| Notes |
- Research to explore: https://uh.edu/~jbutler/gean/dyeshome.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20190918044244/http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/gean/familydocuments.html
Laurens Duyts was bom in Holstein in 1610.
He married Ytie Jansen in 1638 in Amsterdam.
Why was he in Amsterdam? During the night of October 11-12, 1634, a storm raging off the North Sea destroyed the coastline of North Friesland. Nordstrand Island sustained the most damage and more than 6,000 people drowned. If Laurens was in Nordstrand that night he was very lucky to be alive. The economy was devastated so people scattered to the places where they could find work, like Amsterdam.
http://letterstomygrandparents.blogspot.com/2012/04/
More on the flood: https://web.archive.org/web/20190311041838/https://rabbel.nl/nordstrand.html
He came over to New Netherland in 1639 in the ship “de Brant van Trogen.” Among his fellow passengers were the Danes Captain Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, Jonas Bronck (?), and Pieter Andriesen. Duyts and Andriesen were to work for Jonas Bronck : to clear a tract of five hundred acres (to raise tobacco and maize), which Bronck had purchased from the Indians. Duyts thus became one of the pioneers of the present Borough of Bronx. He was commonly known as Laurens Grootschoe (Big Shoe).
By his first marriage with Ytie, he had three children: a
daughter, Margariet, who was baptized on December 23, 1639, the sponsors being Gerrit Jansen of Oldenburg (perhaps he was Ytie’s brother), Teuntje Joris and Tyntje Martens; a son, Jan, who was baptized on March 23, 1641 ; another son, Hans, who was baptized in 1644. Jochem Pietersen Kuyter was sponsor at the baptism of the boys.
Duyts appears to have been farming in different places, leasing the lands he tilled.
In March, 1654, he had a land dispute with Francoys Fyn.
Fyn had a certain parcel of land lying on Long Island over against Hog Island (now Blackwell’s Island). Duyts had sold this without Fyn’s knowing it, claiming it was his own land.
Duyts leased for some time the bowery of the Norwegian
woman from Marstrand, Anneke Jans. He was to pay her two hogs in rent. As he had paid only one, he was sued, in May, 1658, by Anneke’s son-in-law, Johannes Pietersen Verbrugge, later mayor of New York, and was condemned to deliver the hog to the plaintiff.
Duyts’s moral life does not deserve mention. But in order to show hos Laurens “Big Shoe” trampled upon the laws of decency and how such a lawbreaker was punished, we relate that Laurens Duyts of Holstein received a most severe sentence from Stuyvesant on November 25, 1658. For selling his wife, Ytie Jansen, and forcing her to live in adultery with another man and for living himself also in adultery, he was to have a “rope tied around his neck, and then to be severely flogged, to have his right ear cut off, and to be banished for fifty years.”
Laurens died at Bergen, New Jersey, on 14 Jan 1668 and was buried 2 days later.
"Scandinavian Immigrants in New York, 1630-1674", Pg's. 193-194; Evjen; 1916; https://www.google.com/books/edition/Scandinavian_Immi-grants_in_New_York_1630/gIwsAAAAYAAJ
More on Holstein
"The duchies of Schleswig and Holstein had been ruled separately by Danish kings since the 15th century but had been united at various points in their history (notably from 1386 to 1460). The death of King Frederick VI of Denmark in 1839 triggered a crisis" and ultimately, after the war in 1864, H was ruled by Prussia.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Holstein
Of possible interest (Dey genealogical collection): https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/nyhs/ms3123_dey_genealogical_collection/
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1610 - 1668 (58 years)
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