My eighth great grandmother on the Gallison side, one Anneke Adriaens, was divorced in 1664. One seldom heard of such things in those days. But her first husband, Aert Pietersen Tack, was something of a hound and a wastrel. A scholar named Tyler Holman has taken the time to translate a big pile of court papers out of the Dutch so that I might see for myself all the people he owed money to back in New Amsterdam, mostly in beaver pelt equivalents, bushels of wheat, and peas, and all the hired men he cheated out of their pay. Anneke herself was no milktoast. At different times she was brought up on charges for physically attacking one of her neighbors and calling another a whore. The judge always let her off with a stern lecture to stop disturbing the peace.
But one day it came to light that Aert was keeping another wife.
About that time he took off for parts unknown, leaving so many debts that Anneke was forced to sell the farm and all the cows and horses. She turned for comfort to Jacobus Jansen VanEtten, the hired man, my eighth great grandfather. They wanted to be married. She went to court and applied for a divorce. Here's the judgement:
…Anneke Adriaens, his lawful wife, has requested of your honors letters of divorce and permission to marry another person, whereupon, before consenting thereto, the fiscal was ordered on July 31st last to have the aforesaid Aert Pietersen Tack summoned three times by the ringing of the bell to appear in person to hear and to answer, if he can, such complaint and demand as the injured party and the fiscal as her attorney shall make, which summons not only was proclaimed by the beating of the drum in the village of New Haerlem, and whereas nevertheless Aert Pietersen Tack failed to appear and remains contumacious, finding himself unable to defend, justify or purge himself…
(All that beating of drums and ringing of bells failed to cause Aert to appear. Nobody knew where he was. Some said he had gone back to Holland.)
…therefore, the fiscal, nomine offiocii, concludes that the first wife, Anneke Adriaens, must be granted letters of divorce and permission to marry another man, and furthermore that the fiscal and all other officers of justice should be authorized to arrest the defendant, Aert Pietersen Tack, and to confine him here in a proper place of detention, to be taken to the place where it is customary to execute justice, in order to be severely flogged with rods, having two distaffs above his head, and further to be branded with two marks on his back and to be banished from this province. Done at Fort Amsterdam, the 21st of August, 1664.
How do you like them apples? Severely flogged with rods. Branded with marks on his back. Needless to say, Aert declined to turn up and accept his Dutch divorce, preferring to stay in the old country with his new wife. He was never seen again in New Amsterdam. But, I don't know, there's something oddly satisfying about the old Dutch way of doing things. Forget your restraining orders. Forget your alimony awards. Forget your custody agreements. Just keep those flogging rods ready, keep those branding irons hot. That's a divorce a woman could live with.
© 2014 Kate Gallison
Ah, "something of a hound and a wastrel." I love it!
ReplyDeleteAnd somehow I sense that you do not believe that there is such a thing as an amicable divorce.
Steph
Oh, no, no. I know a few folks who were amicably divorced, still friends, never a bad word to say about each other. This was not the case with my divorce. It was forty years ago, and of course I got over it long since, but I still remember how it felt. If I could have gotten a judge to decree that my first husband should be beaten with rods and sent out of the country it would have saved us all a lot of grief.
DeleteKate, my husband's Van Ness ancestors were in the neighborhood down there below Wall Street when all of this was happening. He is, I am quick to point out, my SECOND husband. I also note that Anneke had been forced to sell the farm and all the horses and cows but still managed to need/keep the handyman. Around the same time, by the way, in Spanish America, it was quite common for Spanish men who had a wife in Spain to take another one in Peru or La Plata. When I was researching City of Silver, I read a whole book about bigamists. And there was no divorce of any sort down South American way. It also occurs to me that nowadays, at least in Scandinavian fiction, they don't use the branding iron, but tattoo the wrong-doing men.
ReplyDeleteYes, but by the time a girl gets to see the tattoo it's too late.
DeleteUnless it's on his forehead.
DeleteY'know, I was just thinking that maybe the reason Aert didn't show up when they rang the bell and beat the drum was that he was buried under the cowshed. Postman always rings twice and all that.
ReplyDeleteYour next book!
ReplyDeleteIt might be good to write it under a Dutch surname or perhaps you could appeal to the folks like books about people who channel dead people. Paranormal mystery/romance/domestic distress, that kind of thing.
Steph
Your astounding information on all this makes the junk we see on TV and in the Daily News, People, and the other pulps pale! tjs
ReplyDeleteWe live in namby-pamby times, Thelma. Truly. I'm going to have to make some sort of commercial hay out of all this so I can take my Ancestry.com membership off on my taxes. Still, I have the hardest time thinking of myself as Dutch. We never knew we were Dutch.
ReplyDeleteKate et co, I think most of us have ancestors who were of various backgrounds... whether it is admitted by families or not... as a longtime resident of southern states and history student, I assume there were quite a few people in my background who were not lily white.... with the kinds of people who populated the southern states from the other side of the pond, north and south, it seems impossible that there were pure lines!!! tjs
ReplyDelete