Random History Bytes 141: Adriaen van der Donck 2

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John H. Yates

Last Update: Wed Jun 21 08:22 EDT 2023

Random History Bytes 141: Adriaen van der Donck 2
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Adrian Van der Donck (c.1618-1655) was a Dutchman of extraordinary abilities who cast an enduring democratic shadow in New Amsterdam (now New York City) in New Netherland, during the colonization of America. (His possible portrait is found on his Wikipedia page). The title of a biography about him by J. van den Hout, Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America 1, is an apt description.

Van der Donck was born ca. 1618 in Breda, Netherlands. His maternal grandfather, Adriaen van Bergen, was a Dutch hero in Breda for carrying out a Trojan horse style maneuver using a peat boat with soldiers hidden beneath the peat to recapture Breda from the Spanish during war. 2 Decades later the family still had stature from this.

In 1638, Adriaen began studying law in Leiden at age 20. In 1641 he graduated as a "jurist", an authority on Roman-Dutch law. 3 This was when Willem Kieft of the Dutch West India Company (WIC). was Director of New Netherland. The Dutch Republic had granted the WIC a charter for a trade monopoly in New Netherland, among other places. This gave them the rights of trade and colonization, and the Directors ruled with an iron hand, focusing on profit above all else. The Director also ruled the settlement of New Amsterdam in New Netherland.

The Dutch Republic also began deeding land to patroons, wealthy and connected investors who made agreements to colonize the patroonship with settlers, under a manor system, for profit. Kiliaen van Rensselaer, a diamond and pearl merchant in Amsterdam, established the patroonship of Rensselaerswyck which was on the Hudson River where Albany, New York is today, and included land that is now part of Albany and Rensselaer counties.

Van der Donck was adventurous, desiring to go to the new world, and wrote to Van Rensselaer asking for a position at Rensselaerswyck, in farming. Van Rensselaer was interested in his law background, and hired him as schout, which was essentially sheriff and prosecutor for the colony of Rensselaerswyck. 4

In 1641, Van der Donck boarded Den Eyckenboom ("The Oak Tree") bound for New Amsterdam. 5

Endnotes:
1 J. van den Hout, Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America (Albany, New York: State University of New York, 2018).
2 Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, 2005), 94-95. First published in hardcover in 2004.
3 Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World, 93-100.
4 Van den Hout, Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America, 26.
5 Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World, 103-104.