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Shhh, I'm Back. Don't Tell Anyone.

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Once again I've fallen into the black hole of no posts for months. But today I've been going through my old emails and found some ideas that I can post. Sorry about my slacking. I'm actually writing this sitting an hour from Blauvelt NY having attended a seminar about the history around this area Wednesday night. My brain is humming with ideas. (you can probably tell I borrowed this from Wikipedia)


Dutch Language Distribution in the United States. (LOOK Indiana is dark Blue!)

There has been a Dutch Presence in America since 1602, when the government of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands chartered the Dutch East India Company with the mission of exploring for a passage to the Indies and claiming any uncharted territories for the Dutch republic. The rest of the story I've written about how the English took the colony away from Holland.

Dutch was still spoken in many parts of New York at the time of the Revolution. For example, Alexander Hamilton's wife Eliza Hamilton attended a Dutch-language church during their marriage. Martin Van Buren, the first President born in the United States following it's independence, spoke Dutch as his native language, making him the only president whose first language was not English.

In a 1990 demographic consensus, 3% of surveyed citizens claimed descent from Dutch settlers. Modern estimates place the Dutch American population at 5 million, lagging just a bit behind Scottish American and Swedish American.

Notable Dutch Americans include the Roosevelts (Theodore, Franklin Delano, and Eleanor) Marlon Brando, Thomas Alva Edison, Martin Van Buren, and the Vanderbilts. The Roosevelts are direct descendants of Dutch settlers of the New Netherlands colony in the 17th century.

Only 150,000 people in the United States still speak the Dutch language at home today concentrated mainly in Michigan (i.e. the city of Holland), Tennessee, Miami, Houston, and Chicago. The Dutch language is studied as a novelty in mostly Dutch communities of Pella, Iowa and San Joaquin County California which also has a renowned Dutch and Frisian settle history since the 1840s.

A vernacular dialect of Dutch, known as Jersey Dutch was spoken by a significant number of people in the New Jersey area between the start of the 17th century to the mid-20th century. With the beginning of the 20th century, usage of the language became restricted to internal family circles, with an ever growing number of people abandoning the language in favor of English. It suffered gradual decline throughout the 20th century and it ultimately dissipated from casual usage.

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