HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 235

originally formed one of a series of letters written for the columns of the Brooklyn Eagle, during Mr. Murphy’s residence as U. S. Minister at the Hague; and is so especially full of information concerning names and families familiar to Brooklyn and Kings County, that it cannot fail, we think, to interest our readers.

“The great body of Netherlanders who settled permanently in America, belonged, without exception, to the industrial classes. The most distinguished families amongst us, those whose ancestors filled the most important positions in the new settlement, as well as others, were from the great body of burghers. The only Governor who remained in the country, Peter Stuyvesant, was the son of a minister of Scherpenzed, in Friesland; and the only patroon who settled upon his estates, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, was a merchant of Amsterdam. Although the Republic confirmed no titles, it protected the old nobility in their estates, and they and their families were content to leave the distant enterprises in the hands of the other classes, and remain in the province.

“Returning now to the consideration of names, in order to show what difficulties the peculiar systems adopted in this country (Holland), and continued by the settlers in our own home, throw in the way of tracing genealogies, it is to be observed that the first of these, in point of time, was the patronymic, as it is called, by which a child took, besides his own baptismal name, that of his father, with the addition of zoon or sen, meaning son. To illustrate this: if a child were baptized Hendrick and the baptismal name of his father were Jan, the child would be called Hendrick Jansen. His son, if baptized Tunis, would be called Tunis Hendricksen; the son of the latter might be Willem, and would have the name of Willem Tunisson. And so we might have the succeeding generations called successively Garret Willemsen, Marten Garretsen, Adrian Martensen, and so on, through the whole of the calendar of Christian names; or, as more frequently happened, there would be repetition in the second, third, or fourth generation, of the name of the first; and thus, as these names were common to the whole people, there were in every community different lineages of identically the same name. This custom, which had prevailed in Holland for centuries, was in full vogue at the time of the settlement of New Netherland. In