User:AMK152/Dirck Volckertsen

Dirck Volckertsen was a Norwegian carpenter and early settler of Greenpoint in Brooklyn. In records he is commonly referred to as "Dirck the Noorman."

He was born in Norway and came to New Amsterdam in the 1620s. Volckertsen married Christina Vigne, daughter of Guillaume and Adrienne (Culvier) Vigne. She was a Walloon from Valenciennes. She was a sister-in-law of Cornelis van Tienhoven and stepdaughter of Jan Jansen Damen.

At first, he and his wife lived with her mother and sisters, Maria (and husband Abraham Verplanck), and Maria. Volckertsen and Verplanck had a dispute with their wives' stepfather, Jan Jansen Damen. In July 1638, Damen sued them, demanding they leave his household. It was also testified that Damen attacked Volckertsen's wife.

Greenpoint
In 1638, the Dutch West India Company negotiated the right to settle Brooklyn from the Lenape. Volckertsen was the first recorded European settler of what is now Greenpoint. In 1645, he built a $1 1/2$-story farmhouse there with the help of two Dutch carpenters. It was built in the contemporary Dutch style just west of what is now the intersection of Calyer Street and Franklin Street. There he planted orchards and raised crops, sheep and cattle. He was called Dirck de Noorman by the Dutch colonists of the region, Noorman being the Dutch word for "Norseman" or "Northman." The creek that ran by his farmhouse became known as Norman Kill (Creek); it ran into a large salt marsh and was later filled in.

Volckertsen received title to the land after prevailing in court the year before over a Jan De Pree, who had a rival claim. He initially commuted to his farm by boat and may not have moved into the house full time until after 1655, when the small nearby settlement of Boswyck was established, on the charter of which Volckertsen was listed along with 22 other families. Volckertsen had had periodic conflicts with the Keshaechqueren, who killed two of his sons-in-law and tortured a third in separate incidents throughout the 1650s. Starting in the early 1650s, he began selling and leasing his property to Dutch colonists, among them Jacob Haie (Hay) in 1653, who built a home in northern Greenpoint that was burned down by Indians two years later. Jan Meserole established a farm in 1663; his farmhouse at what is now 723 Manhattan Avenue stood until 1919 and last served as a Young Women’s Hebrew Association.

Legacy
Dirck the Norseman, a brewpub in Greenpoint, is named after Volckertsen.