Travel Tips

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The trails of the Walloons and Flemish people in New York are numerous and often unknown: the Gowanus Bay for instance, west of Brooklyn, is named after Owanus, latin translation of Ohain, the native village of Pierre Minuit. The Wallabout Bay, north of Brooklyn, is a deformation of the Dutch "Waal bocht" (Walloon Bay)

The name Hoboken, well known district of New York, comes from a municipality near Antwerp, Flanders. Communipaw, in Jersey City,is the contraction of Community of Pauw. Michel De Pauw, native of Ghent in Flanders, had also bought Staten Island from the Indians in 1630.

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As to Peter Stuyvesant, to whom some people absolutely wish to attribute the paternity of the founding of New York, he only arrived in 1647, that is twenty-three years after the landing of the first settlers.
American gratitude

On May 20, 1924, for the tercentenary of the founding of New York, a monument was erected in honor of the Walloon settlers, on the site of Battery Park, in the southern part of Manhattan.

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A 50 cents silver coin, commemorating the tercentenary of the arrival of the Walloons was also put into circulation at the same time.

The government of the United States paid also homage to the firstsettlers with the issuing of 1, 2 and 5 cents postage stamps.


Belgian oblivion

People may ask oneself why the real circumstances wrapping the foundation of New York remain, even today, almost unknown in the present Belgium.

The schoolbooks and history books are dumb about the subject. Recently, "Génies en herbe" (Green genious), a game organized by the RTBF (Belgian French-speaking Radio and Television) between different schools, asked to the candidates who was the founder of New York. The supposedly good answer was... Peter Stuyvesant. An answer who teaches a lot about the oblivion into which the ancestors of the participants... and organizers are fallen!

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This oblivion can be explained in different ways. There is one who seems plausible: the founders of New York being Walloons and Flemish protestants, Belgium being catholic, and the teaching having been for a long time influenced by the Catholic Church, one may assume that the latter deliberately occulted this period of our history.

After three hundred and seventy-five years, the Walloon and Flemish settlers doesn't seem to have gained the forgiveness of the Catholic Church.

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Ill feelings are sometimes persistent...
Bibliografie

* Description de la Nouvelle Belgique (door Johannes De Laet - 1640)
* Les Belges et la fondation de New York (door Antoine De Smet - Koninlijke Bibliotheek van België)
* Les Wallons, fondateurs de New York (door Robert Goffin, Institut Jules Destrée)
* Historique de la colonisation de New York par les Belges (door G. Gomme)
* The Belgians, first settlers in New York (door Bayer)
* History of the Huguenot immigration to America (door Charles W. Baird)
* History of the United States of America (door George Bancroft)
* History of the city of New York (door Martha Lamb)
* Narratives of New Netherland (door Franklin Jameson)
* History of the State of New York (door Dr. John Romeyn Brodhead)
* Memorial History of the City of New York (door Generaal James Grant Wilson)
* La part des Belges dans la fondation de l'Etat de New York (door Graaf de Borchgrave)
* Willem Usselinx (door Michel Huisman, hoogleraar bij Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Article Source : New York Foundation
Contact : newyork@skynet.com
http://www.novabelgica.org/club_information/history_english.htm