The Story of New Netherland/Chapter 10

by William Elliot Griffis

TO find the home of the successful planters of the northern and best part of New Netherland, we must look across the Zuyder Zee, in Guelderland. Here at Nijkerk, or near by, lived the van Rensselaers, van Curlers, van Twillers, van Schlechtenhorsts, and other families, who sent their young men and women as pioneers to our shores. From this ancient home came scores of the ancestors of the people of the Empire State. These hardy sons and daughters of the Dutch Republic were true Argonauts. They sailed away to cover the soil of the New Netherland with a golden fleece.

The origin of Nijkerk, which means New Church, is not fully known, but its story we learn from Arend van Schlechtenhorst's "History of Gelderland," from page 107 and onward. This author, who wrote his history in 1649, was a kinsman of Brandt van Schlechtenhorst, commissary at Rensselaerwijk, from 1647 to 1652, who acquired Katskill, Claverack, and the site of the future city of Troy for his patroon, in whose name, also, he withstood Stuyvesant, and by him was made prisoner.

Perhaps Nijkerk got its name when the darkness of paganism had so far lifted that a Christian house of worship was built here, A. D. 1222. It was given municipal rights in 1113, and fortified with gates and walls, of which there are now no trace. In the mediæval wars it was several times besieged and plundered by border ruffians and militant bishops. After so many people left it for the New Netherland, Nijkerk dwindled to a village, hut in 1808 was elevated to the rank of a city by King Louis Bonaparte.

In the Middle Ages, forests covered not only Holland (wood-land), but most of the Netherlands. Then deer were plentiful, and the place called Rensselaer meant the deer's hiding-place, or the stag's lair. The estate, which lies about three miles south of Nijkerk, was given for service in war and. thus became a Riddergoed, that is, a manor, or knight's property. Its ownership conferred a title upon the head of the family, and also called for military service of the tenants in support of the lord, or patroon. Thus the name Van Rensselaer means "from the deer's lair." The family has died out in the Netherlands, and the ancient manor house now belongs to a farmer. The last of the name was buried at Nijkerk, April 11, 1819. The weathervanes on the gabled houses of the old estate long bore the crest of the van Rensselaers. In the struggle for independence from Spain not a few of the men gave their lives for their country. Other names in Nijkerk church and cemeteries are the same as those we read on the gravestones in Schenectady, Kingston, Yonkers, and Tarrytown.

One might as well attempt to write the history of Japan and leave out Mikadoism as to essay the story of Netherland, either Old or New, and ignore the Reformed Church, for the Church was before the State, and the Reformation preceded the Republic. When the rule of universal spiritual government from one city in Italy was abolished, national churches sprang up. Instead of prayers in Latin, the new worship and praise were enjoyed in the people's own language. At the same time the customs in daily life and on Sunday were changed, and the Bible in the language of home became a household book.

The Reformation came to Nijkerk in 1593. Before that time, church and worship were in harmony with the spectacular features of feudalism, and were very impressive to the eye, ear, and to the senses generally. Incense, lights, vestments, and genuflections gave way to a much simpler ritual, consisting of prayer, psalm-singing, Bible-reading, and the sermon instead of the mass. The church interior was made almost bald in its plainness.

Economic, educational, and political improvements gave the Netherlands modern statehood. Most striking was the new system of popular education. The public schools were separated from the Church, though much of the teaching was still doctrinal or religious.

The Van Rensselaer tomb in Nijkerk Church

Nijkerk was a typical Dutch town. What went on here was accomplished, sooner or later, in every community in the Republic. We thus learn what habits and ideas the emigrants brought to New Netherland, better than from any modern authors or after-dinner speeches. Instruction in the public schools sustained by taxation was free to all children, girls as well as boys, until the ago of twelve. At Harderwijk, a few miles distant, Dutch, French, German, and Latin were taught at the High School, founded in 1375, and given a new edifice in 1614. At Nijkerk, the common branches, reading, writing, and arithmetic, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, or the Twelve Articles of the Christian Faith, prayers, catechism, music, singing, and manners were taught. Meals were eaten early. School began at six o'clock in summer and seven in winter, and the hours of instruction were from six to eight, nine to ten, twelve to two, and three to four; plenty of play alternating with work in school. On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons there was holiday from one o'clock.

We shall hear further of the New Church folk in America, for hundreds of them came to settle on the enormously large van Rensselaer manor and in the Mohawk Valley - and elsewhere. More than any other place in the old country, does Nijkerk deserve to be called the mother town of New York State. More Americans of Dutch descent are descended from the Guelderland emigrants than from those hailing from any other community in Patria. Furthermore, the two men who embodied antagonistic ideas, the Old World notion of feudalism and the principle to which the New World is consecrated, — full personal freedom, — were natives of Nijkerk. They were Kilian van Rensselaer and Arendt van Curler.

Other folks from the New Church town, who became famous in the cradle days of the Empire State, will be spoken of hereafter, in the proper place. The van Twillers, the van Rensselaers, and the van Curlers intermarried during many generations, and on the 9th of March, 1656, in the fine old church, already rich in organ and sculptured tombs, was placed a "storied window richly dight," containing the names and the coats-of-arms of the three families. This custom, of presenting stained-glass windows containing the family arms, by patroons and prominent families, was a very ancient one, and was afterward continued in the American Dutch Reformed churches, "after the manner of Patria."

The good people of Nijkerk were diligent, industrious, and fond of the Church and the market. They hated laziness and dirt as the worst forms of original sin. They loved schools and genuine religion, alternated work with play, and were ready for what the world might bring them. They turned to the right, as their statute law and that of most Dutch towns then did direct and still does direct.

The ruts of their wagons, after long litigation and through the influence of New York State, have become the gauge of standard width in the United States, bringing order out of confusion. They set the gable end of their houses fronting the street so that they might save the rain water for washing and that the snow in winter might fall into their own yards, and not on the people in the streets. They enjoyed, with abounding delight of body and soul, even as they rigidly observed, the Kermiss, New Year's Day, Easter, Whitsuntide, and other holy anniversaries and seasons, closing the twelfth month with two festivals, one of St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, on December 6, and the other of Christmas, on December 25.

At church they always gave money in two collections, which were taken up by the deacons in velvet bags hitched to the end of long poles. They worshiped in a two-hour morning service, and were scandalized if it were shorter. They listened to the hour-long sermon, delivered in two parts, didactic and practical, and invariably divided by a collection in between. Of the two almsgivings, one was for the Church, the other for the poor. They fed and dressed comfortably. When born, they were baptized at the font in the church. When mature, they were married in their homes, taking up a collection for the poor. At the communion table, they were cheered and warned in the words of the noble liturgy of the Reformed Church, duly established in the Netherlands in 1568, and soon growing by expansion in other lands and continents.

There were scores of Dutch churches in Asia, Africa, the West Indies, and South America, long before there was one organized in New Netherland, in 1628. These were governed by a consistory composed of the reverend Domine, elders, and deacons, and further officered by a fore-singer, Scripture-reader, Comforter of the sick, or churchmaster, one and all, as the case might be, or, as in some instances, with every one of these officers. In Dutch Formosa was the largest foreign missionary station then known to any national or free church in Europe, and the first, on a great scale, in modern times. The Classis of Amsterdam was in itself the greatest missionary society in Europe, and, in fact, the general agent of Protestant Europe, and helped many thousands of people, British, German, French, and Walloon, besides Netherlanders, to get to America.

I enjoyed none of my many rambles in the Netherlands, during seven visits, more than when I visited Guelderland and the Nijkerk neighborhood. There I saw more intimately, and visited oftener than elsewhere, the homes of the peasantry and the common people, noticing how, in the Mohawk and Hudson valleys, the first settlers copied the models of the home land, in house, church, customs, speech, and, at first, even in costume, footgear and headgear, any curious notions.

In the twentieth century Nijkerk has a population of 8124. We may sum up what Terwen said, in his three-volume album of The Kingdom of the Netherlands, rich in steel plates, published a generation or two ago: —

"Nijkerk lies in the midst of tobacco lands, pretty gardens, and grainfields, three fourths of an hour’s walk from the Zuyder Zee, with which it has communication by means of a good harbor. It is two hours [as the pipe is smoked, or the feet can carry one] northeast of Amersfoort, on the streetway from that city to Harderwijk and Zwolle."

In Amersfoort was born John of Barnoveld, and in Zwolle lived Thomas à Kempis, and Baron van der Capellen, whose ancestor was a patroon on Staten Island, and who was himself our generous friend in the Revolution, to whose honor and memory, on June 6, 1908, the Holland Society of New York reared a noble bronze tablet.

Nijkerk is moderately large in its compass, and possesses fourteen streets, a free Reformed church on the Holker Street, with an unusually fine organ and a handsome clock tower with chimes and dial; a Roman Catholic church, with tower and organ; a church of the Seceders (Christian Reformed, now numerous in Iowa, Dakota, and Michigan); and two synagogues, of which only one is used. Besides these, are the very imposing new edifice, the Reformed Church Hospital, and a Home for Old Men and Women, with a building for the Roman Catholic church community and carried on by Sisters of Mercy, good provision for public instruction, and methods for the prevention of beggary, etc. In the neighborhood lies the free open space of Salenstein. To-day, alert, clean, bright, with all modern equipments, Nijkerk enjoys daily communication with the outer world by means of post, telegraph, telephone, bicycles, automobiles, and seventy railway trains daily.

Such are the usual features of a typical Dutch town, showing ample provision for worship, benevolence, recreation, and industry, and all these were established from times remote. Here are the markets for the sale of fish, cattle, vegetables and grain, live stock of various sorts, cheese, and the products of the cow. All around are the evidences of that human toil which, after a thousand years of labor, has made a garden of the old sea-bottom, over which fish used to feed and disport themselves.

Until both Orient and Occident revealed their mysteries, neither pipes nor potatoes, tea nor coffee, sugar nor cheap spices were known in Nijkerk. A new social era dawned comparatively late in the seventeenth century, when American tobacco, the Arabian bean, the Chinese leaf, and the Indian tuber were brought to "the dorp." The fried or baked potato, dipped in gravy, eked out the midday meal, and the earthen coffee-pot simmered at the window to cheer the tailor, unloosen the tongue, and tap this social virtues. In time, that is, in the eighteenth century, the Delft ware on the dresser and tiles at the chimney side were common enough. Tobacco smoking, never at first allowed in the house, became the luxury of the men as they sat on the side seat of the front door "stoep," that is, the step, or porchway; but all these novelties were long after the time of Henry Hudson. Most of them were next to unknown until after 1650. Emigration to New Netherland occupied scarcely forty years, beginning in 1623 and ceasing in 1663.

Happy was it for Kilian van Rensselaer, the Patroon of Guelderland's mediæval acres, that, when he wanted to create a principality in the New World, his long and happy acquaintance with the sons of the soil and daughters of his neighbors enabled him to draw upon a reserve of sturdy young manhood and womanhood. There is a reason why the manor of Rensselaerwijk was the only successful one in New Netherland.

It may be that some of van Rensselaer's appointments to office — as when he raised his nephew, Walter van Twiller, from being a clerk in the West India Company's counting-house to be the Director-General of New Netherland — were not happy. Yet most of those selected by him, young as they were, made an excellent record in the New World. Chief of these was the immortal Arendt van Curler, whose name the Indians made the title for governors, kings, and emperors.