Jacob Luursen
Jacob Luursen came from Wageningen, a town on the Rhine in the Dutch province of Gelderland. His own words say so. On 2 August 1647 he stood before Cornelis van Tienhoven, secretary of New Netherland, in Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan, and was written down as "Jacob Luyersz from Wageningen." His name is spelled Luyersz, Luyersen, Luurszen and Luerszen in the records. The second part is a patronymic, meaning son of Luur, so his father was named Luur. Nothing else is known of him.
He was born about 1616. On 28 August 1638 he was in Amsterdam, registering his banns to marry. The clerk entered him as "Jacob Leurtsz van Wageninge," aged twenty-two, living in the Haerlemmerdwarsstraat. The word after his town appears to read metselaersgesel, a mason's journeyman. He said he had no parents living. His bride was "Stijntie Douwes van Enckhuijsen," aged twenty-one, of the Angeliersstraat, who had none either. She had been born in Enkhuizen, a port on the Zuiderzee.
His brother Urbanus was in Amsterdam too. Seven months later, on 23 March 1639, "Orbanus Luursz van Wageningen" registered his own banns there. He was a widower, and his first wife had been a Lysbet. His bride was Jannetie Claes of Amsterdam, who came with her father, Claes Arentsz of the Boomstraat. The two men shared a father's name and a home town.
By 1647 Jacob had been working for the Chartered West India Company, the Dutch trading company that owned and ran New Netherland. The company kept its accounts in Amsterdam, and a man paid in the colony collected his wages there through an agent. That August Jacob gave a power of attorney to Aeltje Symons, the wife of Symon Jansen Breet in Amsterdam, to collect "one hundred and fifty guilders, seven stivers, fourteen pennies earned in New Netherland" from the company's Amsterdam chamber. He was about thirty-one.
A year later, on 19 September 1648, Jannetje Claes, widow of Urbanus Luyersen "van Wageningen," a stone mason in the company's service, gave a similar power to collect her dead husband's wages from the ship Princess. A. J. F. van Laer, the New York State Archivist, judged that "this Urbanus was undoubtedly a brother of Jacob Luyersen." The Amsterdam banns of 1639 bear him out: Urbanus's widow was the woman he had married there as "Orbanus Luursz van Wageningen."
On 29 May 1650 Jacob had a son baptized Luur at the Reformed Dutch church in New Amsterdam, the town that became New York City. Only the father's name was entered. The witnesses were Tobias Teuniszen and Janneken Claes. Luursen means son of Luur, so the boy carried his grandfather's name.
In 1651 and 1652 he was in Rensselaerswyck, the Van Rensselaer family's estate around Fort Orange, and in trouble with its court. He was fined ten guilders for drawing a knife on Jochem the baker. An enslaved woman testified that she had given him stolen goods.
He moved to Fort Orange, the company's trading post where Albany now stands. On 25 October 1653 the Director General and Council granted him a patent for a house lot beside the fort, in the village then called Beverwyck. His house served drink. Some time between 1652 and 1656 the Beverwyck court fined Machiel Ryckertsen "for having last day of prayer sat drinking at the house of Jacob Luyersen during divine service."
He was dead by 9 January 1657, at about forty. That day Rutger Jacobsen asked the court to make Claes Teunissen hand over a house, sold to him "in payment of a certain sum due to him by Jacob Luyersen, deceased." The court's officer objected, "as protector of the rights of orphans," and asked for curators "to preserve the rights of the surviving children of Jacob Luyersen." The court named Jan Verbeeck and Evert Wendel. On 7 February 1657 it swore them in and made them the village's first orphan masters. That spring they sued Willem Janssen Stoll for 101 guilders "on the books of Jacob Luyersen." Stoll said he had already paid 80 guilders "to Pieter Bronck, for the widow of Jacob Luyersen."
That summer his trustees put his own house up for sale. The terms describe it: "the house with all the fixtures, and the lot, in length eight rods, in breadth in front on the road four rods and a half, in breadth on the west side three rods and five feet, all according to the patent thereof, except the garden stuff which is therein." The buyer was to take the house on 20 August 1657 and pay in two installments "in good current seewant," the shell beads that served as money in the colony. Hendrick Janssen van Rytert bought it. On 20 July 1657 Andries Vander Sluys stood surety for William Fredericksz Bout in a dispute over half the house, worth 406 guilders 10 stivers.
His widow, Stijntje Douwes, married again, to Claes Teunissen, according to compiled family accounts. Claes was already handling Jacob's debts in January 1657. She was living with Claes at Kingston in 1682, when she stood sponsor to Luur's first child, a daughter baptized Styntie for her. The family name Kuykendall, in the form van Kuykendaal, first appears on a record in 1706, half a century after Jacob's death, carried by his son and grandson.
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Cite: Heirology, "Jacob Luursen (b. 1616)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jacob-luursen-1616-4e82e6.