THE GOEDE VROUW OF MANA-HA-TA
By Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer

Excerpt from Preface

It has been well said in the preface to the Lives of the Lindsays that Every family should have a record of its own. Each has its peculiar spirit running through the whole line, and in more or less development, perceptible in every generation. We do not love our kindred for their glory or their genius, but for their domestic affections and private virtues. An affectionate regard to their memory is natural to the heart; it is an emotion totally distinct from pride -an ideal love. Our ancestors, it is true, are denied to our personal acquaintance, but the light they shed during their lives survives within their tombs, and will reward our search if we explore them.

Encouraged by these wise words, I am emboldened to lay before the public the results of my researches into the lives of the women who, by their industry, their courage, and their piety, helped to create a colony in the New World, and I have followed out the history (as far as was possible) to their descendants of the third and fourth generation. The information contained in this volume was culled from various sources, many of them not open to the public, such as private family papers to which I have fortunately had access, and some of which I had inherited, they having been lain aside by an older member of the family with the view of compiling a family history, which was never accomplished. Family traditions have been used which have always been given for what they are worth and always noted, histories were consulted that have been long out of print and are now to be found only on the back shelves of some old-fashioned library, as well as those that are commonly known and often consulted by the public. All of these I have woven into a web. If the pattern is not clear, or the colors are not properly assorted, it must be excused, as being the work of a woman, done in a womanly…

Abridged Table of Contents

I. Two Dutch Colonies in America
II. Women of the Seventeenth Century
III. Prominent Pioneer Women
IV. The First Settlement on Mana-ha-ta
V. Homes of the Settlers
VI. Habits, Amusements, and Laws
VII. Rensselaers of the Manor
VIII. Der Colonie Nieu Nederlands
IX. New York vs. New Amsterdam
X. Passing of the Pioneers
XI. The Dutch and Their Neighbors
XII. New York in Infancy
XIII. The Pirate and His Escapades
XIV. Society Under the English Rule
XV. Wedding-bells and Caudle-cups
XVI. James Alexander
XVII. My Lady of Petticoat Lane

XVIII. Petticoats and Politics
XIX. New York in 1732
XX. Matches, Batches, and Despatches
XXI. New York in the Forties

XXII. The Last of the Dutch Matrons

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