Twee tweelingen (werk in uitvoering)

Op 14 september 1747 werd in het vestingstadje Ravenstein gelegen aan de Maas in de Rooms-Katholieke Sint-Luciakerk een Surinaamse tweeling gedoopt. De kinderen kregen de namen Adam Franciscus en Susanna Maria. Hoe oud zij precies waren wordt uit de doopregistratie niet duidelijk, maar wel dat ze in Suriname zijn geboren. Als vader wordt genoteerd Gerardus Hijbers van Vellip, van de moeder werd de naam niet opgeschreven, maar slechts dat zij ‘Aethipissa’ was, letterlijk ‘Ethiopische’, bedoeld werd een zwarte vrouw.

De tweeling was vijf maanden eerder samen met hun vader aan boord van het schip Jakob en Daniel van Suriname naar Europa vertrokken. Bleef de moeder achter in Suriname? Of reisde dit hele gezin naar Europa? Dat lijkt alleen al vanwege de verzorging van de kinderen logischer. Vaak werd zoiets bij vertrek in het journaal van de gouverneur genoemd, maar in dit geval helaas niet. Wat we wel weten is dat Gerardus – of liever gezegd Gerrit, zoals hij door zijn broers en zussen in een notariële akten genoemd werd – tijdens de reis aan boord van het schip is overleden. En dat de kinderen op 14 september 1747 in Ravenstein waren.

Wat zal er daarna gebeurd zijn met de tweeling en hun moeder? Bleven ze lang in Nederland, of gingen ze juist weer terug? Waren ze bij hun moeder, of kwamen ze in een weeshuis terecht? Wat zeker is, is dat Susanna op een gegeven moment weer naar Suriname is gereisd. Op 17 mei 1760 vertrekt zij namelijk (opnieuw) vanuit Paramaribo naar Amsterdam, door de gouverneur wordt zij ‘mulattin’ genoemd in het journaal.

Een tweede tweeling

In 1766 blijkt Susanna van Vellep als getrouwde vrouw in Amsterdam te wonen met een zekere Jan Schipper. Wanneer en waar Suzanna en Jan trouwde weet ik nog niet. Zij komen niet voor in de Amsterdamse ondertrouwregisters, en die zijn compleet dus de bruiloft moet buiten Amsterdam (in Suriname?) zijn geweest. Op 16 jul 1766 hadden zij wel iets te vieren in die stad, dan wordt in de Noorderkerk in de Jordaan een tweeling gedoopt door dominee Johannes Calkoen, vader Johannis Schipper, moeder ‘Zussana van Vellep’. Het krijgen van twee-eiige tweelingen is vaak genetisch, zo blijkt ook nu weer. En net als haar moeder, van wie we nog altijd de naam niet weten, kreeg Suzanna een dochter (Magteltje) en een zoon (Johannes). Was Machteltje misschien de naam van Suzanna’s moeder?

Twee jaar later op 14 september 1768 , op de dag af 21 jaar na de doop van Adam en Suzanna, wordt er opnieuw een kind van Suzanna van Vellep en Jan Schippers in de Noorderkerk gedoopt. Geen tweeling, maar een zoon die de naam Adam krijgt, natuurlijk vernoemd naar haar tweelingbroer. Die nu ook in Amsterdam aanwezig blijkt te zijn en die natuurlijk doopgetuige van zijn neefje.

In 1785 is Susanna doopgetuige van een kind dat Susanna Catrina genoemd wordt, docher van Jan Langendijk en Sara Alida Boomhoff, vernoemd naar Susanna van Velp dus. En in 1786 zijn Adam en Susanna samen getuige bij het in Amsterdam geboren kind Jan, zoon van Sijbrant Kraaneveld en Anna Angel.

Noorderkerk, circa 1775,

Wat Suzanna en Adam precies deden weet ik nog niet. Van Suzanna hebben we nog een belangrijk spoor waaruit blijkt dat ze nog dertig jaar geleefd heeft, waarschijnlijk al die tijd in Amsterdam. Op 4 december 1799 wordt namelijk op het Amsterdamse Leidse kerkhof Susanna Maria Huijbertse van Velp, weduwe van Jan Schipper, begraven. Op het moment van overlijden woonde Suzanna in de Utrechtse Dwarsstraat.Wat Suzanna en Adam precies deden weet ik nog niet. Van Suzanna hebben we nog een belangrijk spoor waaruit blijkt dat ze nog dertig jaar geleefd heeft, waarschijnlijk al die tijd in Amsterdam. Op 4 december 1799 wordt namelijk op het Amsterdamse Leidse kerkhof Susanna Maria Huijbertse van Velp, weduwe van Jan Schipper, begraven. Op het moment van overlijden woonde Suzanna in de Utrechtse Dwarsstraat.

Van Adam en de overige familieleden ontbreekt verder nog ieder spoor. Maar daar komt vast snel verandering in.

Mark Ponte

Pieter Claesz Bruijn and Lijsbeth Pieters

Published in: ‘Black in Rembrandt’s Time’, 2020.

In the archives, we often stumble across fragments of human lives: declarations, authorizations, or contracts that demonstrate the existence of a person otherwise absent from the historical record. Many thousands of Amsterdam men took to the sea in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Dutch West India Company (WIC), or merchant marine. This undoubtedly also applies to black Amsterdammers. Some of them probably never visited a public notary or served as a godparent at a baptism. For a few of them, some traces of their lives have been preserved. A case in point is the married couple Lijsbeth Pieters of Angola and Pieter Claesz Bruijn of Brasil.

Marriage bann of Pieter Claes Bruyn from Brazil and Lijsbeth Pieters from Angola, 6 November 1649.

Shortly before four o’clock on 23 March 1640, Pieter Claesz Swart of Brasil entered the office of Henrick Schaeff, behind WIC headquarters on Haarlemmerdijk, accompanied by Willem de Keijser of Middelburg. Schaeff was both a notary and a clerk for the WIC, and the boundary between his two roles was often blurred. Thousands of sailors on the verge of departing for the Atlantic region – territories ranging from West Africa and Brazil to New Amsterdam and North America – visited him for various purposes, such as signing letters of debt to the many local innkeepers, thus pledging away much of their pay. Both Pieter and Willem worked for the WIC, and they had accumulated debts of 50 and 100 guilders respectively to Jan Pietersz Santdrager and his wife Anna Jansz in Amsterdam.

De Hollandse Tuyn and other ships have returned from Brazil under the command of Paulus van Caerden, painting by Hendrick Vroom.

Pieter Claesz Swart was a man of colour. He was a bosschieter – an able seaman – from Brazil, and in 1640 he was about to embark on a new voyage on the WIC yacht Goerree. One of the two notarial deeds that Pieter Claesz signed that day describes him as speaking the Dutch language proficiently. Four years later, Pieter Claesz was back in Amsterdam, where he again accumulated a debt to the keeper of a hostelry in the Jordaan district, this time amounting to no less than 124 guilders, easily a year’s salary for a seaman. This time, interestingly, he is referred to as Peter Claesz Bruijn van Brazilië. (Swart means ‘Black’ and Bruijn means ‘Brown’.) This is the name under which he was later known. In January 1644, he went to sea again, this time on the WIC vessel Mauritius.

Map of Vlooienburg / Jodenbreestraat Area, 6 is House Moyses, 7 Rembrandt’s studio.

At that time, Pieter Claesz was not yet in touch with the small black community around Jodenbreestraat. He accumulated his debts in inns for white people, and the witnesses to his notarial deeds were white. By the late 1640s and 1650s, this situation had changed. In November 1649, when Pieter Claesz was 44 years old, he registered to marry to Lijsbeth Pieters of Angola, whom the notarial deed listed as living in Jodenbreestraat. He probably moved in with her. It is not clear whether he returned to sea after that or remained in Amsterdam. What we do know is that he was in Amsterdam in 1659. In August and October he was a witness to the baptisms of black children in the Catholic house church in the Huis Moyses in Jodenbreestraat. The first of these children, Pieter – undoubtedly named after Pieter Claesz – was the son of Alexander van Angola and Lijsbeth Dames. The second child – Catharina – was the daughter of Louis and Esperanza Alphonse. That same day, Nicolaus, the son of Emanuel and Branca Alphonse, was also baptized. The witness was Lijsbeth Pieters. She had also acted as a witness a few years earlier, in 1657, at the baptism of that couple’s first child Lucretia, as well as for Lucia, the daughter of Bastiaan and Maria Ferdinandes. These are all names of people from the small black community in and around Jodenbreestraat, of which Pieter and Lijsbeth had become important members.

How to cite: Mark Ponte, ‘Pieter Claesz Bruijn and Lijsbeth Pieters’, in: Elmer Kolfin and Epco Runia ed., Black in Rembrandt’s Time, W Books / The Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam 2020, 60-61.

Tappen voor een toekomst

AMSTERDAMSE AKTEN • 1 juni 2022 • Door Maarten Hell en Mark Ponte

In de 18de eeuw stonden enkele Surinaamse tapsters achter de toog in Amsterdam, zo blijkt uit de administratie van het Spinhuis. De vrouwen probeerden met drankverkoop en het aanbieden van logies het hoofd boven water te houden.  

‘Over de veertien honderd tappers’ telde Amsterdam in de tweede helft van de 18de eeuw, zo becijferde de anonieme auteur van de roman Ongelukkige levensbeschrijving van een Amsterdammer uit 1775. Als frequent en fervent bezoeker van de stedelijke stamtafels maakte hij daarmee een correcte inschatting van het toenmalige drankhuizenbestand. In diezelfde roman klaagt een nukkige grijsaard dat er ‘geen negotie [is] waar wat winning op is, of het is in handen van vreemdelingen, zoals het geval is bij de zielverkopers, tappers, logementhouders, tabakskopers’.  

Lees het hele verhaal op OnsAmsterdam.nl

Een slaafgemaakte familie in Amsterdam


In 1783 werden Anthony, zijn vrouw Magdalena en hun zoontje Emanuel vanuit Curaçao naar Amsterdam meegenomen. Daar kwamen zij terecht in een woning aan de Nieuwe Herengracht, het huidige nummer 105. Anthony was de persoonlijke bediende van de oude koopman Isaac Pardo. Ook Magdalena werkte als bediende. Hoe oud Emanuel was en of hij ook moest werken is niet bekend. Anthony en zijn familie leefden op Curaçao in slavernij, in Amsterdam was hun status niet zo duidelijk.

Pesachmaaltijd bij de Familie Nunes da Costa aan de Nieuwe Herengracht 49. Bernard Picart, 1725 (Amsterdam Museum)

Lees het verhaal op alleamsterdamseakten.nl

Anthony, een zwarte jongen tijden de Amerikaanse Onafhankelijkheidsoorlog

Rond 1770 leefde in Amsterdam ‘Swarte Klaas’, een zwarte bedelaar zonder benen, vooral bekend doordat hij werd afgebeeld op een populaire prent uit die tijd. De prent maakt onderdeel uit van een serie prenten van straatfiguren en bedelaars die werkelijk geleefd hebben, getekend door Pieter Barbiers en in prent gebracht door Pieter Langendijk. Swarte Klaas is ook op een prent van de Nieuwe Stadsschouwburg aan het Leidseplein te zien, uitgegeven in 1775. Over de herkomst en identiteit van Klaas is nog weinig bekend. Misschien was hij een afgezwaaide zeeman, die op zee zijn benen verloren was. Zoals de zwarte jongen Anthony, die zijn beide onderbenen verloor tijdens de Amerikaanse Onafhankelijkheidsoorlog.

Lees verder op AlleAmsterdamseAkten.nl

Black History Month

During #BlackHistoryMonth everyday a tweet about Amsterdam’s Black History.

1 – Franciscus Thomas from Sierra Leone

Image

On 1 february 1698 Franciscus Thomas from ‘Sierra Liona in Africa’ and Truijtje Hendricx from Amsterdam posted their banns in Amsterdam. Two weeks later they married in the Old Church. Franciscus Thomas was working as a ‘droogscheerder’ in the textile industry. He lived in the Egelantierstraat in de Jordaan area. #1

2 – Francisco from Angola – ensign in Brazil

Image

Francisco from #Angola was a vaandrig (ensign) in the Dutch army in #Brazil, after the Portuguese takeover in 1654, he settled in #Amsterdam, where he lived in the Jodenbreestraat on the corner of the Markensteeg, ‘under the angel’. He died in January 1659. #2

3 – Alida Clara Carles from Berbice

Image

On 25 December 1784 Alida Clara Karles/ Charles was buried at St Anthonies Cemetery in #Amsterdam. She was born in the Dutch colony of #Berbice, her mother was the free black woman Quassiba. Together with her husband she ran a bar in Pieter Jacobszdwarsstraat. #3

4 – Swarte Klaas

Image

‘Swarte Klaas’ (Black Klaas) was a famous street figure in #Amsterdam in the 18th century. Klaas was a Black man who had lost his legs, maybe as a sailor. He was portrayed by different artists. Klaas died around 1800 in Amsterdam. #4

Image
Image

5 – Pieter Claesz Bruin and Lijsbeth Pieters

In 1649 44-year old sailor Pieter Claesz Bruin from Brazil married Lijsbeth Pieters from Angola. They were an important couple in the small black community around de Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam. They were the godparents of different Black children born in the area. Like Pieter, the son of Alexander van Angola and Lijsbeth Dames and Catharina, the daughter of Louis and Esperanza Alphonse. The children were baptized in the House Moyses.

Read more about Pieter Claesz Bruijn and Lijsbeth Pieters in ‘Black in Rembrandt’s Time‘ and in Dutch in TSEG.

Image

6 – Francisca

In the 1630’s Francesca clearly played a important role in the the formation of a Black community in #Amsterdam. According witnesses, Francisca would ‘receive in her house all the black men who come to this city.’

7 – Theatre

"Dito voor drie morijanen in Salomon f3"

Monday 11 April 1650 three Black men were paid a guilder each to perform in the play ‘Salomon’ in the Municipal Theatre. Unfortunately their names were not registered, but entries like this show that Black people performed in theatre in C17th Amsterdam. The anonymous performers were almost certainly members of the same community as Pieter Claesz Bruin and Lijsbeth Pieters.

Image

They were ‘extras’ in the play, but were paid considerably more than the 10 soldiers in ‘De gestrafte kroonzught’ (La crueldad por el honor) later that month. The 10 soldiers had to share 3 guilders, earning only 6 nickels each.

Image

8 – Louis Zamore van Wicky

Image

This is Louis Zamore van Wicky (1778-1805) hours before his early death in #Amsterdam in 1805. Louis Zamore was a draughtsman born in the plantation colony of #Berbice (now part of #Guyana).

Image

Louis was the son of a Black woman and plantation owner Emanuel de Correvont. The name of his mother is unknown. He had a sister in the Netherlands named Lisette, who is almost certainly watching over het brother’s deathbed in this drawing.

Image

In 1802, Louis Zamore enrolled at Municipal Drawing Academy. He was a student of painter Jurriaan Andriessen and lived with the Andriessen family. In July 1805, Louis suddenly contracted a severe fever and died two days later. He was buried at the Zuiderkerkhof cemetery.

Image

As far as I know, no artworks by Louis Zamore van Wicky are known. Zamore van Wicky was one of the main characters in the @Stadsarchief exhibition ‘Amsterdammers and slavery’ in the summer of 2020.

9 – The Charles Family

Maria Santje Charles (1838-1914) and Hendrik van Guinea Charles (1827-1899). Maria and Hendrik were children of Johannes Charles (1793-1872), survivor of the transatlantic slave trade.

Their father was born in (present day) Ghana, as a child he was captured, enslaved and taken to Suriname, where he was sold to a merchant. In 1817, J. Charles was emancipated to move to the Netherlands as the servant of Majorin Elisabeth Bijval, herself born in slavery in 1776.

Majorin Elisabeth Bijval was a sister of Jacob Beeldsnijder Matroos. Jacob Beeldsnijder Matroos is buried at the @OudeKerkAMS on September 27, 1817.

Johannes Charles had to leave his two-year old son Gideon and hist wife Charlotte in Suriname, where they lived in slavery until januari 1863. Half a year before the legal abolition of slavery in the Dutch colony.


In the Netherlands, Johannes Charles married Elisabeth van Eijbergen from Rotterdam. They settled in Amsterdam and had ten children. Thanks to several letters that survived, we know that Gideon, who was left behind in Suriname, was in touch with his family in The Netherlands.

A few years ago the Charles Family brought Gideon’s letters, some of them written when he was still enslaved, the photo’s and othere family documents to the @stadsarchief. The letters are digitized and are available for research.

10 – Dominicus

Image

On 10 February 1668 Dominicus, “a Black out about 10 or 12 years of age”, was baptized in de Oude Kerk in #Amsterdam. Dominicus lived with Claes Philipsoon on Oude Waal.

Image

We don’t know much about Dominicus. Was he brought to the city as an enslaved child? Was he a child servant in the house of Claes Philipsoon? Like this boy in Haarlem, painted by Frans Hals?

Image


On the same day in the same church a son of Jan Six was baptized, in presence of mayor Nicolaas Tulp his grandfather. Both Jan Six and Nicolaas Tulp were painted by Rembrandt, mother Margareta Tulp by Govert Flinck. Did they see Dominicus in the church that day? What did Dominicus think?


‘Almost all of their servants are slaves and Moors’

This article is part of the essay that I wrote for the exhibition ‘Here. Black in Rembrandt’s Time’, please order the book to read the full essay and support the Rembrandthuis Museum (available in English and Dutch).

From the late sixteenth century onwards, more and more Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal found their way to Amsterdam. They settled mainly in the east of the city, near Jodenbreestraat; south of that street on Vlooienburg; and north, on the city island of Marken. In previous centuries these Portuguese, as they were usually called, were actually Jews who had been forced to live as Christians on the Iberian Peninsula. In Amsterdam, which was relatively tolerant of Judaism, many returned to the faith of their ancestors. With the arrival of the Portuguese, larger numbers of people of African descent came to the city for the first time. From the fifteenth century onwards, enslaved African men and women were traded on the Iberian Peninsula. Usually they had to work as domestic servants. For instance, various Jewish families brought black servants with them to the Netherlands. In addition, there were Sephardic families with relatives of mixed descent. Already in the early seventeenth century, Ernst Brinck, the later burgomaster of Harderwijk, wrote about his visit to Amsterdam after a grand tour through the Low Countries:

Most of the Portuguese, being largely Jews, live in [Joden]breestraat, and also have a house where they gather [i.e., holding services in a house synagogue]. Almost all of their servants are slaves and Moors’.


Rembrandt lived in the middle of a busy neighborhood full of migrants, like Sephardic Jews from Spain, Portugal and Brazil, Persians, Africans, sailors from all over Europe. The man on the left could well be a black Amsterdammer.

Rembrandt van Rijn, ‘Three Orientals Conversing’, Amsterdam, c. 1645 (Rijksmuseum)

The oldest registers of the Portuguese cemetery in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel mention ‘negras,’ ‘escravas’ (enslaved women) and ‘mulattas’ buried there. On 28 September 1629, for example, an ‘escrava’ of Abraham Aboaf was buried next to an ‘escrava’ of David Netto. Occasionally, black servants appeared before a notary to give a statement. On 3 August 1612, Domingos, a ‘black slave’ of Dr Francisco Lopes Henriques (David Farar), declared that he had been incited by a certain Lijsbet, who lived in a cellar in Jodenbreestraat, to steal Farar’s silverware and other items. On 14 March 1622, 27-year-old Marguerita Fonco ‘moca negra’ (black girl) authorised two Portuguese merchants to claim her salary from the inheritance of Felipa de Sa, for whom she had worked for six years. On 7 May 1616, the black sailor Bastiaan from Angola and Lijsbeth Jans from Angola were wed; the couple’s address was Vlooienburg, the island behind Jodenbreestraat. It is not inconceivable that the black men Rembrandt’s teacher Pieter Lastman featured in his history paintings of 1615-1625 came from this group.

Romeijn de Hooghe’s prints

The presence of black servants in the Sephardic community can also be seen in Romeijn de Hooghe’s prints of the Portuguese community from the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In the print of Huis de Pinto in Sint Antoniesbreestraat are several black figures: one standing prominently in a beautiful costume and the other somewhat hidden behind two ladies sporting late seventeenth-century fontange coiffures. Also interesting is the print of the pulpit in the new Portuguese synagogue, in which in the right foreground behind two white men in discussion – one holding a book – is a black man who quite remarkably does not wear a head covering, counter to Jewish laws.

Detail from:
De teba (bima) in de Portugese Synagoge te Amsterdam, ca. 1695, Romeyn de Hooghe, c. 1695

In addition to this group of servants, there were also people of mixed descent within the Sephardic community. When the Afro-European Debora Nassy was about to leave for the Guianas with the Portuguese Nassy family, she wanted certification of her freedom. At an Amsterdam notary’s office, David Nassy declared that Debora ‘sijnde een bruijn vrouwspersoon ofte mulata’ (being a brown female or mulatto) was a free woman, and in his house ‘in vrijheijt geteelt & gebooren & als soodanigh oock opgevoet, sonder dat iemant ter werelt op haer persoon iets heeft te preteenderen’ (conceived & born in freedom & and also raised as such, without anyone in the world having any kind of claim on her person). Like many women of colour, Debora also worked as a servant, including for Hester Belmonte, the sister-in-law of Rembrandt’s rear neighbour David Belmonte. In her will, Sara Moreno, who had migrated to Amsterdam via Brazil and lived on Houtgracht, the canal south of Jodenbreestraat, left money and clothing to ‘haar swartin’ (her black woman) Luna and her daughter Esther.

Detail from:
Huis van David de Pinto aan de Sint-Antoniesbreestraat te Amsterdam, Romeyn de Hooghe, ca. 1695

Slavery in Amsterdam

Most of these black servants probably had a background in slavery, a phenomenon that had no longer existed in the Low Countries for hundreds of years. It is significant that in the course of the seventeenth century the ban on slavery was explicitly incorporated in the printed codes of law. From 1644, under the heading ‘Van den Staet ende conditie van persoonen’ (on the status and condition of persons) the legal codes included the following stipulation: ‘Within the city of Amsterdam and its jurisdiction, all men are free, and none are slaves.’ This was a clear statement that the city did not condone slavery, and that every person was free. The second article determined how this freedom could be claimed: ‘The same [applies to] all slaves who come or are brought to this city and its jurisdiction; [they] are free and beyond the control and authority of their masters and [the latters’] wives; and in so far as their masters and mistresses wish to keep their slaves, and make them serve against their will, the persons concerned can arraign said masters and mistresses in the court of law of this city, where they then shall formally and legally declare them to be free.’This was literally adopted from an older Antwerp law.

Freedom from slavery thus applied to everyone in the city. If someone was held as a slave, that person could take the owner to municipal court and be declared free there. The initiative for this lay with the person who was enslaved. It is not known how often people took such steps. In 1656, 24-year-old Juliana, who had come to Amsterdam with Eliau de Burgos from Brazil, decided to run away instead of move to Barbados with the Burgos family. Occasionally, someone was declared free at a notary’s office, such as Zabelinha from Guinea and her children, who had come to Amsterdam with Simon Correa. They were granted their freedom on 30 October 1642.

Mark Ponte

Translation: Kist & Kilian

Een zwarte New Yorker in de Jordaan

Het is 1759. Jan Christiaan Prijn legt een notariële verklaring af. Hij is de eerst bekende zwarte man in dienst van een Amsterdamse chirurgijn. Geboren in New York, werkte hij hier enkele jaren, voordat hij als lichtmatroos aanmonsterde bij de VOC.

Meesterchirurgijn Jacob Franszn. voert een aderlating uit op het schilderij van zijn chirurgijnswinkel in Amsterdam, dat Egbert van Heemskerck in 1669 maakte. Het bloed wordt opgevangen in een kom, opgehouden door zijn zoontje. Alledaagse arbeid in een heelmeesterspraktijk, zoals bijna een eeuw later ook voor Jan Christiaan Prijn, werkzaam bij meesterchirurgijn Jan David Burghardt in de Jordaan. Niks bijzonders – behalve dan dat Jan Christiaan een zwarte jongeman was, omstreeks 1739 geboren in New York.

Sinds de late 16de eeuw hebben er altijd mensen van Afrikaanse afkomst in Amsterdam gewoond. Er vormde zich zelfs een kleine zwarte gemeenschap in de omgeving van de Jodenbreestraat en het eiland Vlooienburg. Vele honderden zwarte bedienden trokken naar de stad, vaak met een slavernijachtergrond. Alleen al uit Suriname gedurende de 18de eeuw zo’n 1500. Er waren zwarte zeelui bij in dienst van de Nederlandse schepen van de West-Indische Compagnie, de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie en de koopvaardij. Ook op Franse, Portugese en Engelse schepen die aanmeerden in de stad waren bemanningsleden van kleur geen uitzondering. De meeste Jordanezen zullen dan ook niet hebben opgekeken van de twintigjarige zwarte man Jan Christiaan Prijn. Hij was een van de twee knechten die chirurgijn Burghardt in dienst had; de andere was de vijf jaar jongere Adriaan Hoovenaar, een weesjongen uit de Tichelstraat.

Lees verder op OnsAmsterdam.nl

Winter in the 17th Century

Life was tough in seventeenth century Amsterdam. The winters were very cold. This extraordinary painting by Jan de Bray (1662) makes you think about what it was like for migrants from warmer areas like Angola, Sao Tome or Pernambuco to live in the cities of the Dutch Republic?

“Zwarte jongen warmt zijn handen aan kooltjes”, Jan de Braij, 1662

Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697) lived and worked in Haarlem. The painting is in the collection ‘Groot Constantia Homestead’ in Cape Town.

Maria Gay

Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam, 1663

Probably the most poignant example of how harsh the conditions were in Amsterdam, is that of the 18 year old black woman Maria Gay who was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Zuiderkerk in the 1650’s. After her feet were frozen, her legs had to be amputated in the hospital in Amsterdam. Maria Gay ‘with wooden legs’ lived in Amsterdam until the late 1670’s

Swarte Klaas

Swarte Klaas, circa 1770 (Collection Stadsarchief)

Maria Gay’s story also reminds us of the images of the famous Amsterdam street figure ‘Swarte Klaas’. A black man without legs, who lived in Amsterdam in the second half of the eighteenth century. Maybe a former sailor, like Joseph Johnson in London in the early nineteenth century.

Swarte Klaas in front of the CIty Theater of Amsterdam, 1775 (Collection Stadsarchief)