a rediscovery and celebration of New Netherland, the lost Dutch colony of greater New York and the Hudson Valley

he group coordinating the conversion of the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge into a pedestrian crossing of the Hudson River is called Walkway over the Hudson. Its site reports they aim to finish the conversion by October 2009, in time for the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage of discovery of the Hudson River. There is a report from USA Today that sets the date at October 2.

On a tour of the replica ship Halve Maen, a tour guide/crew member told me, several times within a few moments, that Henry Hudson’s original entry into New York harbor was September 19, 1609.

On the website for the New Netherland Museum—the only visitable asset of which is the ship Halve Maen—there is a page describing the 2001 commemoration of this day as being in New York Harbor and witnessing the destruction of the World Trade Center. September 11. It’s particularly memorable as the standard crew was assisted by schoolchildren, as it had been every year, and has since.

Does anyone know the official date for the anniversary? Who gets to determine the day? Who’s got the credentials? To whom do we listen? The New York State commission? Their attentions are divided among three anniversaries: Henry Hudson’s, Champlain’s, and Robert Fulton’s. Will those all be the same day?

For a recollection of what we’re told is a momentous point in history, there is a surprising lack of consensus, even less than a year out. Give or take.

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It’s sometime in the mid-1600s. We’re in a clerical office. The room is dominated by a hutch with dozens of cubbyholes, each brimming with a rolled document. It doesn’t look orderly. There is a great chair, in which sits the Schout, a combination sheriff and prosecutor. On a smaller bench sits an English couple: the wife, Goody Goodgirl, and her husband, Mr. Goodgirl. They look distraught. Goody Goodgirl is pleating her apron nervously. Mr. Goodgirl’s hat is on his lap, and he is fingering the huge buckle on it. [more]

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The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

es, two book reviews in a row. And in this one, I commit two heresies: one, it’s of a book I’ve yet to read, and based only on what others say about it; and two, it’s of a book not about New Netherland, but her English rivals to the east.

The book is The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell; to be precise, it was the review by Heller McAlpin for the Christian Science Monitor, released this Wednesday. (I guess I’m reviewing a review—a third heresy.)

Ms. Vowell tells the story of the four colonies of New England and their interrelationships, drawing parallels to our nation’s behavior during the Bush-43 administration, with the aspirations of the Massachusetts Bay colony in particular. The “city on a hill,” and all that—a quote not from Governor William Bradford’s journal but from a sermon by John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” the fuel for many of Vowell’s observations.   [more]

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Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664

ou’d think I would pick a more influential book as the first to review on this site, namely Russell Shorto’s Island at the Center of the World, to which this blog traces its emotional lineage. I decided to take a different tack, and start at the beginning, from the eyewitnesses, either first- or second-hand, who lived the story of the European foothold in what we call New York, or watched it happen.

From the Preface:

There is no one classical narrative of the history of New Netherland—nothing corresponding in position to Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation or Governor Winthrop’s Journal.

And yet, those two English colonies are at a disadvantage, if the only descriptions people refer to are the views of one author who in each case can’t exactly claim objectivity in his view of Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay respectively, since they were both instrumental in their histories. When you find a compendium of views from varying voices, each telling a little more of the story, there’s value in that. The strifes, the passions, the complaints and accusations, combine roughly chronologically to make a thrilling narrative thread.   [more]

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ast month, the New York Times’ website featured a story of a plan Mayor Bloomberg suggested, for finding spare room on tall rooftops and bridges and other city-run infrastructure to erect wind turbines, to help generate electricity, especially for the power that infrastructure consumes in ways such as lighting.

There was a follow-up article published the next day, about many luminaries in the historian community in New York, observing that the Big Apple has a long and storied history of harnessing wind power. Charles Gehring of the New Netherland Project and Gajus Scheltema, consul general of the Netherlands, were among those to place sites of 17th-century windmills on the modern street map of lower Manhattan, and to observe the four-bladed windmill in the exact center of the seal of New York City.   [more]

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This site is intended to serve as a nexus for everything worth knowing or finding out on the Web about the region and the period we call New Netherland. Much of what I find out has been posted by people who’ve come before me. And there’s no reason why you can’t see those sources for yourself.

And so, I present you a series of links to other sites which I’ve bookmarked, and to which I’ll continuously add, and alert you in updates here. I haven’t just transcribed them onto a page here; instead, I’ve used a site called Delicious. Delicious was intended to be a central repository for your browser’s bookmarks, accessible through any computer connected to the Web.   [more]

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I remembered a website a new-media friend recommended to me. It’s called If I Can Help a Reporter Out. You register to get a daily email of requests by journalists for information you might be able to give, or verify, in pursuit of a news story. If it’s your area of expertise, and you know, you answer the question.

I visited it today. For a fleeting moment of self-flattery, I fantasized clicking that button, with the idea of answering questions about the New Netherland colony and the state of study surrounding it. But I couldn’t. In spite of the site’s motto, “Everyone’s an expert at something,” I know I’m not yet an expert at this, the subject of this blog.

You are. (Well, some of you are.)   [more]

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If you’re at all like me, you’re still marveling at Tetris and Klondike. Now the history buff has a foothold in the new world of computer games, and has had it since developer Sid Meier’s earlier attempt at this game theme, 14 years ago, using the Civilization I game engine.

Debuting yesterday, Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization is released for the XBox360 computer game platform. [more]

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Here’s a funny thought, courtesy of YouTube. Funny, and thought provoking.

Think about it: two cities, Amsterdam and New York, once sister cities (at one time even sharing the same heraldry), yet evolving in two different paths, sometimes parallel — the racial tolerance, made possible by an overall goal (prosperity) that required all hands on deck, regardless of creed or color or even tongue (throughout the period ethnic Dutch never comprised more than half of the population); the “vices”, drug use and prostitution, in a period (The “60’s”, actually the 70’s) after which both cities dealt with the situation in decidedly different ways; and architecture, where one city kept its inner core intact while the other constantly tore down the recent to replace it with the latest and greatest.   [more]

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