CHAPTER X

NIJKERK: THE OLD HOME BEYOND SEA

To find the home of the successful planters of
the northern and best part of New Netherland, we
must look across the Zuyder Zee, in Guelderland.
Here at Nijkerk, or near by, lived the van Rensse¬
laers, van Curlers, van Twillers, van Schlechten-
horsts, and other families, who sent their young
men and women as pioneers to our shores. From
this ancient home came scores of the ancestors of
the people of the Empire State. These hardy sons
and daughters of the Dutch Republic were true
Argonauts. They sailed away to cover the soil of
the New Netherland with a golden fleece.

The origin of Nijkerk, which means New Church,
is not fully known, but its story we learn from
Arend van Schlechtenhorst's " History of Gelder¬
land," from page 107 and onward. This author,
who wrote his history in 1649, was a kinsman of
Brandt van Schlechtenhorst, commissary at Rensse¬
laerwijk, from 1647 to 1652, who acquired Katskill,
Claverack, and the site of the future city of Troy
for his patroon, in whose name, also, he withstood
Stuyvesant, and by him was made prisoner.

Perhaps Nijkerk got its name when the darkness
of paganism had so far lifted that a Christian house