Firth Haring Fabend

I had not expected to find anything surprising in Firth Haring Fabend’s New Netherland in a Nutshell since I have already read everything I could find on New Netherland and the Dutch settlement of what would later be New York State. I have read translated legal records, personal accounts and other historical writings. Recommendations by Russell Shorto, New Netherland Institute and Charles Gehring were impressive, but really, what more was there to be said?

As it turned out, plenty. Immediately, or at least on page 8, the author got my attention by taking a deeper dive into the story of the Walloons. These forgotten people might have gotten top billing over the Pilgrims, or at least equal fame, if anyone else had documented who they were and why they were actually the very first group of European settlers in New Amsterdam. If history had played out differently, we might all speak French today and look back to Belgium, instead of England, as our original “mother country.” There is a wonderful inclusion in the book of most of the very complex characters, situations, and pivotal events in the tapestry of life that was New Netherland during the decades before and leading up to the English “conquest” of New Netherland. This great story is presented in short, manageable segments without overwhelming the casual reader.

The author takes the bare-bones skeleton framework of historical notes and fleshes them out, dressing them up for us in period costumes to complete the picture and dropping us back into that time and place. The wonderful addition of L.F. Tantillo works and other illustrations brings the reader completely into that early drama. This story, nearly forgotten by many Americans, is a fun and easy read, even more so since it echoes down through the centuries with too many of the same issues we are still facing today, four hundred years later.… (lisätietoja)

The family of the title are five generations of Harings descended from John Pietersen Haring, one of the patentees of the Tappan Patent. The author builds, not just a history of the Haring family, but a social history of the Dutch farming community in this New York/New Jersey border settlement. Topics explored include household and farming customs, wills and inheritances, the Dutch Reformed Church and its internal conflicts, and politics and government in the colonial and Revolutionary eras. The extensive end notes and bibliography are evidence of the author's thorough research in tax lists, wills and administrations, church records, and other archival sources. I don't (as far as I know) descend from the Haring family, but I do have Dutch ancestors who emigrated to New Netherland from Hoorn, just as John Pietersen Haring did. My Dutch American ancestors quite possibly lived very similar lives, and a careful analysis of Fabend's sources and conclusions may suggest potential sources and research strategies for pursuing my own family's history.… (lisätietoja)