Amerindian children drowned. Not the words we have. They all came later. After the events, thousands of words were packed into ships headed for Holland,” she wrote. How can we see a war and speak a war and write a war, she wondered, when the words we have are late and imperfect? She wrestled with grief and loss through words, reminding us, always, how some losses have no words.

 Zeg het voort.

Beginning in 1985, the printed edition of the New Netherland Institute’s quarterly newsletter, De Nieu Nederlanse Marcurius, was mailed to all NNI’s members and others interested in the colonial Dutch period of America’s story. The publication aimed to offer news of the translation project, and details of associated activities of relevant interest, including exhibitions, conferences, publications, sources of information, research in progress, and general interest articles on historical Dutch matters. The print version was discontinued in 2018, and May 2019 saw the first edition in electronic format. The name lives on as the eMarcurius.

Have you ever wondered where the newsletter’s curious name comes from? Or why the spelling is so unusual? Dr. Charles Gehring explained it in the first issue in February 1985. The New Netherland Project (NNP), as the Dutch translation mission was called back then, had been established for eleven years, and the idea of an informal newsletter was proposed to share information about New Netherland. The NNP received many “imaginative suggestions” for the name of its newly minted newsletter, but none of these was chosen. Instead, he said, “we thought it appropriate to revive the name of a newsletter which Jeremias van Rensselaer (1632-74) mentioned twice in his correspondence.”  He also explained the unusual spelling and calligraphy of the masthead, saying that it “represents a composite of Jeremias’ handwriting and spelling in his two references to the 17th century newsletter.” In English it meant “The New Netherland Mercury.” Along with other scholars, Dr. Gehring laments that no copies of this newsletter have ever come to light.

Jeremias was the son of the famous Kiliaen van Rensselaer (1586-1643) by his second wife, Anna van Wely. Kiliaen was an Amsterdam diamond and pearl merchant, a director of the Dutch West India Company, and instrumental in the establishment and flourishing of New Netherland. He was founder and first patroon of the Manor of Rensselaerswijck, the largest and most successful patroonship in the colony.

 Dr. Gehring’s choice of name allows us to become acquainted with an interesting figure from our Dutch past. Jeremias van Rensselaer left a large file of correspondence that includes his own letters and those to him from his relatives in the Netherlands, and others. His letters attest to their author’s great energy, business-like qualities, and his methodical habits as an administrator. They are full of lively and intimate human-interest details, and provide a glimpse into both private and public mid-seventeenth century affairs. Jeremias’ letters are an important source for the social history of the period because without them numerous facts and incidents would have been lost. Take just one example: the names of ships that Jeremias frequently mentions, vessels by which the letters and merchandise were transported, and the date of their sailing: De Gelderse Blom, De Blauwe Duyff, De Bonte Koe, De Eycke Boom, and many others.

The two letters in which Jeremias refers to de Nieu Nederlanse Marcurius are both from 1663. The first is to his mother Anna on September 12, and the other, dated September 14, he sent to his older brother Jan Baptist. Much of Jeremias’ correspondence is with his brother concerning the management of the manor. There are also in the letters some oblique references to the lost Marcurius newsletter. For instance, on August 7, 1663, Jeremias wrote to Jan Baptist: “There is not much news to write except that last winter we had an earthquake here, which further inland was very severe, yes, among the French did a great deal of damage to their houses. It was followed by the misfortune in the Esopus, as you will see from the enclosed [account].”

Historians think that the “enclosed [account]” was the first installment of the newsletter that he called The New Netherland Marcurius. In the same letter we learn that the early settlement that became Fort Crailo was fortified as early as 1663 during the Esopus Indian Wars, as Jeremias notes: “…as many as 18 families had fled to my house and others had taken refuge in the Grene Bos, called Cralo, as appears from my enclosed letter.” Again, this “letter” is thought to be the tantalizingly missing Marcurius.

In his 1853 History of New York Under the Dutch, E.B. O’Callaghan wrote that Jeremias’ correspondence is “still in good preservation.” Sadly, this is no longer true. After having been safeguarded by the family for over 250 years the letters were deposited in the New York State Library where they were severely damaged in the disastrous 1911 fire, which destroyed a large part of the state archives as well as many of the Van Rensselaer papers. Hardly a single letter of the Jeremias collection is undamaged, and many are just fragments, charred, discolored, and burned away, with the result that much is lost forever, and there are difficulties establishing the date of many letters.

Nevertheless, what remained of Jeremias’ correspondence was painstakingly translated and edited by A.J.F. van Laer and published in 1932 by the University of the State of New York as Correspondence of Jeremias van Rensselaer, 1651-1674. In his preface the editor notes: “The correspondence consists partly of original letters, ranging in date from 1651 to 1671, which for the greater part were received by Jeremias van Rensselaer from his relatives in Holland after he came to the colony of Rensselaerswyck, and partly of copies, some on loose sheets and others in the form of a Letter Book, of letters written by him from 1656 until his death in 1674 during the last 16 years of which period he was director of the colony.”

A digitized version of this book is available on the New Netherland Institute’s website (newnetherlandinstitute.org), both as original manuscript images and in translation. To access this, at the NNI home page go to Research, then Online Publications. Check out the many other documents online too.

 Jeremias was the first in his family to establish himself permanently in America. In 1662 he married Maria van Cortlandt and they had six children. He devoted the rest of his life to the government of the colony as a prudent administrator, though things were soon to change with the creation of the Province of New York in 1664. Following the surrender of New Netherland to the English, Jeremias, clearly a pragmatist, took the oath of allegiance to Charles II. He notes that one of his letters in October 1664 was sent, by way of London, in one of the English ships that seized New Netherland—Guinea, Elias, Martin, or William and Nicholas. As a prominent member of the community this may have been a special privilege, but nevertheless it does offer some evidence of the harmonious nature of relations following the takeover. On August 28, 1674 he signed off his letter to Jan Baptist, just a few weeks before his death, and doubtless with a heavy heart, saying: “We expect here every day that we shall have to become English.”

It is clear that Jeremias was greatly respected, for, as O’Callaghan writes, in October 1674 he “was followed to the grave by a large concourse of mourners.” I think Jeremias would have been pleased, not only that his correspondence (mostly) survived, but also that the name of his newsletter lives on today in a publication pursuing and promoting the study and understanding of the place where he lived and loved.