Reflections On Faith and 17th Century European-American Colonists
As Seen Through the Lives of Four Young Immigrants
by
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Reflections : On Faith and 17th Century European-American Colonists
Quotes taken from Part I Sections A-E.
The story job the people whose descendants would eventually contribute to the founding of the United States of America began earnest with the coming of individuals from
Europe to NorthAmerica in the 17th century.
John Denman-2 was born in 1621 into a family with members that had served the Church of England for several generations but were faced with harassment due to their sympathies for the developing Reformed beliefs. Life in Nottinghamshire was made even more difficult for his family as his father, and namesake, had died when Young John was two years old. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John would live in Salem, marry a Dutch girl, Sarah, whose parents had died in an Indian conflict. They would have three sons and by the1660’s moved to western Long Island with their expanded family.
Pieter Classen (Wyckoff) who had become an orphan with the death of his parents in the plague epidemic of 1635, would never forget the date of March 4, 1637 as it was then that the ship Rensselaerswyck arrived at Manhattan in the New Netherland Colony…Pieter completed his term of indenture in 1644 on a farm in the Fort Orange area on the Hudson
River and he received his three-hundred seventy guilders from the Rensselaer estate… Grietje (van Ness) accepted his proposal (for marriage)…They would move to Long Island where he would have his own property and manae farms for Petrus Stuyvesant while she would nurture their eleven children…that married and enlarged the population of the New York and New Jersey colonies.
Marie Garneau (as she was known in her home in La Rochelle, France), was twenty-six years old when she fled to the English colony of New York in 1686 with her father, Francis, and her younger brother Jeremie…She would marry John Denman-3 and worship at the Reformed Church of Newtown…after his death in 1713 she and their seven children would live in the colony of New Jersey.
Johannes Kolb and his three Mennonite brothers would arrive in the Autumn of 1707 at the Port of Philadelphia and join their maternal Quaker grandfather, Peter Schumacher in Germantown, Colony of Pennsylvania. Johannes married a Welsh woman… Later they would move with their nine children to the Welsh Neck area on thePee Dee River in the expanding colony of Carolina in the 1730’s.
Each of these families by the early years of the 18th century would have been established in their communities, strengthened by their faith and the ability to worship without restriction from the government.
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About the Book
American colonial history is told through the stories of four young people who left Europe and its Age of Enlightenment to start new lives in an uncertain new world in this scholarly work.
Carlos R. Hamilton Jr. aims to determine what experiences they and thousands of other immigrants had and the role those experiences played in influencing the future United States of America, including its government and culture.
One of the primary reasons these immigrants settled in a new place thousands of miles from home was the prospect of being able to enjoy religious freedom. Other drivers included a desire to enjoy more economic opportunity and achieve security for one’s self and their family.
While this study is limited to Anglo-European immigration, the historical background of homelands of African, Latino, and Asian immigrants are as important in understanding the circumstances of their many contributions to the subsequent culture of the United States of America.
The author suggests that the same reasons people immigrated to what would become the United States hundreds of years ago remain primary reasons increasing numbers of immigrants are seeking residence in America today.
About the Author
Carlos R. Hamilton Jr. grew up in Houston, graduated from the University of Texas-Austin and earned his M.D. with honors from Baylor College of Medicine. He trained in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins Hospital and in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital. After completing military service, he practiced internal medicine and endocrinology and served on the clinical faculty at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In 2000, he moved to the University of Texas Health Science Center as special adviser to the president and professor of medicine. He retired after fifty years of medical practice. He and his wife, Carolyn, enjoy life in their hometown of Houston.