The branch of my family that traces back to New Netherland is through one 3G grandfather, John Ross, who was born in 1829 in Somerset County, New Jersey. While his paternal grandfather was of Scotch-Irish heritage, his other three grandparents descended from the Dutch colony settlers. One grandmother, Martha Van Tuyl, left no records that connect to her parents, but the other two, Christopher Van Arsdalen and Sarah Dumont have fairly complete pedigrees going back to Europe. A distant ancestor, Sarah Rapalje, was said to be the first European child born in what is now New York, and many others have interesting stories as well.
New York harbor during the 17th century.
The New Netherland colony was perhaps the most cosmopolitan settlement in America, and my ancestors came from a lot of different places. This branch of my family includes people from Norway, France, England, Belgium and Germany who mixed with those from the Netherlands. I even have a man said to be from Poland, who had the remarkable story of first settling in a Dutch colony in Brazil before bringing his family to Brooklyn in the 1650s.
Although some of my ancestors lived in New Amsterdam, they primarily settled in the towns of Long Island, places that make up modern-day Brooklyn. By 1700, many started relocating to farms in New Jersey. A few others made their homes up the Hudson River in what is now Ulster County, New York. And a couple of people on my pedigree went all the way out to Southampton, living among a settlement of New Englanders. Today, there are very little traces of the original Dutch colonists, aside from town and street names, and a few old houses.
Places in modern-day Brooklyn derived from my ancestors' names.
Even though the colony founded by the Dutch thrived, it didn’t last very long, and in 1664, England sent a force to take it over. Rather than engaging in a war they knew they would lose, the people of New Netherland surrendered without a fight. This may be the reason the Dutch were allowed to retain a certain status as they assimilated with the English. It’s noteworthy, though, that after English people moved into the former colony, the Dutch largely kept their cultural identity, and one branch of my family continued to be purely Dutch into the 19th century.
While I don’t seem to have very much DNA from my Dutch branch ancestors, I still feel strongly connected to them. This is because I spent 30 years of my adult life living in New York City, and the last 19 years of that were in Brooklyn. To know that my people planted the seed of such a city, gives me great pride — it was neat to live in the same place my ancestors had founded.
