Jan Gerritsz Stryker

Jan Stryker, also known as "Jan Strijcker and "Jan Gerritsz Van Ruinen", was one of two sons born to Gerritt Hermans Strycker and Altje Strijcker.

In 1621 Jan married Lambertje Seubering in Beyle, Drenthe, Netherland. Jan and Lambertje had 11 children, half born in The Netherlands and half in New York: Altje Stryker, Jannetje Stryker, Garrit Janse Stryker, Angenietje Stryker, Hendrick Stryker, Eytie Stryker, Pieter Stryker, and Sara Stryker. ² After the death of his first wife (ed. June 21, 1675) he married, April 30, 1679, Swantje Jans, the widow of Cornelis De Potter, of Brooklyn. She died in the year 1686. On March 31, 1687, he married a third time, Teuntje Teunis, of Flatbush, widow of Jacob Hellakers, of New Amsterdam. She survived her husband. She is recorded as having united with the Dutch Church in New Amsterdam March 3, 1697. ²

From The Genealogical Record of the Strycker Family, compiled by William S. Stryker:
Jan, born in Holland, emigrated from Ruinen, a village in the province of Drenthe, with his wife, two sons and four daughters, and arrived at New Amsterdam in the year 1652. Leaving behind him all the privileges and rights which might be his by descent in the old world, he sought to start his family on new soil in habits of industry and honesty. He was a man of ability and education, for his subsequent history shows him to have been prominent in the civil and religious community in which his lot was cast.

Jan Strÿcker remained in New Amsterdam a little over a year after his arrival there, and in the year 1654 he took the lead in founding a Dutch colony on Long Island at what was called Midwout, probably from a little village of that name in the province of North Holland. It was also called Middlewoods, possibly from some of the features of that locality. The modern name of the place is Flatbush.

On the 11th of December, 1653, while still in New Amsterdam, Jan Strÿcker joined with others in a petition of the Commonalty of the New Netherlands and a remonstrance against the conduct of Director Stuyvesant. The petition recited that “they apprehended the establishment of an arbitrary government over them; that it was contrary to the genuine principles of well regulated governments that one or more men should arrogate to themselves the exclusive power to dispose at will of the life and property of any individual; that it was odious to every free-born man, principally so to those whom God has placed in a free state on newly settled lands. We humbly submit that ‘tis one of our privileges that our consent, or that of our representatives, is necessarily required in the enactment of laws and orders.”

If is remarkable that at this early day this indictment was drawn up, this “bill of rights” was published. But these men came from the blood of the hardy Northmen and imbibed with the free air of America the determination to be truly free themselves.

In the year 1654 Jan Strÿcker was selected as the Chief Magistrate of Midwout, and this office he held most of the time for twenty years. The last time we find the notice of his election was at the Council of War holden in Fort William Hendrick, August 18, Anno 1673, where the delegates from, the respective towns of Midwout, Bruckelen, Amers-fort, Utrecht, Boswyck and Gravesend selected him as “Schepen.”

In a work before referred to, Dr. O’Callaghan’s “Colonial History of New York,” Volume II, page 374, we find a letter to the Right Honorable Petrus Stuyvesant, Director General and Council of New Netherlands from the same Long Island towns just mentioned, “naming Jan Strÿcker as one of the embassy from New Amsterdam and the principal Dutch towns to be sent to the Lord Mayors in Holland on account of their annoyance from the English and the Indians; they complain that they will be driven off their lands unless re-enforced from Fatherland.”

On the 10th of April, 1664, he took his seat as a representative from Midwout in that great Landtdag, a General Assembly called by the burgomasters, which was held at the City Hall in New Amsterdam, to take into consideration the precarious condition of the country. This meeting was presided over by Hon. Jeremias Van Rennselaer and Governor Stuyvesant was present at this august and memorable council (See Mrs. Lamb’s History of New York, Volume I, pages 203, 206 and 207.Also O’Callaghan’s New Netherland Register, page 147)

Director Stuyvesant, August 28th, 1664, addressed a letter to the Dutch towns on Long Island, calling upon them “to send every third man to defend the Capital from the English now arriving in the Narrows.” This the Court and Commonalty of the town of Midwout unanimously answered by Jan Strÿcker that it was impossible to comply with his demands as “we must leave wives and children seated here in fear and trembling, which our hearts fail to do—as the English are themselves hourly expected there.”

He was one of the representatives in the Hempstead Convention in 1665 and he appears as a patentee on the celebrated Nichols patent October 11th, 1667, and again on the Dongan patent November 12th, 1685.

On October 25th, 1673, he was elected Captain of the military company at Midwout and his brother Jacobus was given the authority to “administer the oaths and to instal (sic) him into office.” On March 26, 1674, Captain Jan Strÿcker was named as a deputy to represent the town in a conference to be held at New Orange to confer with Governor Colve, “on Monday next, on the present state of the country.”

To turn from the civil and military man we find him in the first year of his residence at Midwout, one of the two commissioners to build the Dutch Church there—the first erected on Long Island, and he was for many years an active supporter of the Dominie Johannes Theodorus Polhemus, of the Reformed Church of Holland, in that edifice.

After raising a family of eight children, every one of whom lived to adult life and married, seeing his sons settled on valuable plantations and occupying positions of influence in the community, and his daughters marrying into the families of the Brinckerhoffs, the Berriens and the Bergens, living to be over eighty years of age, he died about the year 1697 full of the honors which these new towns could bestow, and with his duties as a civil officer and a free citizen of his adopted country well performed.

Jan Stryker died on March 3, 1697, in Kings, New York, when he was 82 years old. He was buried in the rear churchyard at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Church Lane (now Church Avenue), presently a ghetto area. 1 In 1655, Jan's brother Jacobus painted a picture of him. A photo of this picture is in the New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin Index, volume X, Apr, 1926- Jan, 1927, page 85. As of 1945, the original hung in the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C.¹

¹Captain Jan Gerritse Stryker. https://www.geni.com/people/Captain-Jan-Gerritse-Stryker/6000000039133307071. Accessed 21 May. 2019.
²Stryker, William S. Genealogical Record of The Strycker Family. Sinnickson Chew, Camden, NJ. 1887; 3-6.