On the banks of the Hudson River was a colony of Dutch, who had taken possession of that region many years before, and called it
New Netherlands.
When I began to research my Ryckman ancestors, the Daughters of the American Revolution ancestor roster included eight men named "Ryckman" as my surname has been spelled since as early as a document in 1663 in Beverwijck,
New Netherland, now Albany, New York, with occasional variations in spelling.
It takes nothing away from our colony's English roots to remember that while we were subjects of the English crown for over a hundred years, we had an earlier identity, in which for almost half a century the colony was
New Netherland, Manhattan was New Amsterdam, Albany was Beverwijk (or beaver district), and just up the road, the Dutch in 1624 built Fort Orange.
A director of the Dutch Colony of
New Netherland (modern-day Delaware and Connecticut) he bought it for Dutch settlers.
The book's content ranges geographically --in the nomenclature and the borders of the times--from New France and
New Netherland to New Spain and the West Indies.
Originally known as Pagganuck ("Nut Island") to the Lenape Indians, the island was the first landing place of the Dutch settlers when they founded
New Netherland. In more recent history, just over 200 years ago, the land belonged to the U.S.
As Kim Todt and Martha Dickinson Shattuck note in their essay, "whether trading abroad, intra-or inter-colonially, or at home in
New Netherland, gender did not determine participation" (pp.
In 1664, England's King Charles II granted an area of land on the East Coast of present-day North America known as
New Netherland to his brother James, the Duke of York.
Susanah Shaw Romney,
New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America.
Gehring (
New Netherland Research Center) and Starna (emeritus, anthropology, State U.
As he navigates the history of
New Netherland, a province that spanned from Albany to the Delaware Bay, he reacquaints readers with familiar subjects while introducing them to others relegated to obscurity.