Adrienne Cuvellier (Ariaentje Cuvilje)
One of the earliest known of our ancestors, Adrienne Cuvellier (Ahnentafel # 2267 - 12th Generation back), came to the New Netherlands settlement of New Amsterdam sometime before 1614 when it was a mere trading post. New Amsterdam was later to become New York. Her story is documented in the September 1947 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, pages 65-69 in an article by Herbert F. Seversmith.
She was a native of Valenciennes in France and had earlier married Guillaume Vigne, an early trader between the Indians of the New World and Europeans. They were among the earliest settlers in New Amsterdam and it was here that their son Jean was born in 1614. It has been said that he was the first white male child born in the New Netherlands. (Notice that this was even before the 1620 arrival of the British at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.) Guillaume Vigne (Ahnentafel # 2266), her husband died, and on April 30, 1632 she married Jan Janszen Damen. By 1644 This prominent citizen had become one of the wealthy townsmen of New Amsterdam, owning much of the land in the Wall Street area of today.
The daughter of Adrienne Cuvellier and Guillaume Vigne, Rachel Vigne (Ahnentafel # 1133), sometime before July 25, 1639 married Cornelis Van Tienhoven (Ahnentafel # 1132) , originally of Uthrecht, Netherlands. He was made Secretary of the colony in 1638 under the governorship of Willem Kieft. Kieft’s governmental policies promoted dangerous relations with the Indians, and his attempt to collect taxes from the Algonkin tribes in the Manhattan Island area led to Indian hostilities from 1641 to 1645. This left Adrienne Cuvellier in a dangerous situation, since her residence at that time was located outside the walls of the city.
In February of 1643 when one of her sons-in-law returned from the massacre of the Pavonia Indians, with prisoners and heads of some of the vanquished Indians, she, “forgetful of those finer feelings that do honor to her sex, amused herself in kicking about the heads of the dead men which had been brought in as bloody trophies of the midnight slaughter” (page 66 of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly article).
Adrienne continued to be active in social circles and frequently was a sponsor to baptisms into the Reformed Dutch church in Manhattan of her grandchildren and others. She died in 1655. Her son-in-law, Cornelis (Cornelius) Van Tienhoven was the second most powerful man in the New Netherlands colony and came to be known as one of the greatest villains of early New Amsterdam history. We will have his story separate from this one of his mother-in-law.
© 2008 by E. Lamar Ross and Infopreneur Publishers, LLC.