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De Hooges Memorandum Book The Memorandum Book of Anthony de Hooges _______ Translated by DIRK MOUW A Publication of the New Netherland Research Center and the New Netherland Institute 2012 ii ANTHONY DE HOOGES About the New Netherland Research Center and the New Netherland Institute The New Netherland Research Center is a partnership between the New York State Office of Cultural Education and the New Netherland Institute. Housed in the New York State Library, the Center supports research on the seventeenth century Dutch province of New Netherland, which was centered on New York’s Hudson Valley and extended from Connecticut to Delaware. Under Director Dr. Charles Gehring and Assistant Director Dr. Janny Venema, it continues the work of the New Netherland Project, which since 1974 has translated Dutch era documents held by the New York State Library and the New York State Archives. Visit the New Netherland Research Center online at www.nysl.nysed.gov/newnetherland/. The New Netherland Institute is an independent nonprofit organization supporting research and education in Dutch-American history. For over three decades, the Institute and its predecessor organization the Friends of New Netherland have supported the translation of New York’s Dutch era documents by the New Netherland Project. Through a three-year matching grant from the State of the Netherlands, the Institute now undertakes financial and programmatic support of the New Netherland Research Center. The Institute relies heavily on its members to fulfill this mission. Interested parties can learn more about the Institute’s programs and how to join at www.newnetherlandinstitute.org. MEMORANDUM BOOK iii Contents Acknowledgments iv Introduction v A Copy of Various Acts and Other Noteworthy Memoranda [A-Series] 1 Memoranda and Lists of the Tithe and the Third-Share and the Numbers of Livestock [B-Series] 84 Index of Personal Names 116 iv ANTHONY DE HOOGES Acknowledgments I wish to express my gratitude to Charles Gehring and Janny Venema for their comments, advice and assistance with this project. Their generosity with their time and energies, combined with their vast knowledge and understanding of the relevant history, historiography and language account for numerous improvements to both the introduction and the translation. Any errors or omissions, however, remain my responsibility. I am also grateful to the faculty and Board of Trustees of the New Netherland Institute for offering me this opportunity. Last, I would like to acknowledge the excellent work of Dutch scholars, Gijs Boink and Tom Weterings, who transcribed Anthony de Hooges’s handwriting with great care and skill. The faculty and staff of the New Netherland Institute and the New Netherland Research Center also recognize the generosity of the Kingdom of the Netherlands—in particular the Dutch Embassy in Washington D.C. and the Dutch Consulate in New York City—as well as members of the Board of Trustees of the New Netherland Institute and the New Netherland Research Center and the New York State Department of Education, Office of Cultural Education in Albany, for providing the resources necessary for the completion of this project. Introduction Dirk Mouw Anthony de Hooges was born near the epicenter of the Dutch commercial empire of the seventeenth century; he died, thousands of miles from his birthplace, having spent nearly all of his adult life in service to what one historian has called an “audacious” attempt at colonization, namely, the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck. De Hooges’s life and family history captured the imagination of previous generations of researchers. In fact, one such researcher went so far as to proclaim that there was “probably no more picturesque a personality in all the colonial records.” In recent decades, however, De Hooges has received remarkably little direct attention from historians. This is especially surprising because he was the longest-serving commissioned employee of the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck under Dutch Rule, as well as because his tenure encompassed both some of the best years for the patroonship and some of its most spectacular setbacks.1 Anthony de Hooges was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam on 14 December 1620, the eighth and last child born to Johannes de Hooges2 and Maria Tijron.3 Both of Anthony’s parents were probably Calvinist immigrants from the Southern Netherlands (likely from Mechelen and Antwerp, respectively, in what is now Belgium). The family was evidently solidly middle class: Johannes worked as a bookkeeper for the West India Company and was a shareholder in that company as well.4 Tragedy struck the De Hooges family during Anthony’s first few years of life. Indeed, tragedy struck repeatedly. His mother died when Anthony was very young, probably before his third birthday. Shortly after Anthony’s fourth birthday, his father died as well. The absence of references to any siblings in surviving documents of a later date, written to, by or about the orphaned Anthony suggests that all of his seven siblings also died early in his life. It is likely that at least some of the members of his immediate family succumbed to the plague which is estimated to have claimed eleven percent or more of Amsterdam’s population in 1624 and to have taken a smaller but still devastating human toll the following year. Whatever the causes of their deaths, the trauma of these years seems to have haunted 1 For an introduction to the growth of, and setbacks to the colony during his tenure, see Arnold J. F. Van Laer, "The Patroon System and the Colony of Rensselaerswyck," Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association 8 (1909): 231-32. Quotes are from Tom Lewis, The Hudson: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 65; Helen Reed De Laporte, "Anthonij de Hooges, a Charming Personality," Olde Ulster 6 (1910): 240. 2 His name is written variously in the records; his first name appears as Johannes, Johannus, Johannis, Joannes, and Jan; his family name as Hooges, Hoogus, Hoges. 3 Her name appears variously in contemporary records; her first name as Maria, Marija, Maijke, and Mayken; her family name as Tijron, Tiron and even Tijvon. The record of Anthony’s baptism is in Archief van de Burgerlijke Stand: doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken van Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, inv. no. 5001, item 40, p. 109. The baptisms of his siblings are found in the same collection: Johannis, 1 February 1609 (item 39, p. 176); Katharijna, 11 August 1611 (item 4, p. 358); Petrus, 28 May 1613 (item 39, p. 319); Marija, 9 October 1614 (item 5, p. 119), Anna, 22 May 1616 (item 5, p. 186), Leonora, 11 July 1617 (item 39, p. 477), and Margriet, 24 March 1619 (item 5, p. 279). 4 Archief van de Weeskamer en Commissie van Liquidatie der Zaken van Voormalige Weeskamer, Stadsarchief, Amsterdam, Inbrengregisters, 13 May 1626, inv. no. 791, folio 48. Johannes de Hooges [Hoges] invested six hundred guilders not long before his death; in the index of Amsterdam investors in the Chartered West India Company his occupation is given as “bookkeeper” (Kapitaalboek van aandelen, 1623-1626, Oude West-Indische Compagnie (toegangs no. 1.05.01.01, inventaris no. 18B, folio 149, Nationaal Archief, Den Haag; the digital index can be accessed at http://proxy.handle.net/10648/316b4180-557e-102d-9037-005056a23d00). vi ANTHONY DE HOOGES Anthony throughout his life. Each of his children shared a name with one of his late siblings and two also shared names with his parents, including the one born shortly before Anthony’s own death.5 After the death of Anthony’s parents, many of the people who appear in the records as surrogate family and close friends of the orphan were people connected either to the West India Company or the Van Rensselaer family or to both. A few others were from families which, like Anthony’s parents, had immigrated from the Southern Netherlands to Amsterdam. Shortly after Anthony was orphaned, it was Jan van Wely, the Amsterdam jeweler and member of a family closely associated with the Van Rensselaers, who was named in the records of the Amsterdam Orphan Chamber6 as De Hooges’s testamentary guardian, along with Pieter Stalpaert, a landscape and seascape painter from Brussels (and father of the well-known Amsterdam architect, Daniël Staelpert) and Abraham [de] Walpergen, Pieter Stalpaert’s uncle by marriage. 7 Sixteen years later, in 1621, De Hooges—by that time a young man and evidently in a pensive mood on the eve of his voyage to the New World—reflected on the “certainty of death, as well as the uncertainty of the hour” at which death would overtake him. De Hooges decided to make out a will. He directed that, in the event of his demise, 150 guilders of his assets go to Anna Maria Sporon, a young woman was De Hooges’s “sweetheart,” according to Kiliaen van Rensselaer; another 150 guilders was to go to Jan Andriesz, schoemaecker [cobbler], a man who had invested in the West India Company not long before Anthony’s father had. The remainder of his estate he left, “for certain reasons which moved him,” to Thomas, the son of De Hooges’s erstwhile guardian, Jan van Wely or, if Thomas predeceased De Hooges, to Thomas’s child or children.8 One week after recording his will, De Hooges boarded a ship bound for New Netherland. That a young man like De Hooges would choose to live and work in a West India Company colony over the conveniences of the metropolis of Amsterdam is not entirely surprising. First, he was a young, single man with few attachments in the Old World, or at least no close kin; this was a common profile among seventeenth-century emigrants to many of Europe’s colonies.
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