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View of New Amsterdam, 1665, Nationaal Archief. Left of the centre the beacon, then the gallows, the church and the windmill. Click here for a larger view.
As we have seen, settlers in New Netherland came from all over the world, but particularly from Western Europe and West Africa. Those from Western Europe were mainly Dutch, Flemings, Walloons, Germans, Scandinavians, French, Scottish and Irish. Most of the people from Africa probably came to the New World involuntarily - that is, as slaves. Sometimes they can be identified in the lists by family names such as ‘d’Angola’ or ‘Van de Caep’. The records show that after some time these Africans included many freedmen who had their own organisations; for instance, there are frequent references to the ‘captain of the free negroes’. When the WIC colony of Brazil was retaken by the Portuguese in 1654, 23 Jewish people came to New Netherland that year and more followed in subsequent years.
Three main groups can be distinguished among the Christians in New Netherland: Calvinists, Lutherans and Catholics. It seems that the first two groups were very much in the majority, but some Catholics must also have settled in the colony.
While a considerable degree of freedom of religion prevailed in the Dutch Republic, Catholics were not permitted to hold their services openly. However, in practice there were Catholic congregations who attended Mass in clandestine churches; sometimes a whole church was concealed behind the walls of a house. There was quite a lot of tolerance provided the services were not held openly and public order was not threatened. Governor Stuyvesant was a very orthodox man who really wanted to allow only the Dutch form of Calvinism in the colony – which was quite a different attitude than that usually taken in the Republic. Stuyvesant also prohibited Jews from buying land ‘for compelling reasons’. In the long run he was unable to enforce either the restriction to Calvinism or the restrictions imposed on the Jews. The Jews even appealed to the Republic and the Jewish community in Amsterdam. On 20 April 1657 New Amsterdam granted freedom of religion to its residents.
The first Calvinist religious services were probably held by laymen as ziekentroosters (‘comforters of the sick’) and voorlezers (‘clerks’). The first dominee (‘preacher’) arrived on 7 April 1628. This signalled the beginning of the oldest surviving Protestant church in America. In 1633 the first church building was erected in Manhattan. As the population grew, more churches were added and the religion spread beyond Manhattan. In 1696 the congregation in New York requested and was granted a charter by King William III. This document protected the church from the influence of the English church, made it a corporation and established its right to buy and sell property. The church in question still exists today as the Collegiate Church of New York, which is part of the Reformed Church in America (www.rca.org).
As early as in 1625, that is, before there was a dominee, the first child was baptised in the congregation. Unfortunately no baptismal or marriage records have survived from those early years, but from 1639 onwards there are practically uninterrupted series of baptismal and marriage certificates, which are now also included in Genlias.
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