Today I am excited to tell you the story about our eighth great grandma, Sarah Rapalje, because she was the first white child born in what is now the state of New York!
In 1624, a ship with 30 Protestant Walloons (French-speaking people from what is today southern Belgium) landed in New Netherland. These folks were hired by the West India Company to trap furs, especially of the beaver and otter. The parents of Sarah Rapalje, Catalyntje Trico and Joris Rapalje, were included in this adventure. Eighteen of the men, with their wives, Joris included, were sent to the location near present-day Albany. Under the direction of the Dutch, these men built a new Fort Oranje (the Dutch spelling of the fort) about five miles south of the confluence of the Mohawk River and the North River. Before this newer Fort Oranje was built, the former fort had served as a trading post from about 1617. That Fort Oranje was the first permanent Dutch settlement in New Netherland. Both forts were named in honor of the Dutch House of Oranje-Nassau.
After Joris and Catalyntje settled into their new environment and built their log cabin, they had their first child, our great grandmother, Sarah, who was the first child of European settlers in New York State, on the ninth of June in 1625!
Sarah's first husband was Hans Hansen Bergen who died in 1653.
Sarah's second husband, Theunis Bogaert was born in Holland in 1625. He emigrated from there in 1652. He and Sarah were married in 1654. They had the following children. All but two were born in New York. The two who were born in New Jersey are marked below:
1655 Aertje
1657 Catalyntje, our ancestor
1660 Neeltje
1661 Aeltje
1665 Annetje
1666 Grietje in N J
1667 Adriaen N J
1668 Gysbert
1670 Aertje
unk. Cornelis
Theunis was a magistrate of Brooklyn in 1667 and again in 1673. In 1665, he was a Representative of Brooklyn in the Hempstead Convention. Here are a few words from Wikipedia about that convention:
The Hempstead Convention was a ten-day assembly where 34 delegates met starting on February 28, 1665, "to settle good and known laws" according to a letter by newly appointed Governor Richard Nicolls, the first English colonial governor of the Province of New York. Towns were invited to send two delegates who were "the most sober, able and discrete persons" chosen by taxpayers at their respective Town meetings.
Nicolls opened the Convention by reading the Duke's Patent and his own commission. He then announced laws similar to those in New England, with one critical difference. They were less severe "in matters of conscience and of Religion." Blasphemy and witchcraft, for instance, were not included among the eleven capital crimes.
After Sarah died in 1685, Theunis took a second wife, Grietje Jans. He died in 1699 in New Amsterdam.
THEUNIS GYSBERTSE BOGAERT
BORN: 1625 in Schoondrewoerd, Utrecht, Holland
MARRIED: 19 Aug 1654 in New Amsterdam, Montgomery, NY
DIED: 1699 in New Amsterdam, Montgomry, NY, age 74
SARAH JORISE RAPALJE
BORN: 9 Jun 1625 in Fort Orange, Kings, New York
DIED: 1685 in Brooklyn, Kings, NY
SOURCES: Theunis' birth at Family Search.org, Ancestral File, a family group record (AFN: 8VPP-TF); Sarah's birth at Broderband Family Archives # 17, Ed.1, Birth Records: US/Europe, AA1, Birth Extractions, Date of Import: 5 Aug 2007; CD#101, US/Europe, Births on CD #2; Legacy NFS Sources: Family genealogies; Death citation: Internet, ancestry.com; Register of the early settlers of Kings County.
Related Reading from Wikipedia: Sarah Rapelje was the daughter of Joris Jansen Rapelje (1604-1663) and Catalina Trico (1605-1689), who were Walloon Calvinists who sailed on board the ship Eendracht from the Dutch Republic in 1624. The Rapeljes arrived at a site along the Hudson River where they helped build one of the first Dutch settlements, Fort Orange, where Sarah Rapelje was born on July 9, 1625. Fort Orange would eventually become the fur-trading town of Beverwijck, which itself would later become Albany, New York. In 1626, Manhattan Island near the mouth of the Hudson River was bought by Dutch settlers from local Native Americans, and the Rapelje family were sent to help with the settlement of New Amsterdam on the island's southern tip. Joris Rapelje later bought land on Long Island, across the East River from New Amsterdam, in the village of Breuckelen (the basis of modern Brooklyn) and eventually moved to Wallabout Bay.
Sarah Rapelje married Hans Hansen Bergen in 1639 with whom she had eight children, seven of whom lived into adulthood, until Bergen died in 1653. In 1654 Rapelje married Teunis Gysbertse Bogaert (b. 1625, Heicop, Dutch Republic - d. 1699, Breuckelen, New York) with whom she had seven more children. Through their youngest child and only son, Guysbert, she is the 7th-great grandmother of actor Humphrey Bogart. On April 24, 1660, New Netherland Governor Peter Stuyvesant named Bogaert a magistrate of New Amersfoort and Midwood. In 1663, Bogaert was appointed a magistrate in Breuckelen, succeeding his father-in-law Joris Jansen Rapelje, serving in that capacity until 1673. Bogaert also served as a magistrate of Bushwick between 1664 and 1665, and was a representative of Breuckelen in the Hempstead Convention of 1665.
Rapelje died in 1685 in Boswijck, a village that became the modern Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. By the time Rapelje died the New Netherland colony had been ceded to the English in 1664, and was rebranded the Province of New York.
Rapelje's chair is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York, a gift of her Brinckerhoff descendants. Brooklyn's Rapelye Street is named for the family. Sarah Rapelje herself was granted a large tract of land in the Wallabout in Brooklyn by Dutch authorities for being the first European Christian female to be born in the New Netherland. The family owned extensive property in the area of present-day Red Hook.
Her descendants include Joseph C. Hoagland (1841-1899, president of the Royal Baking Powder Company, and the British television presenter Clare Balding (born 1971).
