NNI's March 2025 eMarcurius

March 2025
Vol. 41 No. 1

From the Director's Desk

Dear Friends,

This edition of the New Netherland Institute's e-Marcurius is filled with NNI news, information on books you can read, resources you can use, and exhibitions you can attend. It will be a busy spring! And, as always, we are already planning for our fall annual conference.

This edition of the e-Marcurius also sees the inaugural piece in a new feature that we're calling "Translator's Corner." At the conclusion of each newsletter, I'll translate a short document that has never before been available in English. The documents in this feature are meant to be illustrative of some of the many documents that a researcher sees on a daily basis but that seldom make it into books and articles. I hope this feature will shed some light on the ordinary people that lived in and built New Netherland.

Warmly,

Deborah Hamer, Executive Director

NNI Fundraiser

Join us on Saturday, March 15, 2025 at 4:30pm for Becoming New York, a special event at the Fort Orange Club in Albany, New York, to celebrate the publication of Russell Shorto's new book, Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America. We will start with a reception and then guests will hear Russell discuss the book and his long relationship with Charly Gehring.

If you are looking for opportunities to hear Russell speak about his new book, visit his website to learn more about other stops on his book tour.

Live from New Amsterdam, March 27, 2025

The next episode of Live From New Amsterdam, NNI's joint lunchtime series with the New Amsterdam Project at New York Historical, will be on Thursday, March 27th. NNI Director Deborah Hamer will interview former New York State Archivist, Tom Ruller, about the archives of New Netherland and the New York State Archives central role in preserving and making Dutch documents accessible. Previous guests from this season include Ian Stewart, Josephine Bloodgood, Jaap Jacobs, James Bradley, Dirk Mouw, and Russell Shorto.

NNI Fellows in the News

BJ Lillis has been awarded the McNeil Center for Early American Studies prestigious dissertation award for “A Valley Between Worlds: Slavery, Dispossession, and the Creation of a Settler-Colonial Society in the Hudson Valley, 1674-1766." Lillis was a speaker at our 2024 conference Dutch Albany in History & Art. Based at the University of Pennsylvania, the McNeil Center is dedicated to advancing scholarship on Early America and the Atlantic World with particular reference to the Mid-Atlantic region.

Upcoming Events

Lecture: The Holland Society's Grotius Collection

On March 11th, the Holland Society's Executive Director, Sarah Bogart Cooney, will give a lecture on the Society's Grotius Collection at the Grolier Club in Manhattan. Purchased in 1890, this collection of editions of Hugo Grotius's work, including first editions from the 17th century, has been housed in Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library since 1901. Because the volumes are not included in Columbia's library catalog, this is a rare opportunity to learn about them.

More Information

If This Old House Could Talk with Fergus Bordewich and Ed Klinger at the Hudson Library

On March 9th, the African American Archives of Columbia County and the Hudson Area Library host a presentation on the Jan van Hoesen House in Claverack at the Hudson Library.

This house is in significant disrepair but is well-known among conservationists. Decorative brickwork spelling "T," "I," "V," and "H" stand for Tanneke and Jan (Ian) van Hoesen, who likely built the house between 1715 and 1730. The presentation will focus on the enslaved people who lived in the home and its subsequent use as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Jan van Hoesen House. Photo Credit: Chelsea Teale

Learn More

Exhibitions

Baltimore Museum of Art

The Baltimore Museum of Art has the exhibition Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art on view until July 27, 2025. Including paintings, prints, and drawings from the museum's collection, the exhibition examines the role of water in the Dutch Republic.

Exhibition Webpage

The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum in Manhattan has just opened a new exhibition, The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt, which features drawings and paintings by Rembrandt and other Dutch artists of the 17th century on the subject of the Book of Esther. Queen Esther was a popular subject in Dutch art because Dutch people connected their own struggle for independence with her heroism.

Exhibition Webpage

Resources

Interested in investigating whether a museum near you holds any 17th century paintings? Use the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's digital project, Mapping Dutch Art in the United States. A collaboration between the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, this map lets you see museums that have Dutch paintings and find out more about them.

New Articles & Books

Lewes Historical Journal

Dr. Chelsea Teale, Associate Director of the New Netherland Research Center, and Dr. Charly Gehring have published, "Jacob Kommer’s Medicine Chest: the 1661 Inventory of New Castle’s Surgeon" in Lewes History volume 26: 36-49. Using a document in the New York State Archives which lists the contents of the chest sent from Amsterdam to New Castle, the article sheds important light on medicinal plants and tools in use in the 17th century.

See the Inventory of the Medicine Chest in the New York State Archives

Elisabeth Funk, The Dutch World of Washington Irving

Elisabeth Funk's book The Dutch World of Washington Irving: Knickerbocker's History of New York and the Hudson Valley Folktales will be available for purchase in June, 2025. For NNI members who purchase it from Cornell University Press's website, a 30% discount is available. Put the book in your Cornell University Press shopping cart and enter the code 09BCARD to secure your discount.

Pre-order Here

Lana Holden, Catalyntje Trico: A Life in New Amsterdam

Lana Holden, a teacher and long-time associate of NNI, has published her first novel, a work of historical fiction that focuses on the extraordinary life of Catalyntje Trico. Trico was one of the first women in the colony and lived to see the English takeover of New Netherland and beyond.

For more of Lana's work, please visit the classroom materials that she created for the New Netherland Institute's website.

Learn More

Caroline Fowler, Slavery & Invention of Dutch Art

Caroline Fowler is Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. Her new book argues that the slave trade played a key role in the emergence of many genres of paintings that became popular in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic, including seascapes, landscapes, and botanical images.

Read the Introduction

Upcoming Award & Fellowship Deadlines Deadlines

The deadline for submitting articles for consideration in the Van Slyke Article Prize competition is April 1. This prize, generously funded by Sandra Lazo, honors the best article published in New Netherland Studies in the previous two years.

Applications for NNI's Fulbright Award are due on November 1. Applicants must be Dutch citizens enrolled in PhD program at a Dutch university, and the award supports research in sources related to New Netherland in the United States.

For Teachers

The New York State Museum is holding a daylong Anthropology Teacher Training Workshop with a focus on New Netherland on March 14th, which will include presentations by New Netherland Research Center Director Charles Gehring and Associate Director Chelsea Teale. Participating teachers will receive CTLE credits. For more information and to register, click here.

Translator's Corner

Testimony Regarding Cornelis Pieters van Purmerent

In a new feature for the newsletter, we will be including a translation of a short document. This issue's translation is by NNI Director Deborah Hamer of a notarial record from the City Archives of Amsterdam.

On this day, the 25^thof October 1638, there appeared before me, Hendrick Schaef, notary, and the under named witnesses, Simon Jans van Durgerdam, 45 years old, skipper, Simon Jans van Vlielant, 48 years old, ship’s carpenter, and Claes Pieters van Embden, 35 years old or thereabouts, constable, all having served in those positions and having arrived with the ship Den Haring.

To read the rest of the translation, click here. To see the original document, click here.

Image: Jan Luyken, Three Scholars in a Library, 1691 [Title page for William Sewel's A New Dictionary of English and Dutch.] From the Collection of the Rijksmuseum.

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Help Support NNI

Through your support of NNI with your membership and donations, you enable NNI to continue its efforts and find new ways to broaden our reach, investigating opportunities to raise awareness about this often-overlooked chapter of the American story. Please keep us in mind as you consider your charitable donations. And, please let me know if you would like to explore further involvement by becoming a member of our Board of Trustees. The Board meets four times a year to plan upcoming activities that promote understanding of New York’s Dutch colonial past and its vital legacy.

You can make a tax-deductible fee-free donation of $50.00 or more to NNI by mailing a check to us at P.O. Box 2536, Empire State Plaza Station, Albany NY 12220-0536, or go online and donate on our website. Your donation gives you a new or renewed membership in NNI. Donors contributing $100 or more will receive a copy of Dutch Renaissance: Translations Unveil America’s Forgotten Past, by Peter A. Douglas, 2024.

Sincerely and with gratitude,

Marilyn E. Douglas, Chair

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New Netherland Institute
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