The Early African and Indigenous Presence in the Tappan Patent and Towns of Bergen County, NJ

Teresa Vega will be talking about how her diverse ancestors left New Amsterdam and moved to East Jersey, (Tappan Patent) in 1683. From the early 1600s until 1865, her ancestors were enslaved by the founders of the Tappan Patent, Blauvelt-Haring-Schmidt family. Other ancestors married into the Afro-Dutch Manual/Mann, DeVries and Van Donck families of New Amsterdam and the Tappan Patent. Teresa’s ancestors include: The original Munsee inhabitants of NY, NJ and CT who occupied New Amsterdam and the Ramapo Mountains; A Dutch pirate who “turned Turk” and married a Mudejar woman of Moroccan descent in Cartagena, Spain whose 2 sons ended up in New Amsterdam in 1630; A few of the first enslaved Angolans who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1626; The first enslaved people not only from West African, Latin America and the Caribbean, but also from Madagascar; The last Black colonial landowner before the British takeover of New Amsterdam; A Dominican sea captain captured on a Spanish or Portuguese ship and given as a prize to the head of the Dutch West Indies Company in 1638 and later referred to as the “Captain of the Blacks;” and a Mixed-Race yeoman among others. Teresa will discuss the life and times of her 4th great-grandmother, Antonia (Tun) Snyder---though born to a Black Patriot from Orangetown, NY and the enslaved daughter of a Mixed-Race man whose great-grandfather was a Dutch pirate---she was one of New Jersey’s last enslaved people. Tun died in Saddle River, Bergen County in 1881. Some of her children and grandchildren married people from “Skunk Hollow,” a free Black settlement in the Palisades.  Teresa will discuss her ancestors as well as issues encountered researching early African and Indigenous people in the colonial era.

About Teresa A. Vega:

Teresa A. Vega is a genealogist, family historian, and blogger

(www.radiantrootsboricuabranches.com). Teresa has been able to trace several family

lines back to colonial New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

Her research specialties include both African-American and Puerto Rican Genealogy in

general, Free Blacks in the Northeast, The Afro-Dutch Cultural Legacy in NY/NJ, and

the NY-Madagascar Slave Trade. She is a member of both the NJ and NY Chapters of

the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAGHS), sits on the Board of

the Rye (NY) Historical Society, and is affiliated with Rutgers University Public History

Project and The Witness Stones Project. In addition. she is also the co-administrator of

FamilyTree DNA’s Malagasy Roots Project. She holds Bachelor’s Degrees in both

Anthropology and Asian Studies from Bowdoin College.