Anthony Janszoon van Salee

Anthony Janszoon van Salee (1607–1676) was an original settler of and prominent landholder, merchant, and creditor in New Netherland. Van Salee is believed to be the son of Jan Janszoon (Jan Jansen), a Dutch pirate who after 1619 served a Moorish state on the Barbary Coast.^[2] His mother Margarita was Moorish and Van Salee was possibly a Muslim; if so he may have been the first to settle in the New World.^[2]

Van Salee was the first grantee of Conyne Eylandt (Coney Island), pictured here from space^[1]

A Quran said to have belonged to van Salee was sold in the ca. 1886 estate sale of Joachim Rule,^[3] among other heirlooms of the Van Siclen and Gulick families,^[4] as documented by descendant Robert Bayles of the Market and Fulton National Bank of New York.^[2][5]

Life

 

1736 Herman Moll map, Cartagena in red

Anthony Janszoon van Salee was Jan Janszoon's fourth child, born in 1607 in Cartagena, Spain,^[6] as the second child of his second wife, Margarita, a Moorish woman. Anthony was born only two years before the Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain, which would have affected many people in his mother's community. His father Janszoon is believed to have been captured in 1618 by one of the Moorish states on the Barbary Coast. He "turned Turk" and served as a pirate, known as Admiral Murat Reis, for Moulay Zaydan in the Republic of Salé city-state (now Morocco),^[7] which had itself been founded a few years earlier by a group of Moriscos who had anticipated the expulsion. In 1624, Anthony was living in Salé with his father. In 1627 he moved to Algiers with his father and family.^[1]

Van Salee was living near the harbor in Amsterdam when he obtained a marriage license on December 15, 1629, to marry Grietse Reyniers, a 27-year-old German native, two days before his ship left for the New World.^[6] In 1630, at the age of 22,^[6] Van Salee arrived with his wife in New Netherlands, as a colonist of the Dutch West India Company.^[2]

Van Salee's pirate father may have provided him a considerable fortune. By 1639 Anthony had become one of the largest landholders on the island, as well as a prosperous farmer.^[8]

In 1638, Van Salee acquired a farm on the island of Manhattan which was named "Wallenstein", in memory of Albrecht von Wallenstein, supreme commander of the armies of the Habsburg monarchy.^[9] The plat was located on the north side of the defensive stockade across Lower Manhattan, along present-day Wall St. The bouwery was surveyed from Broadway to the East River between Ann Street and Maiden Lane. Van Salee transferred the deed the following year.^[9]

Following numerous legal disputes, including with representatives of the Dutch Reformed Church, whose council reprimanded Van Salee and his wife for not behaving as "pious Christians",^[7] he was ordered to leave New Netherland. But, after he appealed to the Dutch West India Company, Van Salee was allowed to settle on 200 acres (0.81 km²) in what would become New Utrecht and Gravesend, Brooklyn, at the southwestern end of Long Island.^[10][11] This property was popularly known as the "Turk's plantation".^[12] He became one of the largest and most prominent landholders on the island. In 1643 he purchased a house on Bridge Street in New Amsterdam, in defiance of the court order excluding him from that settlement. He became a successful merchant and creditor in New Amsterdam, while owning several properties throughout the region.^{[8][page needed]}

In a surviving title deed from the settlement of Brooklyn, New York (then called "New Netherland"), where trades people leased or purchased land to plant orchards and produce gardens, Corielis van Tienlioven notes "that he had found 12 apple, 40 peach, 73 cherry trees, 26 sage plants.., behind the house sold by Anthony Janszoon van Salee to Barent Dirksen [Dutchmen],... ANNO 18th of June 1639." This is one of the first reference to cherry trees being planted in North America^[13] His 1643 deed to land in Coney Island was acquired by the Brooklyn Historical Society at auction in 2019.^[14]

Social legacy

Van Salee was engaged in many legal disputes, which ranged from demands for compensation because his dog attacked the hog of Anthony the Portuguese (described as a black townsman), to charges that he had pointed loaded pistols at slave overseers from the Dutch West India Company.^{[15][page needed]}

He was the first grantee of land on Conyne Eylandt (Coney Island). Van Salee helped found Long Island settlements including New Utrecht and Gravesend. In 1660 he founded Boswijck (now known as Bushwick), along with twenty-three other settlers, including free blacks Francisco and Anton.^[16]

Van Salee was known for frequently reading his Qur'an.^[17] He petitioned to have Christian missionaries assigned to new settlements. Once he was fined for housing an English Quaker at his home on Bridge Street, as they were excluded as Dissenters from the English colony; the man was there to repair a Dutch church.^{[18][page needed]}

Van Salee appeared to be on good terms with his neighbor Lady Deborah Moody,^{[18][page needed]} the founder of Gravesend. John Edwin Stillwell wrote that Van Salee had disputes with her husband Sir Henry Moody,^[19] but he had died in England. Lady Moody was a widow by 1629, a decade before she left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where she lived before settling in New Netherland.^[20]

Marriage and family

Van Salee had married Grietse Reyniers in 1629 in Amsterdam; she was born in Germany.^[6] The couple had four daughters together. They married into respectable colonial commercial families:^[15]

• Eva Antonis, married Ferdinandus van Sycklin, an early immigrant to New Netherland and the namesake for Van Siclen Avenue in Brooklyn.^[21] She is an ancestor of Robert Bayles, the last descendant to own Van Salee's Qur'an. According to Van Dyck Roberts, she was baptized.^[22]
• Cornelia, who married William Johnson^[23]
• Annica, married Thomas Southard. Their daughter Abigail was the great-great-grandmother of Cornelius Vanderbilt^[24]
• Sara, married John Emans.^[25]

Between 1638 and 1639, the couple accounted for fifteen of ninety-three recorded court cases. During this period, many private quarrels were brought to the Dutch colonial court. The charges against the couple included petty slander, brought by Anneke and Dominee Bogardus (a minister) after Grietse accused of them of lying; Grietse's display of private parts to the naval fleet, and Van Salee's occasions of drunkenness.^[18]

Grietse died in 1669. The widower Van Salee married Metje Grevenraet, an ethnic Dutch woman.^[23] He passed his final years at his home on Bridge Street, dying in 1676. Metje was a Quaker who helped Van Salee tolerate the church.^{[18][page needed]}

Van Salee apparently also had a brother living in the colony, Abraham Janszoon van Salee.

Appearance

Van Salee was described as unusually tall, with superior strength. He was known as "a 'Turk'" or "semi-Dutchman from Morocco",^[26] of "tawny" complexion.^[27] He was credited with the "first dwelling erected by Europeans" in what became New Utrecht, about 1643.^[12]

Anthony Van Salee's apparent brother, Abraham Janszoon van Salee, a fellow New Netherland settler who was involved in privateering, was described as a "mulatto", in recognition of his mixed-race ancestry,^[8][2] and married a black woman named Fortuyn.^[12]

Some descriptions of Abraham Janszoon van Salee include ethnic attributions, such as "Turk",^[12] and "Berber".^[28] In court records, Van Salee was noted as "Turk", suggesting that record keepers classified him by appearance or culture.^[29][12][30] Janszoon was known to be the wealthy heir of a former European native head of state, even if his father was associated with privateering on the Barbary Coast. Gomez notes that historic collections devoted to African-centric history have been similarly unable to reach consensus on his appearance, race, or origin.^{[8][page needed]}

Notable descendants

Van Salee's notable descendants include the Vanderbilts^[31] in the United States and Europe,^{[32][clarification needed]} the Whitneys, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Humphrey Bogart.^{[33][unreliable source?]}

References

1. The University magazine, Volume 8, Harvard University, 1898, p. 372
2. GhaneaBassiri, Kambiz (2010). A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge university Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-521-61487-0.
3. Bayles, Robert (1901). Descendants of Pieter Gulick (PDF). p. 11.
4. A History of Real Estate, Building and Architecture in New York City During the Last Quarter of a Century. Record and guide. 1898.
5. King, Moses (1892). King's Handbook of New York City: An Outline History and Description of the American Metropolis. Moses King.
6. Fulfilling God's Mission: The Two Worlds of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607-1647, Willem Frijhoff, Myra Heerspink Scholz. BRILL, 2007. ISBN 978-90-04-16211-2. p. 461
7. GhaneaBassiri (2010), A History of Islam in America, p. 10
8. Gomez, Michael Angelo (2005). "Muslims in New York". Black Crescent: the Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 128–42. ISBN 978-0-521-84095-8.
9. New Amsterdam and Its People: Studies, Social and Topographical, of the Town Under Dutch and Early English Rule, John H. Innes. C. Scribner's sons, 1902. pp. 312-313
10. "Digital Collections : Text : Patent of Anthony Jansen for 100 morgens of land on Long Island [NYSA_A1880-78_VGG_0061]". digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov. Retrieved 2021-07-12.
11. "Granting "Anthony the Turk" land in Brooklyn". www.christies.com. Retrieved 2021-07-12.
12. C. Benjamin Richardson, "Was Anthony Jansen van Salee a Huguenot?", The Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America, New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1862, pp. 172-173; Retrieved 30 Sept 2009.
13. New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch (PDF). Vol. I: Register of the Provincial Secretary 1638–1642. Translated and Annotated by A.J.F. van Laer. Edited with Added Indexes by Kenneth Scott and Kenn Stryker-Rodda. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing. 1974. (PDF) from the original on 2016-08-22.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
14. Schuessler, Jennifer (3 December 2019). "Brooklyn's Muslim Presence Goes Back Centuries. Here's Proof From 1643. (Published 2019)". The New York Times. Retrieved 2021-07-09.
15. The Island at the Center of the World: the Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America, Russell Shorto. Random House Digital, Inc., 2005. ISBN 1-4000-7867-9, ISBN 978-1-4000-7867-7. pp. 85-86, 299
16. Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1863, Graham Russell Hodges. UNC Press Books, 1999. ISBN 0-8078-4778-X, 9780807847787. p. 35
17. Portrait of New Netherland, Ellis Lawrence Raesly. Columbia University Press, 1945. p. 149
18. Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes, Peter Lamborn Wilson. Autonomedia, 2003. ISBN 1-57027-158-5, ISBN 978-1-57027-158-8. pp. 206-211
19. Historical and Genealogical Miscellany: Data Relating to the Settlement and Settlers of New York and New Jersey, Volume 5, John Edwin Stillwell. Genealogical Pub. Co., 1970. p. 223
20. Cooper, A Dangerous Woman: New York's First Lady Liberty, Heritage Books, 1995.
21. American Ancestry: Embracing Lineages from the Whole of the United States, Thomas Patrick Hughes, Frank Munsell. 1888. p. 56
22. Van Dyck Roberts, p. 17
23. The Washington Ancestry, and Records of the McClain, Johnson, and Forty Other Colonial American Families: Prepared for Edward Lee McClain, Volume 3. Charles Arthur Hoppin, Edward Lee McClain. 1932. p. 86
24. Nexus: the Bimonthly Newsletter of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Volumes 13-16. New England Historic Genealogical Society. 1996. p. 21-23
25. Leaves From the Tree, an American Heritage: a History of the Ancestral Families of Robert Bone Hutchinson and Jack Thomas Hutchinson. Jack Thomas Hutchinson. Anundsen Pub. Co., 1989. p. 295
26. Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, "Better Prospects", History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century: New Amsterdam, New York: Macmillan, 1909, p. 161
27. Gad J. Heuman, "From Creole to African", The Slavery Reader, Vol. 1, p. 455
28. Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: the Experiences and Legacy of African Muslims, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 182
29. "Etchings", The Century Illustrated monthly magazine, p. 776, Retrieved 30 Sept 2009.
30. Frank Allaben, "The De Rapaljes", The Ancestry of Leander Howard Crall, New York: The Grafton Press, 1908, p. 279
31. Child, Christopher C. (2022-12-02). "Van Salee Descendants". Vita Brevis. Retrieved 2022-12-03.
32. Nexus: the bimonthly newsletter of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Volumes 13-16. New England Historic Genealogical Society. 1996. pp. 21-23
33. de Valdes y Cocom, Mario. "The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families: The Van Salee Family." Frontline. Retrieved September 10, 2011.