a.k.a. V.J.

Growing up, I was always told that my mother’s mother was part Dutch. Nobody knew any names or details associated with this supposed Dutch ancestry, but this family lore was passed down and accepted as fact.

Years later, I started delving into genealogy, focused on learning about my English and German roots, and also exploring a similarly unsubstantiated claim my father used to make about us having some Irish blood. At that point, I barely even remembered the possibility of Dutch roots. Despite not really looking too hard in that direction on the family tree, my research soon identified a Dutch surname — Vanderwarker — in my maternal grandmother’s line. When I started pulling on that string, it led all the way back to some of the 17th-century colonial settlers of what is now Albany but was then called Fort Orange.

That discovery intrigued me on several levels. For one thing, it verified that my mother had been right all along. (It turns out Dad was also right about the Irish thing. I guess there’s something to be said for vague family oral history.) It also meant that my family’s roots in New York went back a couple centuries earlier than I had always assumed; all the way back to some of the earliest Europeans to live along the Hudson River. That last point changed my whole perspective on the history of this state. To the extent that the Dutch colony of New Netherland is talked about at all in popular history, it’s treated as a brief curiosity — a quaint blip in the timeline before the English chased off Peter Stuyvesant and inevitably consolidated their power over the entire East Coast. I had largely bought into that narrative myself, but after learning that I shared some DNA with those early Dutch settlers, I was less willing to write them off as just the Microsoft Zune of European imperialism.

I haven’t read as much about New Netherland as I’d like, but I did recently discover a very good history podcast called The Other States of America that offers some in-depth insights about the colony, as well as other under-discussed topics like New France, New Sweden, and the Haudenosaunee. I had been delving into that podcast when I found out that I’d be spending a day in Albany and was inspired to take a side-excursion to stand on the same ground my ancestors once did in Fort Orange.

Not surprisingly, there isn’t much in the way of remaining physical traces of the old Dutch colony all these centuries later. There are some historical markers (and I do love a good historical marker) pointing out the location where the fort once stood and explaining the fur trade that served as the backbone of Fort Orange’s economy.

The markers were nice, but they left me wanting more. I don’t make it out to the Hudson Valley very often, but the next time I’m in the area, I’ll probably try to track down some more echoes of New Netherland. Until then, I can only conclude by saying: Let’s go Orange!