Elizabeth Jansen Croon van Hoogvelt

New Amsterdam Marriage

1652 04 Aug; Jacob Curlaer, van Nieukercke, wid; Lysbeth van Hoogvelt, van Arnhem

CORNELIS VAN TIENHOVEN CHARACTER: Note N544http://www.fulkerson.org/1tienhov.html:

He was just a "boo! hiss!" kind of guy All of that might look good on paper. And he was considered to be intelligent, subtle and sharp-witted. The population of New Amsterdam knew him better, though, as a "thickset" man with a "red and bloated" face who was "given to lying, promising everyone. " One wrote, "the whole country cries out against him bitterly as a villain, murderer and traitor. " He was, in fact, the most atrocious character in the history of Manhattan, bar none. THE SCOUNDREL Cornelis was known as a womanizer. He dressed as an Indian "with a little covering" and chased after the many "light women" of New Amsterdam. In 1649 or 1650, long after he married and began a family, he took a lengthy trip back to Holland to offer his explanation why the colony was not progressing. In the middle of this high-level politicking that was surely the most important work of his live, Van Tienhoven vanished. Grossly overweight, "of red and bloated visage," and sporting a prominently juicy cyst- not to mention having a wife and children in New Amsterdam- Van Tienhoven fancied himself a lady's man, and his vanishing had at its root.While there, he "became engaged" to a young lady. The girl, Lysbeth Croon, was the daughter of an Amsterdam basket maker, and Van Tienhoven had assured her that he was single and wanted to marry her on Manhattan. (An undertaker's wife testified that Van Tienhoven had paid her three guilders to find a room for him and his young miss, which she did, "at the house of a grocer... at the sign of the Universal Friend." A tavern keeper’s wife reported that he "evinced great friendship and love, calling her always, Dearest, and conversing with her as man and wife are wont to do, sleeping in one bed.") Van Tienhoven was collared by the sheriff of The Hague and fined, and shortly afterward he and the girl fled the country, boarding a ship bound for Manhattan. The unsuspecting girl- Lysbet Van HOOGVELT- accompanied him on his travels in Holland and on the two-month voyage back to America, expecting to marry him at the end of the journey. When their ship, the Waterhont , tied up at New Amsterdam, he suddenly became a family man again. Such was his influence among the corrupt officials in the colony that no one would listen to the poor girl's tale of betrayal. " Lysbet found great sympathy, and TIENHOVEN's baseness being proved by testimony sent for to Holland, it came near going hard with him, but he escaped punishment only to become a few years later a public swindler, a fugitive from justice, and, as was believed, a suicide!" The worthy but much-injured maiden, Lysbeth Van HOOGVELT, married, 1652, to the widower Jacobus Van CURLER.

James Riker, REVISED HISTORY OF HARLEM (1904), pp.132n-133n.