Newcomers : the story of Anthony and Grietje and the founding of New York / Alan Mikhail.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mikhail, Alan, 1979- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Immigrants--New York (State)--New York--Biography.

Immigrants.

Marginality, Social--New York (State)--New York--History--17th century.

Marginality, Social.

Jansen van Salee, Anthony.

Reyniers, Gretje.

New York (N.Y.)--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

New York (N.Y.).

New York (State)--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

New York (State).

United States--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

United States.

New York (State)--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775--Biography.

United States--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 212 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Story of Anthony and Grietje and the founding of New York

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, [2026]

Summary:

A man thought to be a Muslim from Morocco and a German barmaid fleeing poverty are hardly the images we have of America's august founders. In Newcomers, Alan Mikhail upends the traditional story of America's origins through the revelatory tale of a seventeenth-century immigrant couple by the names of Anthony and Grietje. Married in Amsterdam, the destitute pair emerged from lives of piracy and prostitution in Europe and arrived in 1630s Dutch New Amsterdam, hoping to build a new life. Upon landing on New York City's shores, the swarthy Anthony was attacked for being the Muslim he was not, while Grietje, branded a whore by crude harbor denizens, would become the model of an independent colonial American woman, defiantly mooning her attackers rather than accepting their derision. They endured intense bigotry on crooked neighborhood warrens and in the primitive watering holes of New Amsterdam, battling Dutch authorities and brawling with their neighbors, their appearances in court so frequent that their rebellious existence is seared into the records of early America forever. Eventually ejected from New Amsterdam by Dutch authorities in 1639, they were exiled to the "frontier," to what is now Gravesend Brooklyn, where they and their four daughters farmed and seized land from Native Americans while fighting English colonists from the north. After Grietje died, Anthony moved back to what had become English Manhattan and ended up being one of the richest men in seventeenth-century New York. What is ironic is that this rowdy couple's descendants include some of the most distinguished names in American social and political history, among them the Vanderbilts and President Warren G. Harding. "Through meticulous research" (Russell Shorto), Mikhail has done nothing less than reframe America's original family story, in the process showing that where we have immigration, prejudice trails never far behind. Indeed, we learn of harsh, anti-Muslim sentiment through Anthony and of female defiance, rare that it was, through Grietje. "Promising to change the way we understand Colonial Gotham's formative first years" (Susanah Shaw Romney), Alan Mikhail's Newcomers tells the story of America's fledgling beginnings in a way that it has never been depicted before."-- from jacket flap

Contents:

Prologue

Moored and unmoored

Grietje endures

Dock love

Lenapehoking

Number 22

Try her

Anthony against Anthony

Schism

Empire State

God and Mammon

Remains

Aftermath

The Anthony in all of us.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Ebook version: Mikhail, Alan, 1979- Newcomers.

ISBN:

1324095830

9781324095835

OCLC:

1535851382

Publisher Number:

90104619819