Fiegs To Mark NYC Founder's Death

Next year will mark the 350th anniversary of the death of Wolphert Gerretse Van Kouwenhoven, tenth great-grandfather of a number of Fiegs and Fieg cousins. 

According to genealogical research begun by distant Fieg cousin David Kipp Conover of West Jordan, UT, Grampa Wolfie, who died in the spring of 1662, arrived in the New World as part of an initiative headed by the Dutch West India Company.  He disembarked near Albany in 1625 but soon after established himself in Manhattan operating a farm for Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, one of the founders and directors of the Dutch West India Company.  The farm in the Bowery adjoined other agrarian enterprises including that of Peter Minuit, the governor general of the New Amsterdam colony. 


The Plumb Beach Channel in Gerritsen Beach



Wolfert later crossed the East River and purchased land the Lenape Indians called "Kestateuw."   He established a plantation there, the first known European settlement on Long Island, which he dubbed "Achterveldt."   His estate, commanding a view of Sheepshead Bay and Rockaway Point, became the focal point of the village of New Amersfoort, later called Flatlands.  The original location of his farm sits near the intersection of Flatbush Ave. and Kouwenhoven Pl. in Brooklyn.  The Gerritsen Park neighborhood and park on Sheepshead Bay are also named in his honor.



"He played an active role in laying the foundations of the communities of Manhattan, Albany, Rensselaer, and Brooklyn," Morton Wagman wrote in the 1979 Journal of Long Island History.  In addition to the Fiegs, other notable descendents of Wolphert Gerritse Van Kouwenhoven include presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, 48th New York governor William Averell Harriman and actor Michael Douglas.



Crest of the Van Kouwenhoven family



Doris Fieg Holm is related to Grampa Wolfie through her mother, Louise Stewart Voorhees Fieg, wife of Max Fieg and granddaughter of Carl and Emilie Fieg who immigrated from Germany in 1899.  The Voorheeses are direct blood relations of Grampa Wolfie.