A Family Tree With Deep New York Roots

This weekend the Times had a fun piece about the history of the Van Dusens, a family that can trace its lineage back to one of the first settlers of Manhattan. That settler, Abraham Van Dusen, landed on Manhattan island sometime around 1627, and nowadays the Van Dusens are “among a small cohort of large, long-running Dutch families — including under-the-radar Rapeljes, with more than a million descendants, and the more prominent Kips and Rikers, with their names on neighborhoods and institutions — whose well-documented histories provide a compelling window into the development of what would become New York and, later, the United States.” The Van Dusens count more than 200,000 descendants — including a couple of presidents — in their ranks, and one of the family’s chroniclers is Andrew Van Dusen, a broker who specializes in brownstone Brooklyn. According to the story, Andrew finds evidence of his family legacy all around him: “In recent years, he has connected with Ellen Duryea Van Dusen — a second cousin, once removed — who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and designs clothes under the label ‘Dusen Dusen.’ He has gotten to know Jake Blessing, a first cousin once removed who is headed to Cornell for graduate studies in entomology. And he recently discovered that a probable 10th cousin, Kimberly Van Duzer, lives less than a half mile away, the latest example of what he described as ‘this wonderfully eerie line of coincidence.'”
The Van Dusens of New Amsterdam [NY Times]
Photo by alittlebirdy