In January 1624, two teenagers married just days earlier boarded a small Dutch ship and sailed into a winter gale across the North Atlantic. They had almost nothing but each other — and they were about to help build one of the greatest cities on Earth.
Joris Jansen Rapalje and Catalina Trico were French-speaking Walloon refugees, among the very first families sent to North America by the Dutch West India Company. Their daughter Sarah was the first recorded European girl born in New Netherland. From a tavern in New Amsterdam to 335 acres at Wallabout Bay, they planted roots that would grow into Brooklyn itself — and into a family tree with more than a million living descendants.
I’m one of them. As their 8th-great-grandson, I retrace their journey and follow the family line through the centuries: to Cornelius Vanderbilt and Gloria Vanderbilt, to Humphrey Bogart, to President Theodore Roosevelt — and to a Loyalist branch that lost everything when the Revolution came.
This is the story of how two young immigrants helped give birth to New York: https://youtu.be/tlYckHG63NU