Week 1: Beginnings


(Stormy Seas by Jordon Blackstone - found at pictorem.com)

When I think of beginnings, I think of ancestors who immigrated to the New World - and also the birth of a child. This story has both. I was thinking the other day of women from the past that I have never met that I would like to have a tea party with.  Annetje Barentse Van Rotmer, one of my 10th great grandmothers, came to mind. 


Most sources I have found indicate that Annetje was born of German parents in the area of Niedersachsen, Germany, somewhere between 1607 and 1611.  Other sources say she was born in Norway. She married a cantankerous Norwegian named Albert Andriesson Bradt in Amsterdam on April 11, 1632.  Bradt threw in with Kiliaen van Rensselaer, a Dutch jeweler, who wanted to establish his own fiefdom in the New World. 

On September 25th 1636, the family left Amsterdam on a ship called “Arms of Rensselaerswyck”.  They had two small children with them: Eva, my 9th great grandmother, and her brother Barent.  On their way to New Netherland, on November 2nd, they were blessed with a third child while on board the ship.  They named him Storm, because he was born in a storm.  An excerpt from a book titled Norwegian Immigrants in New York, 1630-1674, found on Ancestry.com, had this excerpt from the ship’s log:

 November Saturday 1. In the morning we veered toward the west and drifted north. The Wind S. W with rough weather and high seas. The past half day and entire night.

Sunday; 2. Drifted 16 leagues N.E. by E.; the wind about west, the latitude by dead reckoning 41 degrees, 50 minutes with very high seas. That day the overhang above our rudder was knocked in by severe storm. This day a child was born on the ship, and named and baptized in England Stoerm; the mother is Asnetie Baernts. This day gone.

In some records for Storm, he is known as Storm Van Der Zee. (By the way, “van” usually isn’t a part of the surname at this time – it translates as “from” and the place name follows it.)  Therefore this name translates to “Storm from the sea”.


(Rensselaerswyck by Denise Dahn at dahndesign.com)

The ship arrived at New York in March and arrived at Albany (then called Beverswych) on April 7th 1637.  The Bradt’s were some of the earliest settlers of Rensselaerswyck. In Lorine McGinnis Schulze’s book The Norwegian Bradt Family in New Netherland New York, she located a document dated August 26, 1636, whereby the patroon of the colony of Rensselaerswyck, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, formed an agreement with 29 year old Andriessen; 43 year old Pieter Cornelissen van Munnickendam, a millwright; and 33 year old Claesz Jans van Naerden, a house carpenter, in which they agree to sail to the colony of Rensselaerswyck and settle there, abiding by the patroon’s conditions and running a sawmill. (Brandt quickly broke the agreement after arriving and took to tobacco farming.)

I wonder what Annetje thought of this whole thing.

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