AHP’s Jay Dickey gave a Zoom lecture entitled “America’s Dutch Heritage: The Story of New Netherland.”

AHP’s Jay Dickey delivered a talk entitled “The Jamestowne Story.”

AHP’s Jay Dickey delivered a Zoom talk entitled “King Philip’s War: An American Tragedy.”

Jay Dickey gave a Zoom lecture entitled “Edward Maria Wingfield: The Forgotten Leader of Jamestowne.” February 2021: AHP’s Jay Dickey delivered a talk entitled “Before He Was a Traitor: Benedict Arnold and the Siege of Quebec.”

Jay Dickey gave a presentation to the Nevada Mayflower Society entitled “The 400th Anniversary of the Fortune: The Forgotten Tale of the Second Ship to Arrive at Plymouth.”

The Forgotten Colony: the 400th Anniversary of the Founding of New Netherland, America’s First “Melting Pot” Today, many Americans consider New York—New York City in particular-- to be a “melting pot,” where different ethnicities and cultures have come together to form a vibrant, diverse community, a center of international commerce and finance, and a welcoming place for immigrants from all the nations of the world. It all started 400 years ago, when a sailing ship carrying a small group of Dutch settlers arrived in North America, traveled up what came to be known as the Hudson River, and established a trading post at today’s Albany New York, following quickly by the settlement of the place they called New Amsterdam, renamed forty years later “New York.” Led by the Dutch West India Company (the “WGC”), over the next two decades thousands of immigrants settled in the region of today’s New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, forming the Dutch Colony of “New Netherland.” Americans today celebrate the nation’s founding colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth, but somehow we’ve forgotten the massively important colony of New Netherland. On January 18, American Heritage Partners hosted a special luncheon featuring guest speaker, Deborah Hamer, the Director of the New Netherland Institute (“NNI”), who shared with us the story of New Netherland. Headquartered in Albany New York, NNI has been engaged over the last few decades in extensive preservation efforts of early Dutch records on a colossal scale. Ms. Hamer provided an overview of the history of New Netherland and shared with us the details of NNI’s efforts to preserve, digitize and translate the extant records of the WGC and other surviving Dutch records related to the history of New Netherland. The large collection of records NNI has already made public has provided critical new information about how the Dutch colony operated, how its people lived their day-to-day lives, how colonial leaders dealt with the indigenous peoples, and how those leaders helped foster the “melting pot” we know of today. This special event was held at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Nevada.

AHP hosted an event in Carson City, NV featuring guest Kim Harris, who gave a “chautauqua” performance about the life of Anne Hutchinson, prominent figure in the history of New England who fought for religious freedom in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630’s; for her non-conformism she was banished, and later she and her children were murdered by Indians. The event was co-sponsored by the Nevada Mayflower Society and several other organizations.