Originally scheduled to be held above the African Burial Ground site in Manhattan on October 24 of this year, our 43rd Annual Conference is currently without a date and home. While we have explored the possibility of having it above the Burial Ground in the summer of 2021, nothing can be confirmed at this time. Please stay tuned.

A big thank you to everyone who has given to the fund so far! Thanks to your generosity, our next annual conference will see more young New Netherland scholars in attendance.

For those of you who remember the old New Netherland Project with its annual “Rensselaerswijck Seminar” and quarterly Nieu Nederlanse Marcurius, must also remember Nancy Zeller. For over a decade (1984–1996) she not only assisted in the organization and production of these outreach programs but was also instrumental in the formation of the Friends of New Netherland. She served as recording secretary in this organization which would eventually grow into the New Netherland Institute. Nancy exuded a positive attitude in whatever she undertook and was relentless in achieving her goal. Her motto was: it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. She had a sharp editor’s eye, which she applied to the project’s translations and its first volume of “Seminar” papers called A Beautiful and Fruitful Place. Finally, Nancy fulfilled a dream by becoming a Reformed minister. After tending to several flocks in the Hudson Valley, she eventually moved back to her native Oklahoma, where she passed away on May 17, 2020 as Nancy Anne McClure-Long.

NNRC director, Charles Gehring

As Dr. Charles Gehring notes, as an American student researching New Netherland history, reading Dutch is the most important skill. This course appears to be an intensive program, and it may be just what some students need to acquire a reading knowledge rather than just bumbling along, looking up every word, and then finally giving up and reading only English language sources.

Don't forget that the New Netherland Institute will partner with Cornell University Press on a special issue of New York History in 2021. The issue's theme will be race and slavery in North America's Dutch communities.

Submissions are due by December 1.

Maintaining safe passage in roadways has always been essential to public welfare, as it was in New Netherland. An April 1658 ordinance, reiterating one from May 1650, dictated that “All streets, paths and highways, are to be properly maintained, constructed, cleaned and kept passable.”

See Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, pg. 345

Image: Asophaler, Caspar Luyken, 1711. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum.

First among maps of New Amsterdam since it appeared in Stokes's Iconography of Manhattan Island in 1916, the Castello Plan has been put to yet another interesting use. 

On the New Amsterdam History Center's website you can, among other things, swipe to compare the Castello Plan with the modern-day city. The project's next steps are to expand through the full history of New Amsterdam. Note that they are currently seeking financial support.

The woman on the left in this photo from last month was of course Nancy Zeller, whose name I know well from her work with the New Netherland Project and whom Charly fondly remembered above.