The Fulkerson Family Pages
Colonial Days: New Netherlands to New York
Researchers of Fulkerson family history tend to hold in common the view that Dirck Volckertszen was most likely a ship's carpenter who left Bergen, Norway, possibly in the year 1625, when the Dutch West India Company sought builders for houses in New Netherland, what is today New York City.
From the mid 1200's, the German Hanseatic League had dominated trade in much of northern Europe, but its influence was waning by the time Dirck would have been a young man. It is doubtful all records regarding Dirck which may be available in New York have been gathered; an as-yet-to-be-done project might be for a family researcher to gather as many of these as possible and put them into date order.
Perhaps the earliest record we have of Dirck is his marriage to Christine Vigne, daughter of Guillame Vigne and Adriennes Cuvelier, in 1630.
The great majority of Dirck's personal and business dealings in the 1650s and 1660s were with Scandinavian immigrants to the New Netherland colony.
Dirck's inlaws, the Vignes, had been among the first 30 French Walloon families the Dutch West India Company imported to establish the New Netherlands colony in 1624. When Christina's father died in 1632, Dirck and his mother-in-law were named executors of the will. Dirck and Christina initially lived in her mother's household. Adrienne Cuvelier, however, soon remarried, and her husband Jan Jansen Damen was not a force for peace in the household. By May of 1638, loan paperwork appears detailing a repayment plan to the colony director, Kieft. From 1638 to 1645, Dirck and Christina owned and occupied a large house at 125 Pearl Street (a block south of Wall Street,today in the vicinity of The Cocoa Exchange and six blocks or so north, northeast from Battery Park), leasing also a nearby farm property from the Dutch West India Company.
Click on our graphics--nearly all are links!
Perhaps our grandmother Christina was as lovely as this Girl with A Pearl Earring, 1670, by Johannes Vermeer
Dirck and Christina's house on Pearl Street was on a quarter-acre and had a garden and apple trees. He sold the house in 1645. The deed states he took six of the apple trees when he moved.
In 1648 Sergeant Daniel Litschoe purchased the site and converted the house into a tavern. The site of this tavern appears on the 1660 map of the city; however, Litschoe traded it in 1653 for "the Jansen house" just north of the City Wall.
The Jansen house may have been the old Vigne home, since Jan Jansen Damen had just died.
Ironically, Adrienne Cuvelier, Christina's mother, may have spent her last three years in Dirck's old house on Pearl Street.
Dirck's leased farm was near brother-in-law Cornelis Van Tienhoven's "plantation" at Smits Vly (translation: Smith's Flat), northeast of Wall Street.
William Kidd, privateer, pirate. 18th century portrait by Sir James Thornhill.
In 1691, Captain William Kidd and his new wife, the former Mrs. Sarah Oort, moved into a large house on Pearl Street, half a block south of Dirck's old house.
