Six Days in Breukelen

New York, NY —

This year New Yorkers are celebrating the 400th anniversary year of Henry Hudson’s voyage from Amsterdam to our shores. Some students in Brooklyn are getting a history lesson about the Dutch settlement here that they wouldn’t find in a textbook. They’ve spent the past few months combing through 17th century artifacts and curating a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Historical Society. WNYC’s Beth Fertig reports.

Take a guided video tour of the BHS exhibition

In 1679, Jasper Danckaerts spent six days in Brooklyn. New Amsterdam had already been taken over by the British, but it still retained its Dutch identity. Danckaerts came from the Netherlands searching for a place to start a religious colony.

KIDS: This is the journal pages.

Dankaerts kept a journal of his six days in Brooklkyn, which belongs to the Brooklyn Historical Society. This year, 19 students from four Brooklyn high schools created an exhibit about Danckaerts’ short stay based on the journal. It was part of the Society’s afterschool program.

PHUONG: The first day on Jasper Danckaerts’ journey to Brooklyn he met several Native American people and he was telling about how bountiful the New World was.

Seventeen year old Phuong Nguyen is a junior at Cobble Hill High School. The students used materials from the Historical Society’s collection to make a visual presentation to go with journal excerpts. Since Danckaerts stayed with Dutch families, they chose a 17th century Dutch pot, ceramic tiles, and a pepper shaker. Seventeen year old George Athanail, of Brooklyn Tech, reads from the translation of Danckaerts’ first day in Brooklyn.

GEORGE: We found a good fire halfway up the chimney of clear oak and hickory. There had already been thrown upon it to be roasted a pail full of Gowanus oysters which are the best in the country. I had to try some of them raw. They are large and full, not less than a foot long.

ILANA: New York, Long Island in general was sort of like the bread basket for the entire East Coast at the time.

That’s eighteen year old Ilana Harris-Babou from St Ann’s School. She was surprised by Danckaerts’ description of her native, very urban Brooklyn. The students were also excited to see old ledger books from Dutch farms, and sketches by Danckaerts.

ILANA: This is how you can see it was the journals of real people because when you think back into the past you don’t really imagine people doodling or being like you, but they have lots of doodles in their journals just like we would.

Danckaerts’ journal documents long walks around Vlacke Bos, or Flatbush, and Coney Island. But Ilana says things took a bad turn by day five of his journey.

ILANA: I know a lot of people when they’re writing in their journal like to take time to complain about things and Danckaerts definitely did that this day because he was stuck inside and it was rainy. And he was with people he considered godless, which to him would be a really big insult. REPORTER: He writes that it was as if in a prison? ILANA: Yes. He talks about feeling trapped a lot during his day in Brooklyn.

The student curators had a difficult time picking objects to go with this section. They chose a leather-bound Dutch catechism, or religious study guide. And because Danckaerts was stuck inside, they found photographs of 17th century Dutch doors. To create the exhibit, they volunteered two afternoons every week this semester, arguing over which colors to paint the walls, what materials to use, and what captions to write.

At the end of the exhibit, the students hung several maps, plus pen and ink drawings Danckaerts made of New York harbor. He was leaving, searching for another place to start his religious colony. Phuong and the others call it his escape from Brooklyn.

PHUONG: At the end I thought he was equivalent to a whiny kid, ‘I want to leave, let me go!’

GEORGE: He got free food from a bunch of people.I know that Brooklyn, he looked and he liked it but he didn’t like it. He sort of had a love-hate relationship.

ILANA: Yeah and it left an impression on him, at least. Which Brooklyn leaves an impression on most people.

“Pages of the Past: the Breukelen Adventures of Jasper Danckaerts” is showing at the Brooklyn Historical Society through the rest of the year. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.