Resources
de Halve Maen Cheat-Sheet
Researcher Marie-Pierre Lessard has published, and made available to the GSBC, a new cheat-sheet for the contents of de Halve Maen, the journal of the Holland Society of New York. Published quarterly since 1922, this publication focuses on the Dutch Colonial period in America and publishes new research illuminating the Dutch contribution to American history as well as aspects of New Netherland culture.
In the introduction to the cheat-sheet, Lessard writes:
“I compiled this list because no single source, to my knowledge, provided a complete overview of these articles. At least one list provided by the Holland Society of New York (HSNY) contains errors. (Some articles are said to be in one issue when they are in another.) PERSI is incomplete. Like PERSI, the Ebscohost site doesn’t list every issue in the online index, even though the issues themselves should all be accessible through Ebscohost (available in libraries).
… some page ranges are missing or not complete, and the least interesting articles (the editorials, the society pages, etc.) are largely not included. … [Lessard later adds, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”]
The notes are my own reflections on the contents of the articles rather than summaries…”
As Lessard notes, existing indexes are either incomplete, contain errors, or are spread across many locations so this should prove to be an excellent resource for those searching for New Netherland information. And for those issues which are available online—including the Holland Society of New York website, Archive.org, FamilySearch Library, issuu.com, and others—Lessard includes hyperlinks to the collections.
Recently, the Holland Society also opened all its online archives to the public where issues up to 2001 (some years missing) are available. (See Resources, below.) Additionally, back-issues of de Halve Maen are available at the Bolger Heritage Center.
We thank Ms. Lessard for compiling this extensive index and to GSBC Trustee Emeritus Peggy W. Norris, MS, MLIS, for securing permission from Ms. Lessard to share it with you via the GSBC website!
Selected Resources
View the de Halve Maen cheat-sheet on the GSBC website at de-halve-maen-cheat-sheet
Learn more about the Holland Society of New York and their online Magazine and Archives (hollandsociety.org/magazine-and-archives)—or jump-into searching the online collections where back-issues of de Halve Maen up to about 2001 have been digitized (https://hsny.localarchives.net).
View issues available on the FamilySearch Library, https://libcat.familysearch.org/Record/38601/Home
View Holland Society publications at Archive.org
Marie-Pierre Lessard is the author of Hendrick Hendricksen Obe, the Drummer: A Biography with Critical Notes on the Dally, Hoppe, Kip, and Grevenraet Genealogies; Also Discussing Hendrick Hendricksen van Eerlant and Aeltje Claes of Kingston, New York (Denmark: Marie-Pierre Lessard, 2020).
[de Halve Maen, or Half-Moon, was named for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) jacht that sailed into what is now New York Harbor in September 1609.]
Article originally published in The Archivist, A Publication of the Genealogical Society of Bergen County, Volume 50, Number 3, August 2023.
