Firth Fabend will give a series of lectures presenting a brief overview of the Dutch people who settled in the Hudson Valley in the 17th and 18th centuries. She illustrates her talk with eighty slides, screened in forty pairs for purposes of comparison. Fabend asks, who were these Dutch people who replanted themselves in the Hudson Valley when it was a wolf-infested wilderness? Why did they come to America? What did they do when they got here? And why is their cultural influence still felt in the area today? She examines the importance of the fur trade, the importation of slavery, the patroon system of land tenure vs. the English manorial system, farming practices, family structure, domestic architecture and house furnishings, the religious culture, the winsome beauty of the land, and the schism in the Dutch Reformed Church that paralleled the divisions between Patriots and Tories in the War of Revolution.

The lecture will be given at the following locations:

Fort Montgomery on Thursday, August 5, at 7:30 p.m. [LINK]

Fishkill Historical Society on Saturday,Sept. 11 at 2 p.m. [LINK]

Emanuel United Church of Christ in Woodhaven, NY on September 29th at 1:00 p.m. [LINK]

Firth Haring Fabend is the author of the prize-winning works A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800, and Zion on the Hudson: Dutch New York and New Jersey in the Age of Revivals, both published by Rutgers University Press, and many scholarly articles. Land So Fair, a historical novel set in the Hudson Valley, with flashbacks to New Netherland, is her sixth novel. She is a Fellow of The Holland Society of New York, The New Netherland Institute in Albany, and the New York Academy of History.