Jonas Bronck

Jonas Bronck (?–1643) was a Danish[1] immigrant to the Dutch colony of New Netherland after whom the Bronx River, Bronx county, and the New York City borough of The Bronx are named.[2] He married his Dutch wife, Teuntje Joriaens, on July 6, 1638, in the Nieuwe Kerk ('New Church'), Amsterdam.

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Bronck's Land

Jonas Bronck’s decision to relocate from Europe was prompted by a number of factors. During the late 1630’s events in both Holland and America induced significant changes in the governance of New Netherland, territory controlled by the Dutch West India Company between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers and north along tidewaters of the Hudson. At its heart was the trading facility of New Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan Island.

Following spectacular collapse of the Tulip Mania bubble in 1637, Holland’s government bruited the idea of taking control of New Netherland from the Company and using the colony for resettlement of individuals impoverished by failed tulip bulb speculations. There was also vexation over the West India Company’s failure to develop New Netherland much beyond its original function, facilitating the fur trade. By contrast, English enclaves in the region were rapidly expanding in territory, population, and viability.

New Amsterdam’s inhabitants then numbered only about four hundred, a count that hardly had increased during the previous decade. Company properties in the colony showed signs of physical neglect and conditions of law and order were less than ideal. Faced with possible government expropriation, the company appointed Willem Kieft as New Netherland’s director with a mandate to increase the territory’s population and vitality.

Arriving in 1638, Kieft promptly purchased additional Lenape Indian lands in the environs of Manhattan and encouraged private settlement by enterprising colonists of diverse backgrounds. Settlers no longer were encumbered with excessive responsibilities to the West India Company. Previously, most real estate and commercial activity in New Netherlands had been under direct Company control. These vicissitudes not escape Bronck’s notice. He was among the first to recognize promising opportunities and crossed the Atlantic to settle in New Amsterdam’s hinterlands.[3]

In June 1639, Bronck navigated up the East River in a ship, De Brant Van Troyen (The Fire of Troy), and made home on a piece of land he had acquired from the Indians, across the Harlem River from the village of Harlem.

His farm (known as Emaus, Bronck's Land, and then just Broncksland, or simply Bronck's), covered roughly the area south of today's 150th Street in the Bronx. The land was within the territory of the Siwanoy and Wecquaesgeek groups of Lenape who inhabited it at the time of colonialization.

Saturday May 6, 1643, not long after Jonas Bronck’s death, his widow Feuntje Jeuriaens together with Peter Bronck conducted a formal inventory of the Bronck farm which was then known as Emaus. This procedure was done in the presence of the Rev. Everardus Bogardus, pastor of the First Reformed Dutch Church of New Amsterdam and Bronck’s old friend Jochim Pietersen Kuyter. According to official records of the State of New York, the latter two were identified as guardians of Bronck’s widow.

The inventory lists contents of the farm Bronck and his family had built in the wilderness during the period of less than four years following his arrival in America. Buildings on the property were a stone house with a tile roof, a barn, two barracks for farm employees, and a tobacco house. The tally of Bronck’s livestock was 25 animals of various kinds, plus an uncounted number of hogs, said to be running in nearby woods.

During the early 1640’s it was not uncommon for Bronck’s New Amsterdam contemporaries to identify themselves on legal documents with graphic marks that were also symbols of illiteracy. By contrast, Jonas Bronck’s personal library provides evidence he was literate in four languages, suggesting his education might have been as high as university level. His library was an impressive archive for its place and time, and is regarded as the earliest for which there is a detailed account in the colonial records of New York.

The following materials were listed in the inventory of Bronck's library: one Bible, folio; Calvin's Institutes, folio; Bullingeri, Schultetus Dominicalia, (Medical); Moleneri Praxis, (Moral and Practical Discourses), quarto; one German Bible, quarto; Mirror of the Sea (Seespiegel), folio; one Luther's Psalter; Sledani, (History of the Reformation), folio; Danish chronicle, quarto; Danish law book, quarto; Luther's Complete Catechism; The Praise of Christ, quarto; Petri Apiani; Danish child's book; a book called Forty Pictures of Death, by Symon Golaert; Biblical stories; Danish calendar; Survey (or View) of the Great Navigation; a parcel of eighteen Dutch and Danish pamphlets by divers authors; seventeen books in manuscript, which are old; eleven pictures, large and small.[4][5][6]

Following Bronck's death, and the dispersion of the few settlers, the tract passed through the hands of successive Dutch traders until 1664, when it came into the possession of Samuel Edsall, (who had also acquired large tract on the North River known as the English Neighborhood) who held it until 1670, when he sold it to Captain Richard Morris and Colonel Lewis Morris, at the time merchants of Barbadoes. Four years later, Colonel Morris obtained a royal patent to Bronck's Land, which afterward became the Manor of Morrisania, the second Lewis (son of Captain Richard), exercising proprietory right.[7]

The area was known as "Broncksland" only through the end of the 17th century - so the modern name of the borough does not come directly from that farmland. However, the river which runs north to south through the area, and which his farm butted against, kept the name Bronck's River, eventually being abbreviated or misspelled Bronx River. This name stuck, and it was this river (which splits the modern borough in two) after which the Bronx was named.

Pieter Bronck

Pieter Bronck was also known as Pieter Jonasson Bronck. Given the relative closeness in age and same father's name indicated by the patronym (Jonas was born about 1600, Pieter, born in 1616) it has been claimed that Pieter was a brother or cousin to Jonas Bronck, and not a son as had been surmised. Pieter Bronck House is a registered historic place in Coxsackie, New York. The American poet William Bronk reported that he was a descendant of Pieter Bronck.[8] At the same time, the middle name, the patronymic "Jonasson" indicates he was indeed the son of a man named Jonas. At that time, custom in Sweden was that the father's first name defined the -son name of his children. In other words, Jonas Jonasson Bronck was the son of a Jonas Bronck; Pieter Jonasson Bronck was the also the son of a Jonas Bronck. Consequently, if Pieter had a son he would be (first name) followed by "Pietersson Bronck" or Pettersson Bronck, or some variation of "Peter's son".

Trivia

See also

References

  1. ^ van Laer, A. J. F. (October) [1916], The American Historical Review, 22, n.1, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association, pp. 164–166, “… Jonas Bronck was a Dane …”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1836219?seq=2&Search=yes&searchText=Jonas&searchText=Bronck&list=show&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Diid%253A10.2307%252Fi304901%26Query%3DJonas%2BBronck%26wc%3Don%26Search.x%3D7%26Search.y%3D13&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=1&returnArticleService=showArticle&resultsServiceName=null 
  2. ^ Hansen, Harry (1950). North of Manhattan. Hastings House. OCLC 542679. , excerpted at The Bronx... Its History & Perspective
  3. ^ Burrows, Edwin G.; Wallace, Mike (Michael L.) (1999), Gotham, A History of New York City to 1898, 1, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 30–37, ISBN 0-19-511634-8 “…many of these colonists, perhaps as many as half of them, represented the same broad mixture of nationalities as New Amsterdam itself. Among them were Swedes, Germans, French, Belgians, Africans, and Danes (such as a certain Jonas Bronck)...” 
  4. ^ Legislature, State of New York (1901) [1883], Documents relative to the colonial history of the state of New York, 14, Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., pp. 42–44, http://www.archive.org/details/documentsrelativ14brod 
  5. ^ Hastings, Hugh (State Historian) (1901), Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, 1, Albany: State Printer, p. 168, http://books.google.com/books?id=U3EAAAAAMAAJ&q=Bronck# 
  6. ^ Van Rensselaer, Mariana Griswold (1909), History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century, 1, New York: The Macmillan Company, p. 161, http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-the-city-of-new-york-in-the-seventeenth-century/oclc/649654938?title=&detail=&page=frame&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%3Fid%3Di9ET9y_FpgQC%26checksum%3D9a3e1cdde2061df1e906bed9b5c04bae&linktype=digitalObject 
  7. ^ Sterling, Aladine, The Book of Englewood, Committee on the History of Englewood authorized by The Mayor and Council of City of Englewood, N.J., http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924028828858/cu31924028828858_djvu.txt 
  8. ^ http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/bronk/katzman.htm

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