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Happy 387th Anniversary Joris and Catalyntje Rapelje!

Walloon Church, Site of the Wedding of Joris Jansen Rapelje and Catalyntje Trico

As the story goes, on January 21, 1624 Joris Jansen Rapelje and his bride-to-be Catalyntje Trico married hastily in the Walloon Church of Amsterdam.  Four days later they would board a ship departing for the New World.  After a brief stay in Fort Orange (now Albany, New York), where Joris found work with the Dutch West India Company, and another move to Fort Amsterdam on the Island of Manhattan, the Rapeljes became the first settlers of this area; a small oyster bed called Rinnegackonck that was later renamed Wallabout bay. 

There are scant records of the young couple prior to their voyage to North America.  We know that Joris was only 19 and Catalyntje 18 on their wedding day, and we can infer that both were illiterate since they left marks rather than signatures on their marriage certificate.  We also know that there were no family witnesses present at the ceremony; suggesting the couple was on their own and perhaps in need of a fresh start. Joris was a Walloon--a French speaking Protestant from the town of Valenciennes, France, which is located on the border of France and Belgium.  The Roman Catholic Church dictated much of the goings on in France at that time, and it was know to persecute Protestants like the Rapeljes for their beliefs. For that reason it is also quite likely that their swift flight from the area was in an effort to find religious freedom in the unsettled territories of the New World.

While in their home in Fort Orange, on June 9, 1625, the couple gave birth to Sarah Rapelje, who was the first European child born in New York.  The Rapeljes had ten more children, a fact that led Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World, to call them the Adam and Eve of New Netherland. You can find Sarah Rapelje’s chair is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York, and the painting below, which features four of their children, at the New York Historical Society. 

In 1637 the Rapeljes purchased 335 acres of land off of Wallabout bay, shown in this early hand drawn map provided by the Brooklyn Historical Society. Finding social mobility and success in the region Joris became a member of the Council of Twelve Men, which is considered to be the first representation of democracy in the colony.  Having established himself as a person of importance Joris also served from 1655 to 1660 as magistrate to Brooklyn.

Like so many of the Dutch settlers that followed, and by extension the rest of us that call Brooklyn our home today, the Rapeljes found a place where they could alter their destiny.  One wonders if they had any idea what was in store for them the day they said their vows and prepared to start their new life in a new world.  It turned out to be quite a honeymoon!