Ancestors

Grietje Tack

Grietje Tack was the wife of Luur Jacobsz van Kuykendaal. She is named with him as mother at the baptisms of ten children in the Kingston Dutch church in Ulster County, New York, from 1682 to 1706. In 1682 the clerk wrote her as "Grietje Artz Tack," which marks her as a daughter of a man named Aert.

Her father was very probably Aert Pietersen Tack of Wiltwyck, as Kingston was called before 1669. He had been born at Etten, near Breda, in Brabant. A Kingston baptism of August 1663 records a daughter Grietjen born to "Aart Pietersen Tack, Grietjen Vooght." The day is torn from the page, and the 1919 Kuykendall history dates it 16 August 1663. Her sponsors were Jacob Jansen and Barber Andries. When her son Johannes was baptized on 20 April 1685, "Cornelis Aartz Tack," Aert's son baptized in 1661, stood sponsor.

Her mother was very probably Annetje Adriaens of Amsterdam, Aert's wife. Annetje was his wife in 1661 and still his wife in the autumn of 1663, when she answered his creditors in the Wiltwyck court. When Aert was later charged with bigamy, the only other wife named was a woman in Holland. The name Grietjen Vooght on the baptism is probably a stand-in at the font: voogd is the Dutch word for guardian.

She was born into a village that had just been attacked. On 7 June 1663 the Esopus Indians raided Wiltwyck and burned the new village beside it. Her parents' house was not among those burned, though a man was wounded inside it. Within a year her father was gone. By July 1664 the court at Wiltwyck recorded that he "has absented himself from this place," and his farm was sold for his debts. Her mother then petitioned for a divorce, because Aert had married another woman at Amsterdam. In January 1665 her mother married Jacob Jansen of Etten, who had worked Aert's farm, and the register called her Aert's "deserted wife." Grietje very probably grew up in the Van Etten household.

Her children were Styntie (1682), Jacob (1683), Johannes (1685), Cornelis (1686), Johannes (1688), Arie (1694), Pieter (1698), Annetje (1700), Sara (1702) and Seytie (1706). Her first daughter was named for her husband's mother, Styntje Douwes, who stood sponsor. Her daughter Annetje of 1700 carried her own mother's name. In October 1706 she and her husband brought Seytie to be baptized on the same day as their grandson Leur, the son of Cornelis. Her death was not found.

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Cite: Heirology, "Grietje Tack (b. 1663)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/grietje-tack-1663-da6926.