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Debra Bruno's recent piece in The Washington Post Magazine has created a lot of buzz and has introduced many readers to New Netherland and its legacy (of slavery). The premise of the article is that Bruno, after discovering that her Dutch ancestors were enslavers, connected with Eleanor Mire, a descendant of one of those enslaved. As it concludes,

"And yet Eleanor — who is unsentimental and smart and funny about everything — has shown me that there is a way to look into both our families’ histories and see and embrace the truth, but not let it forever weigh us down. In the end, I don’t know if this story is about atonement or reconciliation. Or maybe it’s more of a reckoning. Eleanor said in one of our talks, 'People don’t understand. Slavery is a thread going through the generations. It has affected every generation.' She and I are not done. But we’ve started with this."

While it has intensified with recent events, this discussion of slavery's legacy is not new. Whether the nuances and complexity of the past can be preserved when the present stakes seem so high remains to be seen. We look forward to an upcoming conversation with Debra on our new podcast "Dutch New York Stories." 

(The article could be paywalled. But we've had no problem pulling it up several times without a subscription.)

Speaking of the new podcast, we will be recording our first episode in early August with Dr. Andrea Mosterman. The topic will be the slave ship Gideon, which arrived in New Netherland in 1664 shortly before the English takeover. Expect the episode out in September.

Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, known to many of us as the editor of The Iconography of Manhattan Island, led a fascinating life that remains worthy of serious study. Descended from two wealthy New York families (Phelps and Stokes), Newton (as he was apparently called), became an architect and devoted much of his time to the reform of housing for the city's poor. The Iconography is rightfully seen today as a remarkable achievement. 

Jean Zimmerman's 2012 book on Stokes and his wife Edith Minturn contains a good deal of background on The Iconography. The discovery and subsequent wrangling over the famous Castello Plan (its name is derived from the Villa Castello, the map's place of residence) in Italy is a highlight of the book: 

"Over the next three years, [an associate of Stokes] conducted protracted negotiations with the Italian government on behalf of Newton, whose hopes rose and fell from month to month. The Italian king, ultimately the owner of the map, waffled and temporized. The Italian government seemed almost to be taunting Newton, letting him know through [the above-mentioned associate] and other European intermediaries that it convened a professor of geography and a director of a museum to assess the benefits of a trade." The Castello Plan remains in Italy to this day.

Incidentally, Newton also claimed to be the first person to cross the Brooklyn Bridge: "I was about fifteen years old, and I stood all night at the Manhattan approach to the bridge. A great crowd gathered, but I was in the forefront, and when the ribbon was cut, I made a dash for it and reached Brooklyn ahead of everyone else!" 

This tool from CUNY Dominican Studies Institute is an online interactive resource to assist users in the learning of the deciphering and reading of manuscripts written in Spanish during the early modern period, roughly from the late 15th to the 18th century.