Iron Mom Competition—New Netherland Version

New Amsterdam skyline circa 1653.

By Bob Ferris

I am sure that most are aware of the Ironman completions around the world or have seen strongman contests on TV or at the Scottish Games.  Well that is all fine, but what about something for women designed for women?  I think about this type of contest as I look at the challenges faced by women who were early European settlers on this continent.  Seems like they had to be tough and strong just like these modern-day, spandex-clad competitors but at the same time reproductively robust and a little crafty.  Although the natural tendency here would be to think immediately about Puritans and those of Mayflower origin, I think I will examine instead those settlers in New Netherland who often seem forgotten in this mix.  And isn’t that, after all, a female burden as well?

We tend to think that the early settlers in New Netherland were Dutch but many were not. A good portion of those coming to this section of the New World in the early to mid-1600s were Walloons or French-speaking Protestant refuges from the Spanish Netherlands or others with similar religious leanings who sought refuge in this area of modern-day Belgium or in the Netherlands.  Certainly we know them from their Dutch names but anyone who has looked at records of this type and from this time understands that Pierre can become Pieter or Petrus as easily as it can become Peter.

In scanning through the Ironbranches lineages for candidates from this time period (1600-1660) in the Dutch colony I come up with four semi-finalists: Adrienne Cuvellier, Catalyntje Trico, Penelope Van Princis and Aeltje Stryker.  These four come to mind because they were not only reproductively prodigious but they also brought a little something extra to their game.    

Contestant Number One: Adrienne Cuvellier (AKA Ariaentje Cuvilje)

We know a good bit about Adrienne but there is also some mystery as well as a little controversy with her.   We know, for instance, that she was born around 1589 northeast of Paris in the city of Valenciennes, France (Swan Valley) on the border of present-day Belgium.  She was a Walloon married first to Guleyn (Guillaume or William) Vigne in 1608 or 1610.   The couple and their children sailed to the New World in 1624 on one of two ships: Eendracht (Unity or Concord) or the Nieuw Nederland (1,2) .   We know too that they had a son named Jean (Jan).  But here is were it gets murky.  Jean was interviewed in 1679 and was thought to be 65 as well as being born in the colony.   

Why is this important?  If Jean was somehow born in the colony in 1614 while his parents were on a trading rather than settling trip then he would be the first Christian child born in New Netherlands.  And even if his age claim was a typo of sorts and he was born in 1624 when they landed, he still could claim that title if he was born before Sarah Jorise Rapalje (see below) who then would simply be the first female Christian child born in the New Netherland.  Either scenario could be true or neither.  We will never know.   

Adrienne had at least eight children which qualifies her for this version of the Iron Mom contest but what gives her true notoriety and “kicks” her into the semi-finals is her near Machiavellian political machinations and her sometimes gruesomely-rowdy side which seemed to emerge after her first husband died prior to 1632.  In that year she married Jan Jansen Damen who being born in 1607 was nearly twenty years her junior.  This seemed to be when the fun started.   

In New York Night: The Mystique and Its History by Mark Caldwell. 

It is hard to encapsulate the chaos of this time but perhaps it can be characterized as too much ambition, liquor and people in too small a space.  Our Adrienne clearly had a plan to marry her daughters off to men of power and influence and she wanted to keep them close with two of her married daughters—Christine and Maria—with their husbands and their children living in the newly-formed Vinge-Damen household.  Jan actually had to sue to remove his step-children from their home.  There were also stories of some drunken parties and more than one knife fight associated with this household. 

From here.

And by the 1640’s when then Director-General Kieft was in power and the Council of Twelve Men established to deal with the Indians Adrienne was married to one of the twelve (Damen) and her daughter Maria was married to another—Abraham Isaacsen Verplanck.  Sometime in this period, probably 1639, Adrienne’s sixteeen-year-old daughter Rachel married Cornelis Van Tienhoven the somewhat sleazy and always brutal Secretary of New Netherland.  Which leads us to the notorious Shrovetide Dinner mentioned above.  

"Van Tienhoven's mother in law [Ariaentje Cuvilje], forgetful of those finer feelings which do honor to her sex, amused herself, it is stated, in kicking about the heads of the dead men which had been brought in, as bloody trophies of that midnight slaughter” in "Ariaentje Cuvilje [Adrienne Cuvelier], Matriarch of New Amsterdam," by Herbert F. Seversmith, National Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 35 [1947], pp. 65-69.

What role Adrienne, or Ariaentje as she was then called, played in the Shrovetide Dinner is not noted but she was clearly in sympathy as she notoriously played soccer at Fort Amsterdam with a head or heads of Indians slain in this massacre catalyzed, in part, and led by her extended family in 1643.    The resultant, unpopular conflict from this action was known as Kieft’s War.  Kieft was eventually called home in 1647 to answer for his actions.  He died en-route and was replaced by Peter Stuyvesant.  

Although Adrienne had this “violently rebellious” streak she also evidently had good genes as she counts Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Edison as her descendants, along with us. Adrienne through her second husband Jan Damen was also the second European owner of the site of the future World Trade Center .   While married to Jan, Adrienne also owned part of a privateer with a crew of 50 men named La Garce (I have seen this translated as “The Wench” but also “The Bitchy Girl”).  This ship preyed on Spanish merchants sailing near the West Indies making Adrienne—at least for a three-year period—one-sixteenth Privateer of the Caribbean (Ha).  But karma and her son-in-law Cornelis were not kind to Adrienne in the end as her children were sued by the Dutch Reformed Church for non-payment of burial expenses.  Basically Van Tienhoven took the money and ran.  Or did he? His hat and cane we found next to the Hudson River and he was never seen again.

* Van Tienhoven was replaced by our ancestor Nicasius DeSille who was a soldier, statesman and poet.  

Contestant Number Two: Catalyntje (Catalina) Trico (Tricaud)

"M. de la Grange came with his wife to invite me to accompany them in their boat to the Wale Bocht, a place situated on Long Island, almost an hour's distance below the city, directly opposite Correlaers Hoeck...He had an old aunt and other friends living there...This aunt of de La Grange is an old Walloon woman from Valenciennes, seventy-four years old.  She is worldly minded, with mere bonte, living with her whole heart, as well as body, among her progeny, which now number 145 and soon will reach 150.  Nevertheless she lives alone by herself, a little apart from the others, having her little garden, and other conveniences, with which she helped herself..." From the diary of Jasper Danckaerts, a Labdist Thursday, 30 May 1680 writing about Catalina Trico.  

Catalyntje Trico was born in the Prisches Province of Flanders which is within walking distance from Valenciennes where her husband Joris (Jean or George) Rapalje (Raparielliet) was raised.  The two married in 1624 four days before boarding a ship for New Netherland.  Caralyntje and Joris are the parents of Sarah Jorise Rapalje at the very least the first Christian female born in  Netherland and ten other children.  Three of their children are our ancestors—Sarah, Jenetie and Daniel.  

Marriage Certificate for Joris and Catalyntje.

Catalyntje and Adrienne have a fair amount in common in that they gave birth soon after arriving in the New World, grew up in the same region, shared a religion and both their husbands were members of the Committee of Twelve Men.  But they seemed of different minds and temperments.  Joris, unlike Jan, was against waging preemptive war on the Indians.  This was tragically ironic as the only one of the Rapalje’s eleven children who did not marry was Jacob who was killed by Indians in 1643 when the war Joris opposed was raging.  She also steadfastly supported her illiterate husband acting as bookkeeper and recorder for the inn and taproom they ran.  

In 1646 after Jacob was killed the Rapaljes obtained a lot closer to the Fort Amsterdam.  The land was near the southeastern corner of the fort.

She also apparently stood up for her children.  There is a story that she got into an argument with Director-General Peter Minuit (the man who "bought" Manhattan) when he and some others ate a biscuit while she was with her young child working in the fields.  As the biscuit was intended for her young child she berated the hungry visitors.  Minuit reportedly asked her if she knew who he was and then apologized offering to give her a milk cow and the land to graze it on in recompense.  Doubt has been cast on this story because it was not believable because she would have known the Director-General. I am not absolutely sure that was the case because she and Joris started out at Fort Orange not New Amsterdam where this happened and Minuit was fairly newly arrived at this point. Speaking of children, Catalyntje and Joris are the ancestors of a pretty impressive group themselves including Humphrey Bogart, the Wright Brothers, Dewitt Clinton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Howard Dean, Tom Brokaw, Michael Douglas and Mary Cassatt.

A blow up of the above plat map shows the southeastern point of the fort touching the Rapalje's lot which is right next to their son-in-law's Hans Hansen's land. A rod is 16.5 feet or 5.5 yards.  You can also just see the plot of ancestor Isaac De Forest who is associated with the Stout line which follows. 

Contestant Number Three: Penelope Van Princis (Kent, Thompson, Van Prinzen, etc.)

Penelope Stout ever the subject of fact and fiction.

The woman who would become Penelope Stout and is known today as the Mother of Middleton or Monmouth is a heroic figure that emerges from the mists in a swirl of dates and names.  Most accept that she was born about 1622 and then married someone named Kent or Van Princis in or around 1640.  They sailed to the New World intent on reaching New Amsterdam but their ship grounded off the coast of present-day New Jersey near Sandy Hook.  Penelope stayed on the beach with her ill and incapacitated husband while the rest stuck off on foot to find New Amsterdam.  Her companions left quickly for fear of Indian attack.  It seems their fears were well-founded.

Accounts of what transpired vary.  We do know that the attacking Indians killed Penelope’s new husband and wounded her enough that they left her for dead.  Some accounts are graphic and others seem like they want to save people’s sensibilities.  But most indicate a head injury that could have included a fractured skull and partial scalping.  They also indicate a left shoulder injury serious enough to affect the future use of her arm and a slash to her abdomen that exposed her intestines.  And she was stripped naked.  Yet she crawled Hugh Bass-like (think The Revenant) to shelter in a hollow tree where she was eventually found after a week or so by at least one Indian with more friendly intensions who took her to his village where she recovered for a year before he took her the rest of the way to New Amsterdam for sale or reward. 

There are a lot of unknowns here.  Was Penelope Dutch or was she English having fled to the Netherlands because of her Baptist beliefs? What happened to the rest of her party and the crew?  Some sources say they were slaughtered.  What was the name of the Indian who saved her and his tribe?  And who took Penelope in when she eventually landed in New Amsterdam?  There are no answers to these questions so let’s shift gears.

Sometime in the 1630s in Burton Joyce, Nottinghamshire, England a young lad named Richard Eli Stout wanted to marry a woman that his father did not favor.  They argued and Richard ran away to sea.  He served in the British Navy for about seven years and in 1643 he ended up in New Amsterdam and became a member of that colony.  Richard met Penelope and they were soon married as their first child was born in 1645.  They settled at Gravesend on Long Island where they produced eight children (some say ten) before moving in the mid-1660s with a small group to New Jersey near the Indian village where Penelope recovered from her injuries.   Here they founded Middletown.  Of note the same Indian who rescued Penelope two decades before also warned their new town of a pending attack which they were able to to repulse.   

Penelope and Richard prospered here eventually garnering 1800 acres which they passed on to their children.  Richard, though illiterate, became a leader both militarily and in negotiations with the local Indians.  He passed on in 1705 at the age of about 90.  Penelope outlived her husband by nearly 30 years eventually taking her last breath at the age of 110 years surrounded by some of her nearly 500 descendants at that time.  From here she passed into legend with books being written, a commemorative coin and even a spot in the Sunday papers with a piece in Ripley’s Believe it or Not (with the wrong dates and questionable images).  

Contestant Number Four: Aeltje Strycker

Artist concept of what the Dutch Reformed Church in Midwout (Flatbush) would have looked like when Aeltje Strycker and Abraham Brinckerhoff were married there.  Jan Strycker was instrumental in getting the Church finished two years before they were wed.

When my soon-to-be wife first lived in Santa Barbara she rented a little apartment on a street called Brinckerhoff near the beach.  When she told me that it rang a tiny bell which I ignored at the time thinking it one family surname among hundreds.  It wasn’t until later when I started to study my Dutch antecedents that I realized that we had a lot of Brinckerhoffs in the mix.  And it all started in earnest for us in the New World pretty much with a young woman named Aeltje.    

Captain Jan Strycker painted by his brother Jacob or Jacobus  

Not much is known about Aeltje beyond key dates except that she was the daughter of Capt. Jan Strycker (above) a gunsmith and armorer who helped found Midwout (Middle Woods) which is now called Flatbush.  She was probably named for her paternal aunt and had more than nine children, possibly as many as eleven during her lifetime.  This production alone would not have earned her spot on this list except that we from this Ferris line descend from five of those Brinckerhoff children.  And just to make this more confusing and harder to document, two of those five offspring married the children of Sarah Joris Rapalje mentioned above.  

Aeltje married Abraham Brinckerhoff who was the son of Joris Brinckerhoff the first emigre of that name and spelling.  It is interesting to note that the Brinckerhoff's originally went to purchase land on Staten Island but when they visited the property to cut trees for a home Abraham's brother Dirck was shot with an arrow and killed. This was in 1643 during Kieft's War.  Following the episode the family sought safer land in Brooklyn in 1646 which put them nearer to Widwout (Flatbush) where Aeltje eventually lived.  

Aeltje lived for roughly 57 years but I believe they we full and interesting ones.  She came as a young girl from the Netherlands with her father following her uncle to New Amsterdam.  She was there for the founding of Midwout, the Peach Tree War, the finishing of the local church, and watched the fall of the colony as it was surrendered to England a handful of years after she was married.  Only her first born named for her father-in-law was born while her adopted land was still Dutch soil.  She and Abraham settled in Flushing to the northeast where they raised their family and ended their days.

The above reference to Capt. Jan Strycker illustrates further how all were connected as Aeltje's daughter Margret married Johannes Theodorus Polhemus' grandson Theodorus Van Wyck (see page 6). 

Who Would Win?

I vacillate in terms of favorites here.  My sense is that Adrienne wins the prize for toughest and also meanest, but when looking at Jan Jansen Damen and Cornelis Van Tienhoven I suspect that there might just have been plenty of mitigating circumstances.  But Adrienne would have a hard go on the toughness measure with Penelope.  And Penelope, Catalyntje, and Aeltje would all likely be neck and neck in a race for whose mitochondrial DNA was better represented in the current US population.  

It is not without meaning that these women all enhanced our Ferris line (Via Van Wyck, Douw, and Storm marriages) as Ferris means nothing more than iron (ferrous).  Our Ferris line is believed to be descendant from those who came from Normandy with William the Conquerer and were associated with horses and horseshoes (farriers). What do you think? Who is your favorite Iron Mom?