The Fulkerson Family Pages
Magdalene Dircks, #3 of 9 of Dirck and Christina
Magdalene Dircks was born c 1636 in New Amsterdam, New York, in Buswyck, Queens County. Magdalene was the third of seven sisters and the third of the nine children of Dirck Volckertszen De Noorman and Christina Vigne. Note that Amsterdam, New York, is a small town upstate in the vicinity of Schenectady; whereas New Amsterdam was renamed New York after the English Duke of York in 1665.
According to a family tree by Larry Maxwell, Magdalene died 17 Jan 1726/27 in Ulster Co., New York at the very old age of 90 or 91.
Minister Everardus Bogardus served the Reformed Dutch Church of New Amsterdam from 1633 to 1647. It is likely Bogardus baptized all the children of Dirck and Christina except the last two.In 1647 Bogardus left New Amsterdam for Europe aboard The Princess, but, along with the ship and all its passengers, was lost at sea in the Bristol Channel.
Wilhelm Kieft would have been the Dutch Director-General in charge at the time of Magdalene's birth. Kieft served as teh sixth Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1597 to 1647. Kieft became infamous for his attacks on the Raritan/Lenape tribes and the subsequent deterioration in relations between colonists and Native Americans that nearly resulted in the destruction of New Netherlands (see Kieft's War). With Bogardus, Kieft perished aboard The Princess, but, along with the ship and all its passengers, was lost at sea in the Bristol Channel, off the coast of Swansea, Wales, enroute to Amsterdam to defend himself against charges stemming from his attacks. Rev. Bogardus, who perished with him on the Princess, was to have testified against him.
This portrait, A Young Woman Wearing Pearls, from the 1600s Emilian School (Bolognese), depicts a woman who lived in the era of our ancestor. No doubt, as a woman of means, her wardrobe was likely much more sophisticated than that of a child grown up on the frontier in the New World of the Dutch colony in New York.
