Learn about lives of 17th and 18th century Dutch Settlers in the Hudson Valley when author Firth Haring Fabend presents the multimedia lecture, “Patroons and Plowmen, Pietism and Politics” Thursday on 10/22 at 7p.
Fabend illustrates her talk with eighty slides, in forty pairs for purposes of comparison. She 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 recently published LAND SO FAIR is Fabend’s sixth novel. Set in 1737 on a Hudson Valley farm, she writes about how land was “sought, bought, cleared, planted, harvested, bequeathed, fought over, challenged, confiscated, and laced with blood and bones” eleven generations ago in her own family history.
This presentation of The Nyack Library’s Quadricentennial Lecture Series is sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities.
