Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [1196]
1. Note too that Dutch names were patronymic but not patrilineal, meaning that the family lineages typical of England and English colonies didn’t exist in New Netherland. Thus, if Roeloff Jans had a daughter named Volckje, she would be known as Volckje Roeloffse (or Roeloffsen). If she married Jan van Hoesen, she could keep the name Roeloffsen or take the name Jansen (also spelled Jansz or Janse); it wouldn’t be unusual to find her listed both ways in the records.
1. Van der Donck later retired to his estate overlooking Spuyten Duyvil, where he set himself up as ajonkheer, or squire—whence the present town of Yonkers. His death in 1655 coincided with the publication of his famously lyrical Description of the New Netherlands.
2. When the missionaries Jaspar Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter visited New Utrecht in 1679, they found that seven or eight of the original Nayack families, fewer than two dozen people in all, had returned to their former lands to scratch out a “poor, miserable” existence. Cortelyou rented them “a small corner” of what was now his property for “twenty bushels of maize yearly”—an illustration of how quickly the balance had swung against native peoples.
1. A Jacob Street, also said to have been named for Leisler, no longer exists. Gouverneur Street, Gouverneur Lane, and Gouverneur Slip were all named after Abraham Gouverneur, a leading Leislerian who later married Milborne’s widow, Mary Leisler. Hester Street was named after another Leisler daughter, while Nicholas Bayard is remembered in Bayard Street. After World War I a bronze tablet commemorating Leisler was placed on a boulder in City Hall Park, only to be banished a decade or so later by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses.
1. The only rival of the King’s Arms was the Two-Mile or Bowery Village Tavern operated by John Clapp, sometime clerk of the Assembly. Situated two miles north of town on the Bowery Road, roughly on the present site of Astor Place, the Two-Mile Tavern was billed as a place where “Gentlemen travellers. . . may have very good Entertainment for themselves and Horses.” It also became the resort of choice for refreshments during a genteel outing into the country. Dr. Bullivant, who was driven out to Clapp’s by Governor Fletcher himself, testified that it offered “good Cyder & mead.”
1. The African Burial Ground was part of land deeded by Governor Colve in 1673, during the brief Dutch reconquest of the city, to Cornelius van Borsurn, in recognition of the services of his wife, Sara Roeloff. A daughter of Annekje Jans, Roeloff had acted as an interpreter in negotiations between Dutch officials and the Esopus Indians. Subsequent disputes over the title, lasting well into the eighteenth century, probably delayed the development that would eventually cause the burial ground to be filled in. The site was rediscovered in 1991, during excavations in the block bordered by Broadway, Duane, Elk, and Reade streets. The remains of four hundred men, women, and children were removed to Howard University for further study.
1. The Heights of Guan are visible today in the high ground that begins in Bay Ridge and runs west to east through Green-Wood Cemetery, Prospect Park, Eastern Parkway, Evergreen Cemetery, and Forest Park in Queens. The Gowanus Pass is now 37th Street between Green-Wood and Sunset Park, while the Flatbush Pass is the East Drive of Prospect Park. Bedford Pass was where Bedford Avenue now meets Eastern Parkway. Jamaica Pass lies at the junction of Jamaica Avenue and Evergreen Cemetery.
1. Local place names continue to reflect the outcome of the struggle over Trinity’s holdings. When the first streets were cut through the King’s Farm in February 1790, four were named after conservative Anglicans who helped beat back the radical offensive: Duane, Jay, Harison, Provoost. Two streets honored former Tory clergymen: North Moore Street