Anthony Janszoon van Salee

Anthony Janszoon van Salee (1607–1676) was the son of Jan Janszoon, a Dutch pirate who led the Republic of Salé, a pirate state in modern Morocco. He was an original settler of and prominent landholder, merchant, and creditor in New Netherlands. Van Salee may have been the first Muslim in the New World. A Qur'an said to have belonged to him was eventually auctioned in the following centuries, having passed through a descendant, Robert Bayles, a one-time President of The Market and Fulton National Bank of New York.

1736 Herman Moll map, Cartagena in red

Anthony was Jan Janszoon's fourth child, born in 1607 in Cartagena, Spain, from his second wife. In 1624, Anthony was in Salé, Morocco with his father, leaving in 1627 for Algiers with his family. Van Salee was living near the harbor in Amsterdam when he obtained a marriage license on December 15, 1629 to marry 27-year-old German-native Grietse Reyniers two days before his ship to the New World left. In 1630, at the age of 22, he had immigrated to New Netherlands, along with his bride, as a colonist of the Dutch West India Company.

It is speculated that Anthony's father had provided him a considerable fortune, and by 1639 he was one of the largest landholders on the island, as well as a prosperous farmer. The relationship with his father after arriving in the New Amsterdam is unclear.

One of Van Salee's first properties was a farm on the island of Manhattan acquired in 1638 which was named "Wallenstein", titled in memory of Albrecht von Wallenstein. Becoming one of the original settlers of the area, the plat was located on the north side of the stockade along present-day Wall St. The bouwery was surveyed from Broadway to the East River between Ann Street and Maiden Lane. He transferred the deed the following year.

Following numerous legal disputes, including with the church, Anthony was ordered to leave New Netherland, but on appeal to the Dutch West India Company, was allowed to settle on 200 acres (0.81 km2) in what would become New Utrecht and Gravesend, Brooklyn. This made him now one of the largest and most prominent landholders on Long Island. In 1643 he purchased a house on Bridge Street in New Amsterdam, in defiance of the court order restricting such. He would go on to become a successful merchant and creditor in New Amsterdam, while owning several properties throughout the region.

Social legacy

Anthony reportedly was a defender of minorities in the colony, and was disliked by many in the colony. Neighbors called him "A Turk, a rascal, and a horned beast." He was engaged in many legal disputes, from his dog attacking the hog of a black townsman, Anthony the Portuguese, to pointing loaded pistols at slave overseers from the Dutch West India Company. The first grantee of land on Conyne Eylandt (Coney Island), he helped found many Long Island settlements, including New Utrecht, Gravesend, and, in 1660, Boswijck, along with twenty-three settlers, including free blacks Francisco and Anton. He read his Qur'an frequently, petitioned for Christian missionaries, and once was fined for housing an English Quaker at his home on Bridge Street, who was to repair a Dutch church. He was the neighbor of Lady Deborah Moody, with whom he was on good terms, although he had disputes with her husband, Sir Henry, who filed speech charges against him.

Marriage to Grietse Reyniers

He married Grietse Reyniers, a scandalous woman from the Netherlands who was previously the mistress of Wouter van Twiller. She had encountered him while an employee of the tavern belonging to Pieter de Winter. Grietse is considered a legend of American colonial history because of her wild, sexual ways. She is dubbed the first Manhattan "lady of the night" by some accounts, while others have called her the "Carrie Bradshaw" of colonial Manhattan. She is quoted as having once said "I have long been the whore of the nobility. From now on I shall be the whore of the rabble." She was known to have measured the penises of bar patrons with a broom stick.

Between 1638-1639, the couple accounted for 10% of the crime rate in the colony, or fifteen of ninety-three cases. During this period the Dutch legal system was heavily invested in quarrels, and the cases included actions of petty slander from the likes of Anneke and Dominee Bogardus after Grietse accused of them of lying, Grietse mooning the naval fleet, and Anthony's drunkenness.

Grietse died in 1669, and Anthony married Metje Grevenraet, before dying in 1676. He passed his final years at his home on Bridge Street. Metje was a Quaker who helped Anthony tolerate the church.

He had four daughters with Reyniers, who married into respectable colonial commercial families:

• Eva Antonis, who married Ferdinandus van Sycklin, an original immigrant to New Netherland, for whom Van Siclen Avenue in Brooklyn is named. He was a descendant of a crusader and banker named Simon van der Sicklen, whose family possessed the domain of Nazareth, Belgium during the Middle Ages, and founded the town of Seclin, now in France. The family's original surname was de la Faucille.
• Cornelia, who married William Johnson
• Annica, who married Thomas Southard. Their daughter Abigail was the great-great-grandmother of Cornelius Vanderbilt
• Sara, who married John Emans. They are fifth great-grandparents of Warren G. Harding.

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Anthony's physical appearance and race is the subject of much debate, and the consensus was that, like his mother, he was of a mixed ethnic background. He was unusually tall, with superior strength. Van Salee has been described many ways, with some calling him a "semi-Dutchman" of "tawny" complexion, who erected the first "European" house in New Utrecht. Other descriptions have said he was a "former black slave" who was a "mulatto"; others include "half-Moroccan", "Turk", "Berber", and "swarthy".

Anthony's appearance is consistently used in court documentation alongside his name with the phrase "Turk", indicating his appearance or lifestyle was a main emphasis for documentarians and historians during that period. Janszoon was not a "free black", claimed in 2008, and "former black slave", as claimed in 2001, because he was the wealthy heir of a former head of state. Janszoon was considered "European" enough to be credited, in 1643, with building the first "European" settlement in New Utrecht, while even historic Southern African-centric collections cannot determine what his actual appearance, race, or origin was. He had four daughters who married into respectable, colonial New Amsterdam families of European origin.

Anthony's notable descendants include the Vanderbilt dynasty in the United States and Europe and Warren G. Harding.