Commissioned by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Englishman Henry Hudson sailed to the American continent in 1609 in search of an alternative route to the East. This is seen as the starting point of the relationship between the United States and the Netherlands.
On this page you will find all kinds of references to archives, maps, indexes, search aids and publications related to the shared past of the Netherlands and the United States of America. [Dutch]
Founded in 1921, the Netherland-America Foundation (NAF) is the leading bilateral foundation initiating and supporting high-impact exchange between the Netherlands and the United States, including the NAF-Fulbright Fellowships and programs in the arts, business, public policy and historic preservation.
For more than three decades, the New Netherland Institute (NNI) has helped cast light on America’s long-neglected Dutch roots. Created in 1986 as the Friends of the New Netherland Project, it has supported the transcription, translation, and publication of the 17th-century Dutch colonial records held by the New York State Archives and State Library. These records constitute the world’s largest collection of original documentation of the Dutch West India Company and its New World colonies.
The New York City Cemetery Project chronicles the graveyards of NYC. Hundreds of cemeteries—including small family burial grounds and churchyards, as well as larger cemeteries containing hundreds, thousands, even millions of bodies—have existed throughout the five boroughs since the 17th century, with qualities as diverse as the numerous groups that established them and histories as distinct and ever-evolving as the city itself. These cemeteries record patterns of history and immigration and the traditions and customs of numerous religious and ethnic groups, and many are the only remnant of an area’s rural or neighborhood past.
