Category Dutch Americans
No, there is no “s” at the end of “New Netherland”
by Michael J. Douma Like many nineteenth-century New Yorkers of Dutch-descent, the historical scholar John Romeyn Brodhead was bothered by the poor treatment the Dutch had received in the written histories of colonial America. In these histories, there was one “vulgar error” in particular that drew his ire. This was, he said, the “absurd use […]
Sietze Buning’s “War and Peace”
Coming to the house for breakfast after milking, I asked, “What star is that in the southwest, Dad, still so bright with the sun coming up?” That’s no star, Sietze. It’s moving and it’s coming this way.” In minutes, a floating contraption hovered above our farm. A machine growled and ground out a leaflet which […]
Book review – Peter de Haan and Kerst Huisman, eds. Famous Frisians in America
We Frisians feel left out. As a group, our numbers in America are so small that we flat-out never get mentioned in history texts. That a book attempting to remedy this appeared at all in time for the 400-year Dutch American anniversary celebrations must be a sign of Frisian stubbornness and resolve. I don’t know […]
Presentation for the Holland (Michigan) Museum
My presentation on “The Legend of the Black Dutchman”
“I bought a Veneklasen brick house; now how do I repair the bricks”?
At least a few times per year, I get an email from someone from West Michigan who owns a 19th century brick house and is looking to repair it. I welcome these emails, and I’m always glad to share information. In the past, I have learned of some people who have extra bricks sitting around. […]
Dutch Letters of Marque and the Arrival of the First Enslaved Africans in Virginia
A recording from a webinar I moderated for the Netherlands American Foundation, with Leendert van der Valk and Vincent Tucker. https://vimeo.com/536451450
Schenectady Hatmaker, 1763
A page of an account book of a 1760s hatmaker in Schenectady, New York (fom the Winterthur Library, Delaware). A bunch of Dutch people ordering beaver hats for their big heads. In the 1760s, many people in Schenectady still spoke Dutch and even “wrote English with a Dutch accent” as it were.
Foreign Soldiers in the U.S. Civil War (Dutch, German, Danish, English, etc)
Last year, I and my two co-authors Anders Rasmussen and Robert Faith published an article (in the well-regarded Journal of American Ethnic History) about foreign-born men who were forced against their will into the Union army during the American Civil War. In 1862-1863, at the peak of “impressment” claims, over one thousand men complained that […]
Michael J Douma 