Identifying religions in New Amsterdam

And yet more scholarship on the matter:

The Strange Story of Job Ben Solomon, Arthur Pierce Middleton
The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Jul., 1948), pp. 342-350

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1923463

and:

Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, the Son of Solomon, the High Priest of Boonda in Africa; Who was a Slave About Two Years in Maryland; and Afterwards Being Brought to England, was Set Free, and Sent to His Native Land in the Year 1734, Thomas Bluett

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bluett/bluett.html/

http://nowandthen.ashp.cuny.edu/2010/08/mosques-and-muslims-in-manh...

From its earliest days of settlement Muslims were in New Amsterdam.

Anyone brave enough to query the university blog for references?

Jeffrey where there's one there's more. Do you think we can theorize that congregations came together informally in New Amsterdam?

Erica, you mean the Sarah Lawrence College? I can write an email and ask for information.
Nothing to be brave about :-P

Erica, this is a pretty challenging hypothesis - but, of course, none of us here is shy of challenges :-)
My best guess (and I'm NOT a specialist), is that, if some early Africans might have been muslims, they must have come from the southern Nile region. However, currently, all traces around the early Africans are from the Congo and Angola regions.
The Portuguese were most active in those regions (in those days), and the early Africans came from ships captured by the Dutch from the Portuguese. I think it will be tough to identify muslims. The only muslim I can see right now is van Salee, a pirate himself. He was a reasonably respected citizen in New Netherland, so he may have had an impact with regards to his adopted faith.
Jeffrey, your sources are mighty interesting, but they are still beyond the New Netherland period. Please keep digging :-)

This ebook may be of interest.

"The early Germans of New Jersey: their history, churches, and genealogies By Theodore Frelinghuysen Chambers"

http://books.google.com/books?id=Q-r0DEsiLM8C&pg=PA446&dq=f...

I'm writing an email to the dean of the college. Are you oke with that? Almost sending it....... yes have my finger above the send button so if you want me to stop now is the moment LOL

:-)

Yowsa :-) Indeed, Michael, more interesting things to read! Actually, I was already wondering about the Frelinghuysen for quite a while. There are quite interesting connections to be made around them, on Geni:
Jennie, I guess you have hit that 'send' button (I hope so :-) )

Done!

https://www.facebook.com/george.homs#!/pages/New-Amsterdam-Project/...

Do we have 1000 likes allready?

@George: The sources are certainly to matters outside of this project's limits. And, yes, I have been known to go off on tangents - one of my favorite moves, in fact. I'll try to be good, or at least non-disruptive.

So, as an off-topic aside, The American Mohammedan Society was established in Brooklyn in 1907 by (according to A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order, by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri) Muslim immigrants from Poland, Russia, and Lithuania. The organization (with mosque) still exists, but, is 250 years too late for our purposes here. I'll see how far back I can push things and still be able to pretend to be gainfully employed.

@Erica: It does seem reasonable to speculate that any Muslims that ended up in New Amsterdam during this project's study period would have met informally. It also seems reasonable, given the problems the government of New Amsterdam periodically decided to have with Quakers and Jews, that they'd do their best to stay out of said government's view. Which is to say, I'd be happily surprised if there were any documentation that moves any of this beyond speculation.

George

We can find out for sure by plugging into historians, but the blog says Muslims sailed with the Dutch West India Company, so it is more than the slave trade.

Also there were "free persons of color" in the rest of Colonial America. For some of them not to have been part of New Netherlands strikes me as highly unlikely. And the origins of those persons could well have been Muslim Africa.

Jeffrey I am optimistic actually due to more Dutch documents being translated and studied.

Perhaps we can understand better the culture in Holland at the time as New Netherlands would have originated with those values, people's, and movements.

Jeffrey, go off on your tangents, but STAY HERE too! :-)
Frankly honest, I think that this is part of the mission of the New Amsterdam project... trying to get the early facts right, and then get better understanding about why NYC is what it is.
Erica... let's DIG :-)

@George: Not to worry. I'm hooked and happy to move the project forward.

I'm a descendant in nearly equal parts of the 17th century immigration into the Dutch colony (anyone who ended up around what became Albany seems to be at least a close cousin - more Vans than anyone should have to deal with), and the 17th century immigration in to New England. Throw in, as well, immigrants from the Palatine immigration into New York of the early 1710s, the Irish Famine immigration, and some early 18th century Methodists that decided to stop paying taxes to support the Church of England.

Its a good mix. New England Puritans and Dutch Calvinists fighting for my soul while the Irish and the Methodists fight over whether to have a drink.

The Irish are winning so far.

@ Jefffrey LOL

Jeffrey, lol

Anthony had a brother Andrew, I believe, who also spent time in New Amsterdam.
According to family stories Andrew, also Muslim, had an affair with a Black woman
which produced offspring. One of his decendents was a doctor for the Union
Forces during the Civil War.

Jeffrey, I am your 11th cousin once removed. I checked because your heritage is like mine--a little Dutch, a little English, a little Palatine German and some charming Irishmen who swept the daughters of the former off their feet. Also, the Methodists, who in my family were Palatines and converted the Dutch (who didn't care much for the way the DRC sucked up to Anglicans). The Irish won on the drink.

George, Anthony's father was the big time pirate (the sack of Baltimore). I think Anthony was more of a farmer.

Jeffrey, send some beer over - it will be needed to pull all this info together :-)

Well, here she is.....

Deborah Moody

Lady Moody. It took 2 days, but I got her on the tree. Too many Walters, Williams, and Edmunds in the family with similar parents, siblings, and children. Anyway, to figure it out, I had to build out the Dunch tree. It's going to take me awhile to fill out her profile and others in the family, add other needed profiles, and added sources and links.

Just great, Tammy! Whilst you're at it perhaps you should take the whole of Gravesend under you hood :-) With the things I've been reading from the links everyone brought together, there's a LOT of material that helps to understand about the people that settled and developed Gravesend in those early days!
As you can see, Gravesend was already on the list of 18 settlements on the Territorial Development project. I'm not sure how we should call projects that track these settlements. Perhaps "New Amsterdam - Settling Gravesend" (etc...) - or something like that?
Besides a brief overview of when and how the settlements evolved, we can have a list of notables for them too (currently grouped in the bigger Notables page). And, we can then attach profiles to the settlements (even if many of them moved elsewhere, it doesn't matter, they can be in multiple settlement pages.
Regarding the Notables page... This could be reduced to just the major notables of the province of New Netherland - and those of New Amsterdam given it's specific nature). All other notables then simply move to the Settlement pages.
(Just call this a brainstorm, it will take some time before we can sort it all out, of course :-) ).

I found this:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cathie/ctilton.htm

Seems to have a lot of information on the settlers of Gravesend.

I would be happy to work on Gravesend, after we figure out how we want to do it.

Tammy you're the woman, well done!

I think First Settlers of Gravesend could be a standalone project, with the profiles of those in the land allotment.

Then the project can be linked to territorial development and first churches too, perhaps.

I say First Setters if we want to confine to the official list.

Tammy,
You may have noticed the reference to Anthony "Johnson" a "Mohammedan" in the Gravesend article. This is Anthony Jansen van Salee, son of Jan Jansen (the pirate).

I missed that. Normally I would pick up on anyone named Johnson. I'll have to make a note of that.

So far, I've found 7 profiles for original settlers of Gravesend on Geni (not counting spouses or children).

Regarding your latter remark, Tammy. My feeling is that we need to work with the name-bearer immigrants - which includes men AND women AND their children. Basically, anyone who was not born there. They may have been born in New England, and I wouldn't count those in; if they arrived from overseas in New England first (or wherever on American soil), and then went on to Gravesend - I count them in. That's how we've been adding profiles to New Amsterdam.
Erica, in terms of project titling... How about if we start using "New Netherland - First Settlers of Gravesend" (etc...). A break from the "New Amsterdam" titling - but perhaps it's something we'll need to do over time anyway. We have a list of original names and modern names on territorial development. Shall we use the modern name? Perhaps we could as we're saying "First Settlers...".

If you look in projects, we've tended to use the terminology of the source as the project name, and then link the project to its umbrellas and laterals.

As example

Ancient Planters
Passengers oif the Swan 1609
Ancient Planters: Reynolds Family

I think we should do something similar, as this is the way the mind works - associatively. Look how we're covering Anabaptism, mosques, wrongly defined Heritage Homes. (hint to Tammy for another "old homes" project!) and lots and lots of beer, or should I say bier, in the same conversation.

When was the first beer garden in New Amsterdam?