Sebastian Croll was a Dutchman said to have been made the first

commissary A commissary is a government official charged with oversight or an ecclesiastical official who exercises in special circumstances the jurisdiction of a bishop. In many countries, the term is used as an administrative or police title. It often c ...

Fort Orange Fort Orange ( nl, Fort Oranje) was the first permanent Dutch settlement in New Netherland; the present-day city of Albany, New York developed at this site. It was built in 1624 as a replacement for Fort Nassau, which had been built on nearb ...

in 1617, which was built on the site of the present-day city of

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York C ...

. He was also an elder in the "Church in the Fort," which was founded by the Rev.

Jonas Michaelius Jonas Michaëlius (1577 - after 1638) was the first clergyman to lead a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in America. Biography He was probably born ''Jonas Joannis Michielsz'' in Hoorn. He studied at the University of Leyden from 1600- ...

in 1628. The last name ''Croll'' is pronounced in

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

, similar to the English pronunciation, but according to an upper class widow living in

Hudson, New York Hudson is a city and the county seat of Columbia County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 5,894. Located on the east side of the Hudson River and 120 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, it was named for the rive ...

in 1909, one Mrs. Anna R. Bradbury, ''Croll'' is pronounced as "crull" in Dutch. Thus she claimed that he introduced the

cruller A cruller () is a deep-fried pastry like a doughnut popular in Europe and North America often made from a rectangle of dough with a cut made in the middle that allows it to be pulled over and through itself, producing twists in the sides of the p ...

to the New World, and that she thus believed him to be the

eponym An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''epon ...

for the pastry. This belief has been repeated in other later US works.

References

People of New Netherland {{Netherlands-bio-stub