Sharing Personal History One Life at a Time
The Roots of a Legacy
Long before Gerrit Graveraet’s great grandfather, Isaac Graveraet, arrived in New York as a free trader, Jacob Harsen’s lineage was already rooted in the soil of the New World. Around 1624, Wolfert Gerritze Van Kouwenhoven, aka Couwenhoven[2], Jacob Harsen’s third great grandfather arrived as one of the first Dutch farmers on Manhattan Island. Wolfert was one of the original five farmers on Manhattan Island sent over by the Dutch West India Company.[3]
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In Part Two we learned about Gerrit Graveraet’s great grandfather, Isaac Graveraet. Continuing with this family, we will now explore a few of Isaac’s family ties and how they may have impacted and shaped the lives of his two sons, Andries and Hendrick Graveraet. In the late 17th century the Graveraet family surname was spelled Grevenraedt. For simplicity I have chosen to use the spelling of Graveraet unless the surname is used within a quote. I would also like to note that Andries is at times referred to as Andrew. [1]
Read moreBefore the fur traders of Albany made their way west to Detroit, before the convergence of the Harsen and Graveraet families on Harsens Island, there was Isaac Grevenraedt. As the patriarch of the Graveraet family in North America, Isaac’s story begins in New Amsterdam in the mid-1600s. His name appears on the famed Castello Plan, a map that recorded the homes of Dutch settlers along the tip of present day Manhattan Island. From civic leadership to private trade, Isaac carved out a prominent life amid the shifting powers of the Dutch and English empires, leaving a legacy that would eventually stretch to the Great Lakes frontier.
To understand the journey of Gerrit Graveraet, we must begin with the life of his great-grandfather, a Dutch trader and civic leader whose legacy shaped the generations that followed.
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