The Fulkerson Family Pages
Household of Dirck Holgerson Volckertszen, De Noorman and Christine Vigne, Est. c 1630
THE STONE HOUSE AT NOORMAN'S KILL
Dirck was a commuting farmer. He traveled up the East River in his boat from Smits Vly on Manhattan to his bouwerie on the Long Island shore.
Dirck began building a stone farm house on Long Island about 1645. According to a Greenpoint historian, the house was at Franklin and Calyer streets in Greenpoint's historic district. He had the assistance of at least two carpenters, Jan Willemsz Bos, and Abraham Martensen, both young men of about 25 years of age.
The house these young men helped build faced south on Norman's Kill, where Dirck sheltered his boats. He may not have moved into the house permanently until after 1655, when the small nearby settlement of Boswyck was established. Until then, there weren't enough neighbors around to assist in protecting the property from Indian attacks.
The house subsequently remained occupied for 200 years. The land grant was officially recorded on April 3, 1645 and continued to be recognized after the English took over the colony in 1664.
Dirck leased part of his land to fellow Norwegian Jochem Calder in 1649. It appears Dirck was trying to gain more neighbors in Brooklyn, to help defend against the Indians, as a number of sales followed in the early 1650's.
NYHM: Dec. 6, 1646, declaration of Jan Willemsen Bos and Abraham Martensen that they built a house for Dirck Holgersen on Long Island: "Before me, Cornelis van Tienhoven, secretary of New Netherland, appeared Jan Willemsz Bos, aged 25 years, and Abraham Martensen, aged about 25 years, carpenters, who at the request of Dirck Holgersen declare before the fiscal that they, the deponents, built for Dirck Holgersen a house on Long Island, to which house they made four projecting eaves.* This the deponents offer to confirm. Done the 6th of December 1646, in New Amsterdam. Jan Wylmsen Bos This is the X mark of Abraham Martensen, made by himself Acknowledged before me, Cornelis van Tienhoven, Secretary"
Click here to see a historical marker at Greenpoint which calls Dirck a "Scandinavian ship's carpenter" and names Dirck as its first resident.
The Shipbuilder and his Wife, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1633, British Royal Collection
Dirck Volckertszen De Noorman
The First American Fulkerson, In Old New Amsterdam
Dirck Volckertszen De Noorman was born circa 1595 in Bergen, Norway. If Dirck were among Minuit's invited ship's carpenters, it would indicate an arrival for him in New Amsterdam (which would later become New York) between 1626 and 1628.
Another possibility is that Dirck came over in 1625, when the Dutch West India Company imported builders to put up houses in the colony. (In 1624, the first year of the New Netherlands settlement, most of the colonists lived "underground" in log-lined, sod-roofed dugouts.)
Historical records and family lore support the story that Dirck worked at first as a shipbuilder for the executives of the New Netherlands enterprise and later employed his woodworking skills constructing homes and barns and fences, both for himself and for clients among fellow colonists.
Perhaps the meeting between our grandparents Dirck and Christine occurred when Dirck set about building her parents', the Vigne's (sometimes spelled Vinje) house on the East River....making his acquaintance then with Christina Vigne, who was in her early teens in that year.
Our grandmother many generations ago, Christine Vigne, was the eldest child and daughter of Guillaume Vigne and his wife Adrienne (a.k.a. Arientje) Cuvielle. Christine was born circa 1610 in St. Waast-La-Haut, Valenciennes, French Flanders. Family researchers report the Vignes were among the first 30 French Walloon families the Dutch West India Company imported to establish the New Netherlands colony in 1624, led by Peter Minuit, who was not Dutch, but was a French Walloon, like the Vignes. The name William, an Anglicized version of the French name Guillame repeats through hundreds of years and down the generations, appearing abundantly in the Fulkerson family---our ancestors often honored members of the matrilineal side through passing the names of beloved elders to newborn infants.
If we assume it was 1625 when Dirck arrived in the colony, he would have been about 30 years old, provided family researchers have concluded rightly about his birth date having been in 1595.
Records indicate his wife Christina Vigne was born in 1610, so their age difference would have been substantial, with Dirck having been fifteen years her senior.It seems odd Christine would have been 20 years old when she and Dirck wed; a rather late age for a woman to marry in those days. Perhaps her position as eldest daughter made her an asset to the family her mother, especially, was reluctant to give up to a husband.
It can be a temptation to view the 1600's as very primitive times when one thinks of Colonial America, but it is important to remember that the colonists came from mostly urban areas, within which big business operated on multiple continents. Therefore, the New Netherlands colony kept detailed written records, so we are able to piece together many details of the day-to-day lives of our early American ancestors.
The New Amsterdam colony spent a considerable amount of effort at record keeping. They took great care to write deeds, contracts and other agreements. They also kept detailed court records: New Amsterdammers were frequently found offending the law or suing one another. Many details of Dirck's life are known to us from the legal documents of that era, translations of which appeared in the "New York Historical Manuscripts" series and similar works.
It is through these records we can be confident Dirck De Noorman married Christine Vigne in the year 1630 in Noorman's Kill, Long Island, New York.
Today a whiskey pub (with great reviews) bears the Noorman's Kil name, revered not only for its selection of spirits, but for, of all things, its grilled cheese sandwiches.
We do not know for certain whether Noorman's Kill ("kill" is the Dutch word for stream or brook) was named for Dirck, but family lore consistently holds that Norman Street, which remains as a thoroughfare in Bushwick on Long Island to this day, memorializes his once-upon-a-time stewardship of the land in its vicinity as his farm.
The couple's first child, Grietje (Margaret), was born about 1633. Eight more youngsters would arrive prior to 1654. As of June 2015, Our Cousin Chuck Fulkerson's extensive genealogy (by no means complete) lists 2,773 of their direct, paternal-line, Fulkerson descendants.
Dirck and Christina lived on her parents' farm, at the south end of Broadway. Christina's father Guillame died in April 1632. Sadly, this was prior to the birth of any of his grandchildren by Dirck and his daughter Christine. Dirck and Christine's mother Adrienne were named executors of the will.
Grietje (Margaret) Dircks was born into the family in 1633 in New Amsterdam. Sister Christine Dircks, named after her mother (which was apparently a common practice), was born two years later in 1635.
Their third child, Magdalene Dircks, arrived in 1636 in Kings County, New York, near Kingston; but we do not know why her birth occurred there as opposed to New Amsterdam. Perhaps it had something to do with conflicts with the Native Americans of the area.
Dirck and Christina initially continued living in her mother's household, but they did not get along well with Jan Jansen Damen, whom Adrienne married six years after Guillame Vigne's death, May 7, 1638. Details of how 'not well' the couple and Christina's stepfather got along appear in early New York records.
Upon moving into the Vigne household, Damen found he had married into an extended family. Christine and Dirck and their two young daughters were in the home. Christina's sister Maria had been widowed, husband Jan Roos having died in 1632; but she had married again, to Abraham Ver Planck (1634), and their children were in the home as well. In fact, with his marriage to Adrienne, Jan joined a crowd of a family in a household of six adults and 7 or 8 children, and possibly a few slaves.
June 21, 1638, Damen sued to have Abraham Ver Planck and Dirck Volckertszen "quit his house and leave him the master thereof."
Dirck countered with a charge of assault and had witnesses testify Jan attacked his wife Christine, throwing her outside, and coming at him with a knife. Dirck was able to defend himself with a handy wooden post, with which he firmly beaned the advancing warden of the Dutch Reformed Church. Perhaps the hostility of Damen and the crowded condition of the Vinje/Damen household provided ample reason for Dirck to obtain a loan, probably to buy his own house, in May of 1638.
In 1638, Dirck also took advantage of an opportunity to purchase 400 - 500 acres of land on Long Island, after an agreement with the Natives made the area available for settlement. He held this land for a time undeveloped.
Another Dircks sister, Sarah, was born in 1639, but no further information about her exists; so she may have died in infancy. Also that year, the third Vigne daughter, Grandmother Christine's youngest sister Rachel left the Damen/Vigne/Dircks household, sadly, for a life of tragedy. She was only 16 when she married Cornelis Van Tienhoven, the 28-year-old Secretary to the Director, a scoundrel, philanderer, and murderous fiend who would heap humiliation upon Rachel, infamy upon her family, and death and destruction upon Native Americans in the area and the whole people of the New Netherlands colony.
Perhaps it was sorrow at Rachel's leaving motivating Grandmother Christine to name her next daughter, born the 8th of September, 1641, Rachel, after her younger sister. This daughter likely arrived in Dirck's and Christine's new home, away from Christine's mother and stepfather, at 125 Pearl Street. Brother and first son of the family, Volkert, arrived 15 November, 1643. It is likely the family enjoyed many dishes made of apples during their time at the 125 Pearl Street address, because records show Dircks removed some of the trees to take with him to his next property when he sold it in 1645.
A second son, Jacob Dircks, was born in 1646, but we are not sure where the family was actually living at the time of his birth.
On August 4, 1649, Christine's sister Rachel's husband, Cornelis Van Tienhoven, sold property on the 250 block of Pearl Street to Dirck and their other brother-in-law, Maria's husband, Abraham Ver Planck. Dirck built himself a house in 1649 at 259 Pearl Street. This was a busy year for the family, since their eldest daughter, sixteen-year-old Grietje, was the first to leave home, marrying Jan Hermanszen Schutt.
Christine may already have been expecting the couple's eighth child, sixth daughter Araiantje Dircks, born August 21, 1650. The family did not remain long at 259 Pearl Street.
By 1652, Dirck and his daughters' husbands had begun building and improving the family's property on the big acreage Dirck had purchased in 1638. Sadly, daughter Grietje's marriage to her first husband Jan was cut short when she was widowed when Indians attacked and killed him. Maybe her second husband, Jan Nagel Von Limberg, had been a friend of Schutt's, because she wasted no time in marrying him within the year of her first husband's death. No doubt Grietje would have been anxious to have a provider and protector for herself and her and Schutt's daughter, Fytje "Phebe" Schutt, born in 1651.
Christine and Dirck's third daughter, Grietje's younger sister Magdalena, also married in 1652--at age 16, to Cornelias Hendricksen Van Dort, on October 24.
We may assume the baby of Dirck and Christine's family, ninth child and seventh daughter, Jennekin (twenty years younger than Grietje), who was born December 7, 1653, arrived in the Pearl Street home; but she likely remembered little, if anything, of that place; because by 1655 her father Dircks was listed along with 22 other families (mostly French Walloons) as being a founder of Boswyk (Bushwick) on what is today Long Island, New York.
In the same year their last child Jenniken was born, the second grandchild of Dirck and Christine, and second child of daughter Grietje, arrived--little Juriaen Jansen Nagel, child of Grietje's second husband Jan. Also in 1653, Dirck and Christine's second daughter, Christine, at age eighteen, married Jacob Jansen Haie.
Hopefully, their family enjoyed a somewhat quiet year in 1654, because tragedy struck again in 1655 when Magdalena's husband Cornelias Van Dort was killed by Indians September 15 in Boswyck, leaving her with a young daughter, Maria.
By 1657, Magdalena had married a second time, to another native of Norway, Herman Hendricksen Rosenkranz. At this time, Magdelena's sister Rachel was still living at home at the ripe old age of sixteen with their parents Dirck and Christina. Also living on the farm in Boswyck were little brother Volkert, aged 14; brother Jacob, aged 11; little Ariantje Dircks, aged 7; and the baby Jenniken--at that time only 4 years old.
We are blessed to have many paintings by the Dutch Masters which left us nearly photographic representations of 17th Century people and life.
Children born to Dirck De Noorman and Christine Vigne:
First child/first daughter: Grietje (Margaret) Dircks, born circa 1633, New Amsterdam, NY. Grietje died April 01, 1671.
Second child/second daughter: Christine Dircks, born circa 1635. New Amsterdam, NY.
Third child/third daughter: Magdalene Dircks, born circa 1636, Kings County, NY. Magdalene died after June 17, 1726, Kingston, Ulster County, NY.
Fourth child/fourth daughter: Sarah Dircks, born circa 1639. Sarah is not mentioned again. Perhaps she died in infancy.
Fifth child/fifth daughter: Rachel D. Dircks (possibly named for her mother's sister, Rachel), born on September 08, 1641, New Amsterdam, NY. Rachel died after 1712.
Sixth child/FIRST son: Volkert Dircks, born November 15, 1643, New Amsterdam, NY. Volkert died between 1687 and 1690 in Boswyck, Queens County, NY.
Seventh child/second son: Jacob Dircks, born about 1646, New Amsterdam, NY. Jacob died in 1700.
Eighth child/sixth daughter: Ariantje Dircks, born August 21, 1650, New Amsterdam, New York.
Ninth child/seventh daughter: Jennekin Dircks, born December 7, 1653, New Amsterdam, NY.
