Category New York History
Book Presentation: Netherlands-America Foundation (April 25, 2025)
For details and to reserve a seat: https://thenaf.org/event/naf-washington-dc-michael-douma-presents-the-slow-death-of-slavery-in-dutch-new-york/
A White Solomon Northrup? The Barnhart Case in Cattaraugus, NY
Scanning through some digital newspaper databases, I came across the following curious story, originally printed in the Buffalo Courier Express of March 24, 1857. I could not access that newspaper, but other newspapers copied and re-printed the story, in part or in full. The title was typically “A MOHAWK DUTCHMAN IN SLAVERY,” but sometimes it […]
A New Netherlander, or the First New Yorker (?) in Japan
I’ve always been interested in the explorers on the fringe (pun intended) of history. There is Pytheas the Greek, for example, who may have circumnavigated the British Isles in 325 B.C., and then there might have been a Minorite Friar from England who visited Norse Vinland in the 14th century. Had the records of these […]
New York slavery in De Groene Amsterdammer
My research on Dutch slavery in New York was recently referenced multiple times in an article in the popular Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer. The writer, Leendert Van der Valk, has done a tremendous job of bringing early Dutch colonial American history to the modern Dutch public. More than just relating the stories of other […]
Review of Philip Dröge, De Tawl: Hoe de Nederlandse taal (bijna) Amerika veroverde, Spectrum, Amsterdam, 2023.
Over at Low-countries.com, I published a review of a new book about the Dutch language in America. The English version is already up here: https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/colonial-echoes-when-americans-spoke-dutch and a Dutch version of this review will appear soon in De Lage Landen magazine.
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 […]
How old? Claims for Superannutated, Centenarian, and Super-Centenarian Ex-Slaves
If you search for articles on “ex-slave centenarians” you will discover many claims of formerly enslaved people who lived not only to 100, but much longer. In 1981, William Pinckey of Prince George’s County, Maryland, claimed to be 118, and had been born a slave. Not to be outdone, Philadelphia’s Mary McDonla claimed to be 135 […]
Michael J Douma 