Aert and Annetjen: Herman Wolf's 6th great-grandparents

Aert Jacobsen (who later adopted the surname Van Wagenen), came to Albany NY from  Achttienhoven¹ (in the Netherlands) no later than 1650 with his wife, Annetien Gerrits van Schaijck, whom he married in 1640².  They brought their three young daughters on the voyage: Neeltje, Greitje and Elizabeth³.  Elizabeth married Cornelis Masten and is Herman Wolf’s 5th great-grandmother.

• Original Dutch: Aert Jacobsz j.g. van Achthienhoven en AnnitgenGerrits van Schaijck j.d. mede van Achthienhoven tot Westbroeck bevesticht den 21 Junij 1640
• English Translation: Aert Jacobsz, young unmarried man from Achtienhoven, and Annitgen Gerrits van Schaijck, young unmarried woman also from Achtienhoven, confirmed [married] at Westbroek on the 21st of June 1640.

We don’t know why Aert and Annitje made the voyage, given that the living conditions in Netherland at the time were good: there was religious tolerance, the economy was decent and people were not fighting to survive. We can surmise that they came in hopes of eventually becoming  landowners (something that was very difficult in the Netherlands at the time) and possibly social mobility. 

However, for someone who was not wealthy, getting to America was nearly impossible without help from someone who was (specifically, a patroon).  The patroonship acted like a modern  corporate relocation package, or old-fashioned indentured labor. Kiliaen van Rensselaer, and later his son Jan Baptist van Rensselaer, paid for the entire voyage, food, cleared land, farm animals and initial tools.

Naturally, there was a catch. Immigrants needed to compete a mandatory service period, give the patroon a cut of anything you produce, use only the patroon’s services (such as mills, docks, etc) and live under the strict rules of the Van Rensselaer family.

While the "patroonship" required you to start as a tenant, the vast wilderness offered a pathway to eventually break away. Adventurers knew that if they could just get across the ocean, land was abundant, and they could eventually strike out on their own—which is exactly what Aert Jacobsen did when he bought his independent Kingston farm in 1661.

There are a few family histories that claim Jacob Aertsz, a guy who came in 1637 on  den Calmer Sleutel⁴, was Aert Jacobson's father. According to the Dutch naming system, we can surmise that Aert's father was named Jacob. But, the dates don't entirely line up with a father-son relationship, so either this was a brother or the two men are completely unrelated. Either way, this person "Jacob Aertsz" was also referred to as "Jacob Aertsz Wagenaer" and it could be that future generations made some incorrect assumptions as to the relationship.

This is the document that formalized the relationship between Jan Baptist van Rensselaer and Aert Jacobson that began in 1654.

Upon arrival in New York, court records show he took a lease on a farm along the Vloman Kill (creek) in Bethlehem. However, in early 1654, official court court minutes record a disaster: a catastrophic fire completely burned down his house, barns, and farming equipment at Bethlehem.  This is all documented in the Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts, which can be found online.

You will notice that the 1654 contact is for twelve long years, so how did he get out of it to buy farmland near Kingston? The lease explicitly notes that at the expiration, the tenant will not receive compensation for the cleared land, "with the exception of the fence, for which he shall be paid or compensated according to an appraisal by impartial persons."

Over his seven years on the farm (1654–1661), Aert spent extensive capital and heavy manual labor splitting logs and building extensive boundary fences to protect his fields. When he decided to relocate to Esopus, he requested an official appraisal of these improvements. The substantial value of his fencing was used as a credit to completely wipe out any remaining back-rent (toepacht or grain tithes) he owed to Director Jan Baptist van Rensselaer's estate.

Due to all the improvements he made, van Rensselaer was able to re-lease the land to someone else for more favorable terms, so this was a win-win for both sides. 

Aert’s purchase contract stipulated that the 600 guilders would be paid "half in beaver and half in wheat at market prices". Since he had just spent seven years running an active agricultural farm in Greenbush under his 1654 contract, he wheat and grains harvested from his cleared lands served as direct currency to pay off his new real estate. Furthermore, despite van Rensselaer’s mandatory monopolies, independent farmers routinely traded with local indigenous populations or regional merchants to accumulate valuable beaver pelts, which functioned as the standard high-value currency of the colony.