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The Dutch Paper Chase

Some of the story of New York's first European settlers exists in thousands of old documents

By Steve Wick | Staff Writer

Charles Gehring was translating Dutch documents from the 17th Century when he found an account that he couldn't forget. It concerned a trip some Dutch businessmen made from Albany to western New York in the later part of the century.

``They were traveling to an Indian village near present-day Buffalo to explore trading opportunities,'' Gehring said. ``They were hundreds of miles from any settlements. They wrote that when they came into the village, they encountered a white man named Charles Smith. They were stunned. He had been kidnaped years before in Virginia.

``He begged the Dutch to take him with them when they left. There's no record of what happened, but I don't get the sense they were able to leave with him. I don't know what ever became of Charles Smith.''

The tale of the mysterious Charles Smith is one of thousands of stories Gehring has uncovered in the two decades he has been director of an ambitious effort called the New Netherlands Project. Gehring began it in the mid-1970s when he was hired to translate documents dating from the brief period between the arrival of Dutch explorers in New York waters, in the early 1600s, and ending when the Dutch were kicked out by the English in 1664.

``It is a fascinating period,'' Gehring said. ``I've always thought the Dutch history of New York has been given short shrift by historians and scholars. It's as if they weren't here.''

When he began the project, Gehring found that there were approximately 12,000 pages of Dutch records dating to the period when the region was called New Netherlands and the tiny community at the southern tip of Manhattan Island was New Amsterdam. These documents had first been stored in Manhattan and then, during the American Revolution when fires were common, had been taken by British officials to two prison ships anchored in the harbor, the Dutchess of Gordon and the Warwick, for safekeeping. After the war, New York officials brought them back to Manhattan and later to Albany, where Gehring has his office.

During the 19th and early 20th Centuries, scholars slogged through a small portion of the Dutch records, translating important government documents but leaving untouched thousands of pages related to social history and the everyday lives of the Dutch. Today, Gehring estimated, there are approximately 6,000 pages of flesh-and-blood history, written in 17th Century Dutch and waiting for his sharp eye and knowledge of the language.

A linguist and teacher before he began the New Netherlands Project, Gehring can read and write in 17th Century Dutch, which he said is far different from modern Dutch. He likened it to comparing English today with Shakespearean English. But understanding the language is not enough -- he has to decipher the handwriting, too.

``It took quite a while to get used to the handwriting. In the beginning, I'd look at a page and think, What are those letters? Now I can do it. It took a lot of time. In looking at the new documents, I also realized that some of the old translations were just incomplete. With what we've learned in recent years, we have a greater knowledge and can go back to these earlier translations and do a better job.''

From what he has learned, a tremendous amount of material that relates to the Dutch occupation of New York is missing. For the most part, Gehring said, the state's records begin in 1642, 16 years after the Dutch purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for 60 guilders worth of trade goods. Nothing before that year has been found. When the English arrived in force in 1664, the Dutch left, only to return in 1673 for another brief occupancy. But in between, Gehring said, official records continued to be written in Dutch.

Taken together, the documents already translated provide a wealth of material about how the Dutch lived, how they interacted with the Indians, and how their communities were set up. ``It fascinated me that what they did here was the very model of a community in the Netherlands,'' Gehring said. ``They transplanted what they knew exactly -- from their church, to the poor house, the way streets were laid out, what the architecture was like. They brought all their institutions with them.''

A fire that broke out in 1911 in the State Library in Albany nearly destroyed New York's past. More than 2 million documents -- books, thousands of records pertaining to Indian transactions, English records before the Revolution -- were lost. Some Dutch records were destroyed, and nearly all suffered burns and smoke damage.

Gehring receives no state funding for his effort. He raises his approximately $120,000 annual budget from private sources. It covers his work and the work of his assistant, Janny Venema, both of whom travel to the Netherlands to lose themselves in the Dutch Archives. Gehring said there is much to be done, and he wants to do it.

``I can't retire, and I don't want to,'' said the 58-year-old scholar. ``I love what I do. I've learned so much that is now available to the pubic. You know, the Dutch came here from a small, crowded country. Their opportunities in this new country were limitless. They could look west and see nothing but immense space. Their ambitions soared here.''