Set in the brick wall of the Steenschuur canal in Leiden is a plaque commemorating the catastrophic buskruitramp, or gunpowder disaster, of 1807. It says: Ligplaats van het Kruitschip Gesprongen 12 Januari 1807, or the mooring place of the gunpowder ship exploded 12 January 1807.
Those concerned with the study of New Netherland will be familiar with the Dutch East India Company, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), established in 1602 to trade with India and Southeast Asia, as well as the Dutch West India Company, the Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie (GWC), chartered in 1621 for a trade monopoly in North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil.
“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
For he commandeth, and raised the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths:
their soul is melted because of trouble.”
Psalm 107, 23-26
Have you ever wondered about the name of the New Netherland Institute's newsletter, or its curious spelling? Dr. Charles Gehring explained it in the first issue in February 1985. The New Netherland Project, as the Dutch translation mission was called back then, had received many "imaginative suggestions" for the name of its newly minted newsletter, but none was chosen.
On May 2, 1839, at the urging of the New-York Historical Society and with the support of Governor William Seward (later Secretary of State for Presidents Lincoln and Johnson), the New York State Legislature passed an act “To appoint an agent to procure and transcribe documents in Europe relative to the colonial history of this state.”
Perhaps for many people the most well known inhabitant of New Netherland is Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, and his most notable physical feature was, in his later years at least, a wooden leg. Let’s see how he became Peg Leg Pete.
The opening of the new Tappan Zee Bridge (officially renamed the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge) in September 2018 can be seen as yet another reminder of the Dutch history of the Hudson Valley. The “Zee” component of the name is clearly Dutch, meaning “sea,” as in the Zuider Zee, or southern sea, in the Netherlands. But what does Tappan mean, and why is part of a river called a sea?
Have you ever wondered about the name of the New Netherland Institute’s newsletter, or its curious spelling? Read on…
