Name
Sijtge Pieters.[1] Her common name complicates identification.
Migration
Sijtge’s voyages across the Atlantic were documented by Lourens Cornelissen, who gave a deposition about her in 1645. Sijtge Cornelis sailed from Amsterdam at an unknown time before 1641 on the West India Company’s ship St. Jacob, with skipper Adriaen van Texel, destined for Brazil. She traveled with two women from Rotterdam; Jannetgen Willems and an unidentified woman. The ship stopped for replenishments at the island of Saint Vincent, where it encountered another West India Company ship, Barquelonge, under the command of skipper Adriaen van Leeuwen. Sijtge Pieters married its gunner, Cornelis de Boer, on one of these ships, probably the Barquelonge. The three women transferred to Barquelonge and sailed to Curaçao, where the other two women married: Jannetgen Willems married a man named Jacob from Zeeland, and the other woman married a barber/surgeon also called Jacob. In March 1641, Sijtge Pieters and Cornelis de Boer boarded the ship Engel Gabriel, under the command of captain Lourens Cornelissen, which was in Curaçao to load a cargo of salt. Cornelissen hired Jannetgen Willems’s husband Jacob as helmsman for the voyage back to the Netherland. When the skipper planned a stop at New Netherland to take on provisions, the helmsman and his wife refused to go there. Near Bermuda, they transferred to skipper Pieter Claessen’s ship. The Engel Gabriel continued to Manhattan, and arrived on 4 August 1641.[2]
According to Lourens Cornelissen, the Engel Gabriel left Manhattan on 29 September 1641, with Cornelis de Boer and Sijtge Pieters among its passengers. Sijtge Pieters was miserable during the voyage. The ship’s surgeon determined she suffered from “morbum gallicum” [French disease, i.e. syphilis]. The surgeon treated her, but she refused to get dressings unless forced. Her room or place on board of the ship had a vile stench. Sijtge had not quite recovered when the ship arrived back in Holland.[3]
Lourens Cornelissen gave the deposition at the request of Marijtgen Cornelissen, the wife of Pieter Sas in Amsterdam.[4] The deposition established that Sijtge Pieters had married Cornelis de Boer and that she was seriously ill when she arrived back in the Netherlands. This type of information would typically only be relevant to family members or creditors, for example to determine legal heirs. It is possible Sijtge Pieters was the daughter of Pieter Sas and Marijtgen Cornelissen, who married in 1619.[5] Alternatively, Sijtge Pieters or Cornelis de Boer may have owed them money.
Other sources confirm the Engel Gabriel’s visit to New Netherland, though they do not mention Sijtge Pieters or her husband. On 6 September 1641, several crew members declared that the ship had a broken mast and was leaking while underway from Curaçao to the Netherlands, and that they convinced the skipper to make for New Netherland.[6] That same day, the director-general of New Netherland chartered the ship to transport with merchandise, to be loaded by 22 September 1641, for a fee of 2500 guilders.[7] On 12 September 1641, the New Netherland council ordered the ship’s pilot and chief boatswain to pay a fine of 40 guilders plus the duties on some sugar they had sold without proper registration.[8]
Settlement
Sijtge Pieters was in New Netherland between 4 August and 29 September 1641. She probably stayed onboard the ship, since Lourens Cornelissen said he had gotten to know her well during their time at Manhattan.[9]
Biographical Details
Sijtge Pieters was born between say 1580 and 1620. She was probably at least in her twenties when she embarked on her journey, and unlikely to have been over sixty. Pieters is a patronymic,indicating her father’s name was Pieter. She died at an unknown date after September 1641.
Marriage and Children
Sijtge Pieters married Cornelis de Boer at the island of Saint Vincent, probably on the Barquelonge, some time before March 1641.[10]
Associations
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Sijtge Pieters knew Lourens Cornelissen, the skipper who gave a deposition about her in 1645. Lourens Cornelissen was from Katwijk. He was 34 years old and lived in Amsterdam at the time of the deposition. He was the captain of the Engel Gabriel in 1641, when Sijtge Pieters was on board, and later of the ship Maecht van Enkhuijsen [Maiden of Enkhuizen].[11]
Sijtge Pieters also knew the two women with whom she traveled and their husbands: Jannetgen Willems, also called “Schoonbruijn”; her husband Jacob from Zeeland, nicknamed “Coppe,” who had arrived in Curaçao on a sloop as helmsman or skipper; and another woman who married a surgeon also called Jacob. Sijtge also must have had a connection to Maritgen Cornelissen, the wife of Pieter Sas, who requested the deposition about Sijtge.[12]
Literature
Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Romney mentions the travel of the three women as an example of personal relationships affecting mobility in the Atlantic world (pp. 77–78).
Citations
[1] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645, in Hendrick Schaef, notary (Amsterdam), minutes of depositions, powers of attorneys, inventories, etc, 2 January–24 October 1645, fol. 193r–194r; imaged, Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsarchief (https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/file/9a2f8918-0b23-f619-859b-8d6d4f65443d), image 195 of 210; citing call no.1291, Record Group [RG] 5075: Archief van de Notarissen ter Standplaats Amsterdam [Records of the Notaries Residing in Amsterdam], Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
[2] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645.
[3] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645.
[4] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645.
[5] Marriage intentions of Pieter Sasse and Maritje Cornelis, 3 March 1619, in Amsterdam, marriage intentions of the church, 1618–1619, p. 171; imaged, “Indexen,” Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsarchief (https://archief.amsterdam/indexen/deeds/34cfc189-1e09-46df-bed5-4f971885ad58); citing call no. 423, RG 5001: Archief van de Burgerlijke Stand: doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken van Amsterdam (retroacta van de Burgerlijke Stand) [Archives of the Civil Registration: baptismal, marriage, and burial books of Amsterdam (predecessors of the civil registration)], Stadsarchief Amsterdam.
[6] Kenneth Scott and Kenn Stryker-Rodda, eds., Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638–1642, trans. Arnold J. F. Van Laer, vol. 1 (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing, 1974), 360–61.
[7] Scott and Stryker-Rodda, Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638–1642, 361–63.
[8] Fiscal vs. pilot and chief boatswain of the Engel Gabriel, 12 September 1641, in New Netherland Council, Dutch colonial council minutes, vol. 4, 1638–1649, p. 100; imaged, “Digital Collections,” New York State Archives (https://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/objects/11497), identifier NYSA_A1809-78_V04_p100; citing series A1809, New York State Archives, Albany, New York.
[9] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645.
[10] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645.
[11] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645.
[12] Deposition about Sijtge Pieters by Lourens Cornelissen, 9 October 1645.
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