I have been a bit under the weather this week so I spent a bit of time investigating “errors” that I thought I had in my family tree. It did not take me long to find an interesting story to share with you. I hope you enjoy it.

Albert de Noorsman in New Amsterdam

Albert Andriessen Bradt was born in Fredrikstad, Norway in 1607. He was the son of Andres Arentsen Bradt and Aefjie Eva Kinetis. Fredrikstand, was a busy port city known for it’s fishing and logging industries. It was founded in 1567 by King Frederick II. At the time of Albert’s birth, Norway was under Danish Rule.

Albert and his brother Arent, like many young Norwegian young men for generations, took to the sea as a way of seeking opportunity. They went to the Netherlands and signed on with the Dutch Navy or Merchant Marines, the dominant maritime nation at the time. After a short stint as a sailor, Albert seemed to prefer to remain on dry land. He had become a tobacco “planter”. (I had no idea that they grew tobacco in the Netherlands but I have learned it was a thriving industry as early as 1616. )

In the Netherlands, Albert met and married Annetje Baerents Van Rottmer in March of 1632. They lived on the Romboutsteegh (Rombout Alley) in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, they had their first two children, Barent and Eva.

On August 26, 1636, Albert Bradt and two associates entered into a business agreement with a wealthy businessman whose name was Kiliean Van Rensselaer. They signed a detailed agreement, committing to building and operating a sawmill near Fort Orange in the new colonies for a period of seven years and Albert Bradt committed to grow tobacco as well. Kiliean Van Rensselaer was a Dutch investor who was involved in the diamond and pearl trade. He had several partners and they had recently formed a Patroon and were awarded extensive property in the American colonies by the West Indies Company which included Fort Orange.

By the time 1630s, the West Indies Company had struggled thru a decade of dwindling profits. The company, decided to grant large estates to individuals or investment groups called Patroons. In exchange these groups/patroons pledged that they would recruit settlers and provided transport to settlers to the new American colonies at the expense of the patroon. The new settlers would improve the land, form towns , create businesses and pay a large percent of what they make back to the Patroon for a length of time determined in their contract. The investors of the Patroon anticipated that theses settlers would make them wealthy. The Patroon would receive all the fishing, hunting, and milling rights, along with a tenth of all harvests. The Patroon’s did not consider that the land and the settlers were so far away. The Patroon’s also had been granted civil and criminal jurisdiction and could appoint his own magistrates.

Of all the Dutch patroons in New Amsterdam, Kiliean Van Rensselaer did the most to develop his extensive holdings. The sawmill Albert had contracted to construct was built and ran as a key part of Van Rensselaer’s plan to create a money-making enterprise. But in the end, the Van Rensselaer Patroon was only a modest economic success and fell far short of the investors expectations. Of the people who settled in North America, few if any of the artisans or farmers were able to pay the Patroon and make a decent living too. Nearly all of them were drawn irresistibly into the fur trade instead which was strictly off limits because that was owned and operated by the West Indies Company. It was illegal and unlawful to trade furs but with the powers that be thousand of miles away most settlers dabbled in it anyway. An we know that Albert Bradt did too, While the Patroons Groups did not become the wealthy enterprises that investors like Van Rensselaer had hoped for. These Patroon groups were instrumental in the development, economy, social structure, and politics of New Amsterdam.

On September 25, 1636, Albert Bradt, his wife, Annetie, and two children departed Amsterdam aboard his patroon’s new ship, called the Rensselaerswyck. The ship had forty passengers and fifteen crew members. Their first destination, was a port on the Dutch barrier island of Texel. This part of the trip required navigating along narrow passages through the shallow waters and sandbanks. They left Texel on October 8,1636. Little did they know what lay ahead of them on their journey. Storms kept the Rensselaerswyck from following the routes vessels crossing the Atlantic Ocean typically took (south as far as the coast of Morocco and then west to the Azores and across the open ocean to America). On November 16, after more than a month of being battered by storms and then adrift in the Bay of Biscay with no windfor 16 days, the captain was forced by dwindling provisions and damage to his ship’s stern to put in at the small English port of Ilfracombe.

In the midst of this worrisome ordeal at sea, on November 2, a pregnant Annetie, Albert’s wife, gave birth to their a third child, a boy who they named Storm. The ship resumed it trip to the colonies on January 9, 1637, six weeks later. (Meanwhile, Storm was baptized in England.) After some further difficulties, including a narrow escape from privateers, the Rensselaerswyck made landfall at Cape Charles, Virginia. It then followed the coastline northward and arrived in New Amsterdam on March 4, 1637. Ice in the Hudson River kept the ship at its dock on Manhattan Island until March 26, but at long last the ship and its passengers sailed up the river and arrived in Fort Orange (Albany) in the early hours of April 7, 1637.

Aside from the solders at the fort and a handful of fur traders, these forty Europeans were the first settlers to occupy this region located between the Mohawk territories in the west and the Mahican territories in the east.

After arriving, the two families, the Bradt’s and the Cornelissen’s lived in one structure, and constructed and operated the patroon’s sawmill from a differet structure on what was originally called Tawasentha Creek. After the structures were built, Albert created a tobacco farm. In time the Tawasentha Creek on which Bradt lived and worked would be named after Albert himself. It was renamed Normanskill and is still known as that today, The name came from “de Norman” or “de Noorsman” (“the Norwegian”) and the Dutch name for word creek “Kill”,  The Normanskill or the Norwegian’s Creek. Prior to adopting the patriarchal surname of Bradt, Albert was known as Albert de Noorsman and Albert de Norman by the locals.

Almost immediately, Albert Bradt had difficulty getting along with the partner, Pieter Cornelissen. Albert Bradt was a cantankerous fellow. He seems to have been the cause of a great deal of upheaval in the seven year partnership. By March 25, 1638, Albert Bradt moved his family out of the house that the partnership shared and into a different residence. The partners had separated and Albert was raising tobacco full time. At the same time, he was dabbling in the fur trade in direct violation with the agreements established with the West Indies Company. He was by no means alone. Many of the new settlers were also. Technically it was illegal (but still widely practiced) until the West Indies Company ended its monopoly of that trade in 1639. Albert also raised cattle, grew apples, fished, had a real estate holdings within Fort George and engaged in trade with the Indians. He had a very good working relationship with most of the local Indian tribes. Meanwhile, his brother, Arent, assisted him in the tobacco business while Albert dabbled in all his other pursuits. Albert was frequently brought before a judge or manistrate for breaking this rule or that law and frequently battled with officials of the Patroon, the West Indies Company, and the local officials. He often refused to pay the fines levied on him when he stepped too far out of line. There are many early court records which involve Albert Bradt,

Albert Bradt and the Patroon manager, Killian Van Rensselaer had a rather rocky relationship too. The latter was a bit of a micromanager. Within their business correspondences,Van Rensselaer was often critical of Bradt’s actions, attitude, financial accounts, and tobacco crops. On the other hand, Bradt’s job was to make money for the organization and Van Rensselaer which he did .

By 1646, Albert was managing two sawmills. His seven year contract with the Patroon had expired in in 1643 and Kiliean Van Rensselare died the same year. The descendants of Kiliean felt Albert owed them rent. They tried to obtain payment of these funds but all they ever received were apples from Albert’ s orchard. Over the next couple of decades, he supplied lumber to the growing population of the colony. In 1651, Albert’s holdings were describes as two powerful waterfalls with busy working sawmills and three dwellings.

By August of 1851, Pieter Cornelissen and Albert Bradt entered into another more amiable partnership. Bradt bought a warehouse and a residence which was used for office space to run a fur trading business. Bradt now had well established business connections in the Netherlands, after fourteen years of doing business in the colonies. He also owned a sailing vessel which he used to transport goods up and down the Hudson River delivering much needed supplies to the small settlements which were popping up along the river.

Disputes with Albert still arose in Court papers from time to time but much less frequent. It appears that he was mellowing with age. When his partner died in 1658, Albert bought the sawmill owned by his partner at fair market value, he sold the ship they co-owned, found renters for his partners businesses near the fort and assumed all the debt that their active partnership had. He turned all proceeds over to Pieter Cornelissen estate. At this time Albert, went back to running the Sawmills, the farm and the orchard at Normanskill.

Albert is my 8^th Great Grandfather. His son, Storm is my 7^th Great Grandfather. I had learned a bit about this family from my Canadian distant cousin thru the Maternal side of my family. I always thought the given name “Storm” was interesting. And that it would make for interesting research somday because the name Storm has continued to be used in the descendants of the family. It turns out that the surname for many of these descendants has changed to Vanderzee which in dutch translates to “of the sea” in other words “Storm of the Sea” . Much of what I found for this blog came from researcher, Donn Neal, the Bradt Family Society Website and other sources on Ancestry. I had no idea I had such early Norwegian connections to colonial America. I thought, as many other researchers, that this family was Dutch. As it turns out Albert is Norwegian and Annetje is Germanic Dutch.

Happy Hunting,

Jan