Family Card - Person Sheet
Family Card - Person Sheet
NameJan Franse Van Hoesen - Direct Ancestor (Family North American Pioneer) 
Birth1581, Schleswig-Flensburg, Schleeswig-Holstein,, Germany
Death29 Nov 1665, Albany, New York, BNA
Notes for Jan Franse Van Hoesen - Direct Ancestor (Family North American Pioneer)
“…Jan Franse van Hoesen, came to New Netherland via Amsterdam from Husum, near Hamburg on Germany's North Sea cost. A seafarer by trade, Van Hoesen arrived at New Amsterdam in 1639 and eventually made his way up the river to Beverwyck (now Albany), where he settled with his family. In 1662 he negotiated the purchase of a large tract of land south of Beverwyck from the native Mahicans, at the site of the future city of Hudson.
Van Hoesen's land lay some thirty miles downstream of Beverwyck, near Claverack (literally "Clover Reach"), at the southern end of the vast patroonship of the Van Rensselaer family. The property included a large, flat point of land that jutted out into the Hudson, where a village called Claverack Landing emerged by the eighteenth century. In a drawn-out legal battle that went on for generations, the powerful Van Rensselaers challenged Van Hoesen's title to this land, claiming to have purchased it for themselves in the 1640s.
But Van Hoesen fought back, and he passed the land to his heirs upon his death in 1665. With the creation of Livingston Manor to the south in 1686, the Van Hoesen property became one of very few freeholds for miles along the Hudson's eastern shore. The feud persisted for more than a century, until 1784, when most of the contested land was sold to a group of Quaker whaling families from Nantucket. In the wake of the Revolutionary War, these families had come up the Hudson in search of a more sheltered place to make their homes. They found that place at Claverack Landing, which they renamed Hudson and which in 1785 became the third city incorporated in the state of New York.
Van Hoesen's land lay some thirty miles downstream of Beverwyck, near Claverack (literally "Clover Reach"), at the southern end of the vast patroonship of the Van Rensselaer family. The property included a large, flat point of land that jutted out into the Hudson, where a village called Claverack Landing emerged by the eighteenth century. In a drawn-out legal battle that went on for generations, the powerful Van Rensselaers challenged Van Hoesen's title to this land, claiming to have purchased it for themselves in the 1640s.
But Van Hoesen fought back, and he passed the land to his heirs upon his death in 1665. With the creation of Livingston Manor to the south in 1686, the Van Hoesen property became one of very few freeholds for miles along the Hudson's eastern shore. The feud persisted for more than a century, until 1784, when most of the contested land was sold to a group of Quaker whaling families from Nantucket. In the wake of the Revolutionary War, these families had come up the Hudson in search of a more sheltered place to make their homes. They found that place at Claverack Landing, which they renamed Hudson and which in 1785 became the third city incorporated in the state of New York.