Jan Van Husum and the Patron Rensselaer

I bore no grudge against the patroon, indeed, I owed a great deal to the Rensselaer family: ship's passage from Amsterdam to the colony for myself and my wife, a lot on which to garden and build a house, a new life in exchange for four years work. The patroon needed colonists for a Dutch Colony. I never met the patroon, though I saw his painting hanging in the office of his agent at the Dutch West India Company. My problems with the patroon did not occur until much later, after I had worked off my debt to him and his company. By trading for furs with the Mohicans, I slowly acquired wealth. It was then that I took up the notion of acquiring land as he done, and having done so, our legal battle would begin.
A Fictional Autobiography of Jan Franz Van Husum

Renssalaerwyck

The story of the Rensselaerwyck Colony in America is well known.*

For millennia, the Mahican (Mohicans, Mohawks) lived in the Hudson River Valley.

Then, in 1630, the Dutch West India Company deeded (there will forever be a debate as to what right they had to take land belonging to the Indians and formally and legally acquire it) to to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, a wealthy Dutch merchant and one of the company's original directors. Rensselaerwyck was like a broad sandwich, extending for miles at the confluence of the Mohawk River and the Hudson including present-day Albany.

Rensselaerwyck saw the colony as a business oportunity and engaged hundreds of Dutch settlers to sail to Renssalaerwyck to be his tenants. Usually, for a period of four years in exchange for free passage. Jan Fransse Van Husum was among them.

The Dutch West India Company required Rennsalaer to appease the original Indian land and to transport "fifty souls upwards of the age of 15, one-forth to be sent during the first year, and the remainder before the expiration of the fourth year."

To this end, Rensselaer's agent, Sebastiaen Jansen Crol, an officer in charge of Fort Orange, in a series of purchases from 1630 to 1639, purchased (again, one can dispute the legal niceties of the word) all the land on the west side of the Hudson from Albany 12 miles south to Smack's Island, at the mouth of the Mohawk River stretching two days' journey inland," and the land east of the river, north and south, at a similar distance.

See the original map of Rennsselaerwyck from Wikipedia.

Coming to America, Jan Fransse Van Husum 

In 1634, a flood of biblical proportions struck the western coast of the Jutland peninsula and the town of Husum, Jan called home, and the island of Nordstrand where his wife to be lived. The couple made their way to Amsterdam and married in May of 1639, shortly before setting sail aboard the ship Den Harlink to join other settlers in Renssalaerwyck. They arrived at Fort Orange in July and started a new life. Outside the fort, a community called Beverwyck was established. Relations with the Mohawks was by all accounts friendly. Jan reportedly worked for the colony as a clerk.

Four years passed and more.

In 1653 on the 25th of October, the Dutch government of the New Netherlands records a land patent giving Jan Fransse Van Hoesen Van Hoesen a lot with a garden in Beverwyck.

Then, on June 5, 1662, it is recorded that Jan purchased from the Mohicans several hundred acres of the Claverack land to the north of Rensselaerwyck. The purchase price was 500 guilders in beaver skins. Jan's purchase included the present day city of Hudson and part of Greenport. It extended along the Hudson Riveron the north from Stockport Creek to the mouth of Keshna's Kill on the south, which empties into the South Bay near Mount Merino, and on the east of Claverack Creek. At this point, where it met the boundary of Rennsalaerwyck.

Van Hoesen vs. Van Renssalaer

Rennselaer contested Jan's land patent. Jan and his former patroon would meet in a court of law. After Jan's death, the case would be decided in his favor. One interesting fact, papers related to the lawsuit are in the Library of Congress, files of Alexander Hamilton, but I find them too hard to read.

Notes:

There are two principal sources for the article:
Van Rensselaer Family,
New Netherlands and Jan Van Husum.

Of course, one also should always consult Joyce Lindstrom's book,
Vanhoose, Van Hooser, Van Huss Family in America.