Cornelis van Tienhoven (ca. 1601

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

- November 1656 ?,

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

?) was secretary of the

New Netherlands New Netherland ( nl, Nieuw Nederland; la, Novum Belgium or ) was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic that was located on the east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva P ...

from 1638 to 1656 and as such one of the most influential people in New Amsterdam. Van Tienhoven was born the son of Luyt (Lucas) Cornelisz van Tienhoven and Jannetje Adriaens de Haes. He arrived in New Amsterdam as a

Dutch West Indies Company The Dutch West India Company ( nl, Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, ''WIC'' or ''GWC''; ; en, Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx ...

accountant in 1633 on the same ship as the new director of the colony

Wouter van Twiller Wouter van Twiller (May 22, 1606 – buried August 29, 1654) was an employee of the Dutch West India Company and the fourth Director of New Netherland. He governed from 1632 until 1638, succeeding Peter Minuit, who was recalled by the Dutch ...

. He was promoted to ''schout-fiscaal'' (usually translated as secretary) with the arrival of Director

Willem Kieft Willem Kieft (September 1597 – September 27, 1647) was a Dutch merchant and the Director of New Netherland (of which New Amsterdam was the capital) from 1638 to 1647. Life and career Willem Kieft was appointed to the rank of director ...

in 1638 and retained that title under Peter Stuyvesant in 1647. In 1648 he married the 16-year-old Rachel Vigne. During the 1649 mission of

Adriaen van der Donck Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck (16181655) was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific ''Jonkheer'' the city of Yonkers, New York, is named. Although he was not, as sometimes claimed, the first lawyer in the Dutch colo ...

to the Netherlands to plead to the

States-General of the Netherlands The States General of the Netherlands ( nl, Staten-Generaal ) is the supreme bicameral legislature of the Netherlands consisting of the Senate () and the House of Representatives (). Both chambers meet at the Binnenhof in The Hague. The States ...

for local governance for the residents of New Amsterdam, Cornelis van Tienhoven also went as the representative of Peter Stuyvesant and argued against it. When New Amsterdam was granted the right to establish a local government in 1652, he became the first ''

schout In Dutch-speaking areas, a ''schout'' was a local official appointed to carry out administrative, law enforcement and prosecutorial tasks. The office was abolished with the introduction of administrative reforms during the Napoleonic period. Fu ...

'' in the colony. His actions appear to have had a very negative effect on the relationship of the colonists and the native people, instigating several retaliatory raids by the latter. His last misdeed, when Stuyvesant was on a visit to the Dutch colony in

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

, seems to have led to the

Peach Tree War The Peach Tree War, also known as the Peach War, was a large-scale attack on September 15, 1655 by the Susquehannock Indians and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the North River (Hudson River). The attack was motivated ...

, after which the Company directors back in Holland ordered Stuyvesant to fire van Tienhoven, which happened in June 1656. Van Tienhoven's hat and cane were found in the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

on November 18, 1656, but it is unknown if he drowned, was murdered by one of his enemies, or simply disappeared, as he was supposed to appear in court. At the time his wife was expecting his fourth child. Van Tienhoven's younger brother escaped at around the same time to

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate) ...

, but there is no indication that Cornelis came along.

External links

Cornelis Luycasz van Tienhoven biography
at the Historical Society of the New York Courts
A profile
in The Morning News (published and accessed April 3, 2008) 1600s births 1656 deaths Dutch accountants American people of Dutch descent People of New Netherland People from Utrecht (city) {{Netherlands-bio-stub