CONNECTIONS

THE NORMANSKILL FALLS FROM DOWNSTREAM

1736 BRADT (BRADT-MABIE) HOUSE IN 1883. BUILT BY ARENT BRATT ON THE FARM INHERITED FROM HIS GRANDMOTHER, CATALYNTJE DE VOS BRATT

Restored before 1901

1640 Letter from Kiliaen van Rensselaer to Albert and Arent Andriesen

Arent's Biography in The Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts

Arent doesn't appear in the records of New Netherland as often as Albert. Even his voyage to the New World is undocumented. Through strong circumstantial evidence, it is concluded that he made the crossing with his brother. Bradt historian Peter Christoph suggested that he mostly worked with Albert in the early years.  The farm that he leased in 1658 was on an island across the Hudson River from Fort Orange/Beverwyck (Albany. This island is now part of the mainland.)  He paid his rent in wheat and oats.  (Tobacco farming was unsuccessful in New Netherland.)

Over 100 years after publication, The VAN RENSSELAER BOWIER MANUSCRIPTS is still a very good source for Bradt documentation, not without mistakes but relatively few.

Arent Andriessen in the "Bradt Book"

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Death of Arent Andriessen About 1663

The page below is from a booklet printed in 1987 by Peter Christoph.  It puts Arent Andriessen's death in 1663, but Cynthia Brott Biasca writing a couple of years later was less specific, 1662/1663.  No actual record of his death exists.

Schenectady Patent map

In 1664, Catalyntje de Vos (Bradt) moved her family to Schenectady where she was one of the first proprietors.  Her property is the two plots of farmland numbered "1". For safety, the residents lived in the small, square plot to the right of Van Slyck's Island. (The Erie Canal appears on this map, presumably for reference.)

Legendary Ancestors and the Van Slyck/Bradt Connection

The Question of Jacques Hertel in Family Lore

In the 1670s, '80s, and '90s, the Bratts became a little more "Americanized." Between about 1678 and 1683, two of Arent Bratt's sons, Andries and Samuel, married daughters of Jacques Van Slyck. Jacques was a son of the Dutchman, Cornelis Van Slyck, and his wife, a native resident of the Mohawk village of Canajoharie. The Native American connection expanded in 1696 when a son of Van Slyck, married Claartje Bradt, a granddaughter of Albert Bratt. The children of these marriages were 1/8 Native American, or 1/16 if an oral tradition about a French-Canadian fur trader is true.

According to this tradition, the trader, Jacques Hertel, and a Mohawk woman had two daughters, one of the daughters being the mother of the Jacques Van Slyck above. Historical records make no mention of the story, so it has been analyzed, critiqued, and sometimes supported by a number of people over the years. The link here goes to an article with a new perspective about it. This article presents newly researched evidence and develops some of the older evidence along new lines. Surprisingly, the original version of the story showcases not Hertel, but a shadowy Indian chief by the name of Shononsise. Curiouser and curiouser. Take a look:  [ The Question of Jacques Hertel ]

The fullest description of Cornelis Van Slyck's Mohawk wife is in the following link. It describes the Van Slyck family as documented in 1780 by a visiting Dutch clergyman, Jasper Danckaerts:  [ Van Slyck and his Mohawk Wife ]

If you'd like to see more of the Danckaerts Journal, the link below will take you there. It includes his entire interview with Illetie Van Slyck and later with her brother, Jacques (an ancestor of many Bradts), and with their Mohawk nephew. (Before leaving Albany, Danckaerts visited Patrooness Maria Van Rensselaer at her home south of Albany. From there, he went to see several of her mills on the nearby Normanskill [page 214, --he does not identify the stream by name]): [ Danckaerts in Upstate New York ]

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