Dutch heritage in Hudson Valley/Upstate New York

[Q44]

I posted above about our town of Kinderhook which is Dutch for "Children's corner", then I realized just how many of the other towns in Columbia County are Dutch in origin. We have Valatie, Ghent, and Claverack as well as Stuyvesant. The bridge over the Hudson is named after Rip Van Winkle.

[ContraPagan]

Originally Posted by 987ABC

Zee is a Dutch word for sea or ocean. The Hudson River where the Tappan Zee Bridge spans is 3 miles wide and tidal and brackish. So it appears to be more of a "sea" and not a river. The Dutch called this the Tappan Zee, meaning the Tappan Sea. Tappan being the name of an Indian tribe that lived in that area.

All the more reason NOT to change the name of the bridge!!!!!!!!! It had NOTHING to do with the Cuomo family or anyone else of Italian heritage!!

[CookieSkoon]

Here in the central southern tier and the Finger Lakes, Dutch influence is still alive. Both in family heritage and through Mennonite and Amish population.

[oihamad]

The Amish and Mennonites are of Southwest German and Swiss origin. The term Pennsylvania Dutch is an English corruption of Deutsch, the German word for German. Most Dutch settlers from the Netherlands in Colonial New York and later 19th Century Dutch immigrants in Western Michigan and Iowa were Reformed Christians, though I believe some of the later immigrants were Catholics also. The Reformed tradition and Mennonite tradition come from very different branches of the Reformation, the Reformed Church in the Netherlands deriving from the Calvinist theology which emphasized the need for believers to participate in Society whereas the Mennonites derived from a Pietist theology which emphasized separation from society.

[ki0eh]

One thing I find fascinating to understand a rural area is to identify the denomination of the "little country churches." I had a girlfriend from rural Albany County who thought all small churches were Reformed. But in Cortland (a corrupted form of the name of the Lieutenant Governor when the county was formed in 1808) and Tompkins counties, there aren't any. The "little country churches" there instead are Methodist or UCC (formerly Congregational), since the early Euro-American settlers were New Englanders vs. from eastern NY.

Also, a couple of more recent Presidents (than Martin Van Buren) from NY State, had Dutch heritage. Home | The Roosevelts | PBS

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by ABQConvict

The Dutch culture is very close to the English, so Dutch settlers and their descendants assimilated within a generation or two.

But not before adding several important everyday words:

cookie

stoop

boss

booze

bumpkin

cruise

dapper

gruff

kink

...and many, many more.

Also, architectural styles and the ubiquitous Dutch place names that pepper the state. Of course there are many Dutch family names continued through the descent of the Dutch settlers, throughout the state, as well.

And as mentioned above, the Dutch Reformed Church (now often referred to simple as the Reformed Church) is still a common sight in many parts of New York.

The Dutch Reformed Church is now mostly known as the denomination called The Reformed Church of America, RCA for short. There is a splinter denomination called The Christian Reformed Church based on some dispute of doctrine. I grew up in the RCA in a small town (in NJ) that had both. Of course the members of the other were going to Hell. Hehehe.

The African-American abolitionist Sojourner Truth was first owned by a Dutch farmer in upstate New York, and she only spoke Dutch until she was about 12 and sold to an English-speaking family.

Everybody knows that Nieuw Amsterdam became New York City, but even though OP seems more interested in the upstate Dutch, Russell Shorto's excellent book The Island At The Center of The World, about the Dutch colony that became NYC expands outside the history of the city itself and up into Albany (Fort Orange), and even more significant, the Iroquois influence on the government of the Dutch colony and ultimately, the United States.

https://www.amazon.com/Island-Center...r+of+the+world

And then, if you feel like going south a bit, don't forget that the Dutch also settled northern New Jersey, where the "Jersey Dutch" dialect, a mix of Dutch, English, and aboriginal languages, survived into the 20th century.

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by 987ABC

Another lasting legacy of the Dutch is that they referred to the Hudson (at least the tidal southern part) to be the North River, and they called the Delaware River the South River. We have long ago dropped North River as a name for the Hudson, but its legacy still exists in the many things that bear "north river" in their name. I think that "north river" lasted longer in a navigational context. The Mohawk and the Hudson meet to form a much larger waterway called .... the Hudson (somewhere near Albany and Troy). It probably made more sense (and still does today I guess) to have the merged waterway bear a different name, because its characteristics are different south of the merge.

Glad to see someone else knows this. It is still used in some cases.

Remember when the pilot "Sully" landed the plane in the Hudson after a bird strike shortly after taking off from LaGuardia? In a documentary, if you listen to the radio broadcasts from the ferries that rescued the passengers, you can hear them call, "Airplane down in the North River!"

[The13th]

Brooklyn may be too far south for the parameters of this thread, but I was recently at the NY Aquarium and read a placard that Coney Island might have been named after the Dutch word for rabbits. From Wikipedia:

The first documented European name for the island is the Dutch name Conyne Eylandt, or Konijn Eiland using modern Dutch spelling, meaning Rabbit Island. The name was anglicized to Coney Island after the English took over the colony in 1664, coney being the corresponding English word.

[2ner]

Originally Posted by oihamad

I am a Graduate Student in History in North Carolina. Knowing that the Dutch in the 17th Century were the first Europeans to colonize/establish a major foothold in what became the Colony and later State of New York, I am curious if there are any areas of Upstate New York or the Hudson River Valley where Dutch Culture, the Dutch Language, and the Dutch Reformed Church maintained a significant influence or continue to be present? I posted a similar thread in the Massachusetts forum concerning New England Yankee Culture as I am interested generally in the continuity of regional/historical cultures in the USA and worldwide (where I live in Raleigh, North Carolina Southern Culture is slowly but surely diminishing). Any responses would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Omar

Colonie is a suburb of Albany. Colonie (or kolonie in modern Dutch) means 'colony' (not too hard to decipher). I went to school (in Maine) with a kid named Stuyvesant. He said his family was from among the original Dutch settlers along the Hudson. He was very proud of this.

In Kingston, there's an old Dutch Reformed Church. Inside, there are commemorative writings along the walls... with many Dutch family names of former members. If I remember correctly, there are also some headstones in the cemetery written in Dutch.

If you drive up I-87 from NYC to Montreal, you will pass over many rivers ending in 'kill'. In the Adirondacks, there's a Vanderwacker mountain.

Others in this thread have mentioned NYC, so I will add to that discussion. If the Puritans had settled Manhattan instead of the Dutch, NYC would not be. The Dutch in New Amsterdam were free-wheeling, money-making business people and traders. They controlled the slave trade to the Southern colonies for a while, for example. They were there to make money. The New England Puritans were less 'worldly' minded. Broadway was originally named Breede Weg (literally, 'Broad Way').

The Dutch got a bad deal from the English, IMO, but the English respected the freedom of (and from) religion that the Dutch settlers had in their colony... which laid the foundation for modern New York. I've been to Suriname. A lovely place, but still a bad deal.

[slowlane3]

Former U.S. Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, was a rare example of someone descended from original Dutch settlers who remained living in Brooklyn long after it was overwhelmed with immigrants of other origins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Everett_Koop