This is the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam by Dutch settlers. The map shows what the city looked like in 1660, a few years before it was taken over by the British and renamed New York. The red oval shows the location of Abraham Rychen's house; he sold it in 1655.
Abraham Rycken was born in 1618 in Nijmegen, Netherlands. He is my 9th great-grandfather. Abraham married Grietje Harmensen, the daughter of settler Harmen Harmensen. Harmen was an armorer for the Dutch army and later retired to a farm on Riker's Island where he made tomahawks for the indigenous people who lived there and on Long Island. Harmen was killed in 1643 by a native using one of his tomahawks.
After selling their house in New Amsterdam, Abraham and Grietje moved to Long Island and later to the old farm on Riker's Island.
I descend from Aeltje Abrahamson, the daughter of Abraham Rycken and Grietje Harmensen. She was born in 1653 in Long Island City. She married a German settler named Harmen Jansen.
This is a map of New York in 1754. The wide street running north (right) from the Dutch fort was called De Heere Straat in New Amsterdam and in 1754 it is called Broad Way. The street along the wall in the Dutch colony was De Wal Straat and it's now Wall Street. The canal in the Dutch colony was filled in and it became Broad Street. The street along the east side of the Dutch colony was called Waterside and it's now Water street. Water Street no longer borders the East river because of all the landfill that has occurred over the past 400 years.
9 comments :
Larry, congratulations with the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam !
I conclude: you are Dutch!
a tiny amount of your DNA is Dutch!
and ... without the Dutch you and New York would not exist...
you wrote: "Nijmegan" but you won't find Nijmegan on a Dutch map, the correct name is: Nijmegen.
Given Mendelian segregation, it’s possible/likely that, if these are his only Dutch ancestors, he himself doesn’t carry any of their DNA, as it could be all “diluted” away.
Gert: I have an urge to make an obscure joke about "a vowel too far", but I will refrain.
"...if these are his only Dutch ancestors,.."
>"By 1655, the population of New Netherland had grown to 2,000 people, with 1,500 living in New Amsterdam. By 1664, the population of New Netherland had risen to almost 9,000 people, 2,500 of whom lived in New Amsterdam".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam
'New Amsterdam' = Nieuw-Amsterdam.
My most recent single ancestor with a significant Dutch heritage is Peter Montras (1715-1790). He is my 6th great-grandfather. I should have inherited 1/256 (0.4%) of my genome from him. That's theoretically detectable but not by any of the standard genealogy tests.
Acccording to a graph once published by Carl Zimmer, the probability of sharing zero autosomal DNA with an ancestor 8 generations back is only about 15%, though it rises quickly as you go only a generation or two further back. Since this isn't the male line, you of course share 0 Y-chromosomal DNA with him.
All this is only true if the ancestors you find in the records are indeed biological ancestors and no DNA from other non-documented sources has been sneaked in. Extra-pair paternity (EPP) is reported to be about 1% though. Thus, not to frequent.
ETA: Larmuseau MHD, Matthijs K, Wenseleers T. Cuckolded Fathers Rare in Human Populations. Trends Ecol Evol. 2016 May;31(5):327-329. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2016.03.004.
Aeltje Abrahamson, the daughter of Abraham Rycken and Grietje Harmensen: presumably she was called Abrahamsdochter as befitting a girl; her brother would have been Abrahamsson.
It mihgt be possilble that the change from patronymic to surname was alreadyin effect.
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