New Netherland Institute

🌊 Stel je voor dat je in de 17e eeuw de Atlantische Oceaan overstak.
🌬Maanden op zee. Stormen. Overvolle schepen. Een onzekere toekomst.
⚓ Toch maakten duizenden Nederlandse migranten de reis, op zoek naar nieuwe kansen.
📜 Onze tentoonstelling verkent wat het betekende om je thuis achter te laten en opnieuw te beginnen.

Tijdens twee weekenden in 2026 worden deze verhalen zichtbaar en beleefbaar in de Grote Kerk. De geschiedenis wordt verteld aan de hand van portretten, brieven, bijzondere gebeurtenissen en familieverhalen — soms verrassend, soms ontroerend, soms ronduit spannend.

Er is een expositie, een film en er zijn activiteiten voor jong en oud.

Reserveer alvast de data: 26 & 27 september en 3 & 4 oktober 2026 Grote Kerk Schermerhorn – Het verhaal van de jongen die de oceaan overstak: Hoe Schermerhorn naam maakte in Amerika

The Boy Who Crossed the Ocean: Jacob Janse Schermerhorn

One of the earliest members of the family to leave the Netherlands for the New World. Like many Dutch settlers, he helped build the trading networks and communities of New Netherland. His journey across the Atlantic began a story that would stretch across five centuries.

🌊 A remarkable story begins in a small village in North Holland.

🍂 This autumn, the Grote Kerk Schermerhorn presents a special exhibition-

🗽 Discover how the name Schermerhorn traveled from this village to New Amsterdam and became part of American history.

🖼️ Five centuries of migration, ambition, scandal, and survival come to life through portraits, film, concerts and stories.

📅 September–October 2026

For more information, follow us or go to https://www.grotekerkschermerhorn.nl/

🇳🇱❤️🇺🇸 **Does your family have roots in Schermerhorn, NL?**

Whether your ancestors stayed in the Netherlands or crossed the Atlantic to begin a new life in America, your family's story is part of a remarkable shared history.

This autumn, the Grote Kerk Schermerhorn invites descendants of the Schermerhorn family—and everyone connected to this historic village—to discover the exhibition:

🔴⚪️🔵 Het Verhaal van de Jongen die de Oceaan Overstak 🔴⚪️🔵

Explore how one family name traveled from a small North Holland village to New Amsterdam, where it became woven into the history of America. Through portraits, film, personal stories, and historical discoveries, you'll follow five centuries of courage, migration, ambition, triumph, and resilience.

💬 Are you a Schermerhorn descendant?
📖 Do you have old photographs, letters, family stories, or a family tree to share?
🌍 Do you live in the Netherlands, the United States, or somewhere else in the world?

We would love to hear from you.

Our hope is that this exhibition becomes more than a look at the past—it becomes a bridge between families, generations, and two countries connected by history.

Join us, ask questions, share your story, and help us keep this unique heritage alive.

📍 Grote Kerk Schermerhorn
📅 September–October 2026

Together, let's reconnect Schermerhorn with its family across the ocean.

The New Netherland Institute's latest newsletter is out! You can find it in your inboxes, or you can view it here: https://crm.newnetherlandinstitute.org/civicrm/mailing/view/?id=444&reset=1.

As always, you review back issues and register to receive our newsletter by visiting https://newnetherlandinstitute.org/readwatchlisten/marcurius/.

Image: Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667), Young Man Smoking and A Woman Pouring Beer, ca. 1656-58. From the Leiden Collection. On view now in Old Masters, New Amsterdam at the New York Historical until August 30.

Meet this year's Fulbright - New Netherland Research Fellow!

Johan Visser, a PhD Candidate at Leiden University, is this year's Fulbright-NNRC scholar. He is working on a project entitled Feeding the Atlantic: Computational Reading of Scarcity and Paradise in the Dutch Atlantic World, which looks at how descriptions of New Netherland as an agricultural paradise conflicted with actual experiences of food scarcity for many who lived in the colony.

The New Netherland Institute was honored to be included in the celebration for the Alice P. Kenney Endowed Fund at the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region () in Albany on Wednesday. We are grateful to Marjorie Kenney for her generosity and to the Community Foundation for administering grants from the Kenney Endowed Fund.

It is a wonderful coincidence that the Community Foundation should disperse the first grants from the Alice P. Kenney Fund at the semiquincentennial of the American Revolution as Alice (who, unfortunately, died much too young in 1985) was one of the foremost historians of Albany in and around the period of the Revolution. Some of her work on the subject can be found in "The Gansevoorts of Albany: Dutch Patricians in the Upper Hudson Valley" (1969) and "Stubborn for Liberty: The Dutch in New York" (1975). If you would like to read more about Alice P. Kenney and her mother, Marjorie Kenney, Paul Grondahl has written a nice piece about them for the Albany Times Union, which you can find here: https://eedition.timesunion.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=2f065ee7-9bcb-4fed-a843-a9eaa201f254&share=true.

We look forward to honoring Alice Kenney's legacy with further work on New Netherland.

Reminder: join us for our next Live from New Amsterdam on Thursday, May 28 at noon. Deborah Hamer will speak with Anna Danziger Halperin, the Director of the Jean Margo Reid Center for Women's History at The New York Historical, about the new exhibition Revolutionary Women. For more information and to register, visit https://www.nyhistory.org/programs/live-from-new-amsterdam-revolutionary-women?date=2026-05-28

Image: John Watson, Anna Van Rensselaer Schuyler (1719-1791). From the Collection of New York Historical.

Meet NNI's Third 2026 Wendell Fellow!

Lisa Fludd-Smith is co-founder and Deputy Executive Director of the African American Archive of Columbia County. She will be working on "Write My Name in the Book of Life," a book about the Black history of the Hudson Valley in the 17th through 19th centuries. She is particularly interested in exploring the relationships between Dutch settlers and the people they enslaved and then how the two groups interacted after manumission.

Join us for our next Live from New Amsterdam on Thursday, May 28 at noon. Deborah Hamer will speak with Anna Danziger Halperin, the Director of the Jean Margo Reid Center for Women's History at The New York Historical, about the new exhibition Revolutionary Women. For more information and to register, visit https://www.nyhistory.org/programs/live-from-new-amsterdam-revolutionary-women?date=2026-05-28

Join the on Tuesday, June 9th at noon for an online talk by Dr. Erin Kramer (Trinity University) about her new book The Ancient House: Constructing Community in the Seventeenth-Century New York Borderlands. The book explores the relationships between the Dutch and Haudenosaunee and Albany's significance as the site where the two groups met and negotiated their relationships. Event is free, but registration is required. For more information, visit https://nyslibrary.libcal.com/event/16518635