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ROE JAN HISTORY: Who were Roeliff Jansen and his wife Anneke Jans?

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By CHRIS ATKINS and LAUREN LETELLIER, Hilldale Town Historians

OUR LITTLE CORNER of Columbia County is often referred to as the “Roe Jan Region,” and local folks know that “Roe Jan” is a shortening of Roeliff Jansen (multiple spellings of the name turn up in the historic record: Roeloff Jansz, Roeloff Janz, Rolf Jansen, Roeloff Jans). A number of local institutions are named in honor of Jansen: the Roeliff Jansen Community Library, the Roeliff Jansen Historical Society, even the now-decaying Roeliff Jansen Central School on Route 22. The abbreviated name is also popular among local businesses, as seen in the Roe Jan Auto Center, Roe Jan Lockworks and The Roe Jan Brewing Company. Even the annual Harlem Valley Rail Trail bicycle ride fundraiser is called the Roe Jan Ramble. And of course, the 56.2 mile long Roeliff Jansen Kill — the traditional boundary between the Native American Mahican and Wappinger tribes — crisscrosses the area.

But who was Roeliff Jansen and why do we continue to commemorate him some 400 years after his death? And what role did he play in the early development of the Roe Jan region’s five towns (Ancram, Copake, Gallatin, Hillsdale and Taghkanic)?

For answers, we first turned to a book published in 1976 by the Roeliff Jansen Historical Society. “A History of the Roeliff Jansen Area” contains a well-researched essay about Roeliff Jansen by Jim Polk, co-owner of A New Leaf, a used bookstore in Pine Plains.

Until fairly recently, Jansen was thought to be a Dutchman because he arrived in New Amsterdam on May 24, 1630 on de Eendracht, a ship of the Dutch West India Company that sailed from the Dutch port of Texel. In fact, as Mr. Polk points out, Roeliff Jansen was born on the island of Marstrand in 1602. Although Marstrand is part of Sweden today, it belonged to Norway until 1658, so Jansen would have considered himself a Norwegian.

Marstrand was famed for its herring fishing industry, which evidently held no appeal for young Jansen. Before he turned 20 he left to find fame and fortune in Amsterdam.

Polk’s narrative notes that after 10 years in Amsterdam, Jansen had found neither. He did, however, marry a popular 18-year-old Norwegian woman named Annetje (or Anneke) Jans (1605-1663) when he was 21. With future prospects in the Netherlands not promising, Jansen took a major step in 1630. Armed with a three-year contract from Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, the Amsterdam diamond and pearl merchant who was a founder and director of the Dutch West India Company, Jansen, Anneke, their two daughters, and Anneke’s mother made the five-week journey by sea to New Netherland, the first Dutch colony in the New Patroon Kiliaen Van Rensselaer

Anneke Jans. Image contributed

New Netherland extended from Fort Orange (today’s Albany) and eastern New York to parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

Arriving in New Amsterdam (today’s New York City), the seat of New Netherland’s colonial government, the Jansen family and two Norwegians who had also crossed on de Eendracht boarded a small jacht (from which we get the word yacht) and sailed up the Hudson River to Fort Orange. There, the party disembarked and set out to undertake their mission: clear several acres of virgin forest and start a farm on Rensselaerwyck, Van Rensselaer’s vast patent that extended from the Hudson River all the way to what today is the Massachusetts border. There are reports that they worked a parcel known as de Laet’s Burgh (today’s Greenbush), where Van Rensselaer first sought to concentrate his colonists, across the river from the West India Company’s Fort Orange. Jansen’s salary was $72 a year.

On July 1, 1632, after two years of farming, Roeliff Jansen was appointed schepen, or alderman, a role where he became the middleman between Van Rensselaer and his tenant farmers in the area. The oath of the schepens, administered by a schout, a local official vested in the Dutch colonies of America with local judicial function, was as follows:

“This you swear, that you will be good schepens, that you will be loyal and feal to my gracious lord and support and strengthen him in his affairs as much as is in your power; that you will pass honest judgment between the lord and the farmer, the farmer and the lord, and in the proceedings between two farmers, and that you will not fail to do this on any consideration whatsoever. So help you God.”

As schepen, Jansen got a “black hat, with silver bands.”

In a monograph written by former Albany Times Union reporter Paul Grondahl, we learned that neither Roeliff nor Anneke could read or write. They “signed” their names with special marks, which may account for the many different spellings of their names in a variety of sources. (Grondahl himself spells Jansen’s given name “Roelof.”)

Grondahl writes, “The family interacted daily with local Native Americans with whom they traded. Their daughter, Sara, later became the translator of New Netherland director-general Peter Stuyvesant in negotiations with the [natives].”

Kiliaen Van Rensselaer had certain standards for his distant employee and as a manager, Jansen did not meet them. The Patroon complained in a July 20, 1632 letter to Wolfert Gerritz, a founder of the New Netherland colony, that it was “bad management that Roeloff Jansen could not get any winter seed. I hope that he has sown the more summer seed.”

Likewise in a letter of April 23, 1634, to New Amsterdam Director-General Wouter van Twiller, the Patroon said: “I see that Roeloff Janssen has grossly run up my account in drawing the provisions, yes, practically the full allowance [even] when there was [enough in] stock. I think that his wife, mother, and sister and others must have given things away, which can not be allowed. He complains that your honor has dismissed him from the farm, and your honor writes me that he wanted to leave it.”

In 1634, after fulfilling their contract to Van Rensselaer, the Jansen family decamped from Rensselaerwyck to New Amsterdam and worked on a Dutch West India Company bouwerie (the Dutch word for farm). New Amsterdam comprised what we think of today as Lower Manhattan, or the Financial District. Its northern border was Wall Street.

The fort gave The Battery (in present-day Manhattan) its name, a large street going from the fort past the city wall became Broadway, and the city wall gave Wall Street its name.

In 1636, the Dutch West Indian Company granted Jansen 62 acres of what is today’s Greenwich Village, SoHo and Tribeca. Jansen built a modest home near today’s World Trade Center. The first public park in New York City, Duane Park, is the last remnant of open space of their farm; the couple is remembered on a plaque to this day.

It was not great farmland; indeed, much of it was swampland. In any case, before Jansen could sow the first seed, he died in 1636, leaving Anneke a widow with five children. At his death, Jansen was owed 217 guilders (approximately $12,000 in today’s money) by the Dutch West India Company, but Anneke was having trouble collecting. The family was struggling (land-rich but cash-poor) and Anneke’s mother, Trijn, had taken a position as the official midwife of the city of New Amsterdam.

That wasn’t the end of the story, however. As it turns out, Anneke had a remarkable second act of her own. Read more about that next week.

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