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

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“In 1991, workers discovered an African burial ground in lower Manhattan. This discovery confronted New Yorkers with the city’s history of slavery and renewed conversations about slavery and African American culture in the region. Remnants that were found at this burial ground also helped reconstruct the history of slavery and African cultural influences in seventeenth- and especially eighteenth-century New York. Today, a monument at the African Burial Ground’s location at 290 Broadway commemorates the city’s enslaved population and the region’s legacy of slavery.”*

We are pleased to announce that our 43rd Annual Conference will convene at (and above) this remarkable site on the 24th of October 2020. We will welcome proposals for a broad range of presentations that help us understand not only the complex histories of race and slavery in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland but also its legacy and how it has lingered in the public imagination. A detailed call for presentations will be out shortly.

*Excerpt from NNI's digital exhibit “Slavery in New Netherland” by Dr. Andrea Mosterman.

Image: Detail of the Maerschalck Map (ca. 1755), indicating the location of the “Negros Buriel Ground” just outside the city's palisades. 

When the English acquired political control over New Netherland in 1664 and carved out the provinces of New York, East and West New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the Dutch colonial inhabitants did not disappear. Rather they remained entrenched, rapidly multiplied, expanded, and prospered. This exhibit takes a look at the enduring presence of New Netherland in the mid-Atlantic region and its lasting impact on the development of modern American society, politics, and culture.

Image: The Return of Rip Van Winkle, John Quidor, 1829

In my conversation last month with Charly about Sinterklaas, he reminded me that after the Eighty Years’ War with Spain, which ended in 1648, the secular St. Nicholas celebration was outlawed. To refresh my memory about St. Nicholas, he suggested I re-read Elisabeth Paling Funk’s essay “From Amsterdam to New Amsterdam: Washington Irving, The Dutch St. Nicholas, and the American Santa Claus”- which I did. This essay is one of twelve essays in Explorers, Fortunes, and Love Letters: A Window on New Netherland edited by Martha Shattuck and published by the New Netherland Institute in 2009. According to Funk, Washington Irving in his Knickerbocker History, 1812 edition, describes St. Nicholas as a seventeenth-century New Netherland settler. This, along with many details of both the historical and legendary fourth-century bishop from Turkey are richly described in her essay. Funk, an independent scholar, freelance editor, translator, and former NNI trustee is a longtime friend and colleague of Charly. As Charly says “St. Nicholas appears in Elisabeth Funk's analysis of Washington Irving's Knickerbocker History of New York. In a chapter about “Irving as Folk Historian,” St. Nicholas's movements are detailed through time and human imagination from Turkey to Europe to the New World, where he surfaces as Santa Claus. Lies's untitled manuscript is under contract to Cornell University Press.”

Marilyn

Image: The Feast of St Nicholas, Richard Brakenburg, 1685

The Altamont Enterprise recently sat down with New Netherland Research Center director Dr. Charles Gehring to discuss his life's work as well as his current search for Dutch family bibles. The conversation is also available as a podcast.

Every summer since 2007, Columbia University has been offering a Dutch workshop. The workshop provides students with an introduction to reading strategies of Dutch texts and is accompanied by a 17th-century Dutch paleography course taught by Dr. Frans Blom, Associate Professor of Dutch Literature at the University of Amsterdam. Enrollment is open to doctoral students from all US universities. With the support of the Nederlandse Taalunie, the workshop is free of charge and bares no academic credit. Students wishing to participate in the workshop are required to have completed at least one year of Dutch or to have maintained fluency in German.

I took this class a few summers ago, and it was a great experience. I recommend it. – Steve