History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 224

THE FLEMISH AMERICANS
NEW YORK AND ITS ORIGINS:
LEGEND AND REALITY.
According to the legend, New York was founded in 1626 by the Dutch in the southern
part of Manhattan Island. Some schoolbooks, history books, television broadcasts and down to cigarettes makers - even say that the founder of New York was named
Peter Stuyvesant.
The reality is somewhat different...
It is in May 1624 that the "Nieu Nederlandt", a ship chartered by the
West India Company, arrived in sight of Manhattan Island. The vessel
carried about thirty Belgian families: most of them were Walloons
accompanied by a few Flemings.
The passengers were soon dispersed: after being left on Nut Island
(today Governor’s Island), eight men moved quickly to the lower part
of Manhattan and erected there a fort - on the site of the present
Battery Park. Four couples and eight men were sent to the Delaware River, where
they also built a fort (near the present town of Gloucester, New Jersey). Two families
and six men were sent to the Fresh River (now Connecticut), where a small fort was
built, on the site of the present city of Hartford. About eighteen families remained on
the "Nieu Nederlandt" and proceeded up the Hudson. They finally landed near the
present city of Albany (capital of the State of New York).
Those first steps in the colonization of this territory were actually the follow up of a
process that started a century earlier.
It is indeed in 1524 that the French expedition led by the Florentine Giovanni Da
Verrazzano discovered the New York bay for the first time. King Francis I being at war
with Spain, the information was sent to the Record Office. During the next tens of
years, the Spaniards were almost the only ones who showed interest for the New
World and exploited its resources.

Willem Usselinx
In 1555, Charles V abdicated in favor of his son Philip II. His intolerance soon brought
the Netherlands in the chaos. The Duke of Alba, sent by the King of Spain, imposed a
merciless repression towards the Protestants, in rebellion against the misuses of the
Catholic Church.
The excesses of the Inquisition leaded to a massive emigration of Walloons and
Flemings to the North of the Netherlands, Sweden, England and Germany, to the
"Gueux" (beggars) rebellion, and to the secession of the Northern Provinces, which
took the name of United-Provinces. The southern Provinces stayed under the yoke of
the Spaniards and continued to undergo the pangs of war.

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