CAN THE DUTCH BE ABSORBED? [To THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Your correspondent "H." in his letter, "Can the Dutch be Absorbed ? " in the Spectator of September 22nd, asks with doubt if any Dutch, as distinct from German, was spoken in New York as late as 1776? It certainly was, and at a later period. I have lately prepared from family papers for private circulation the memoirs of a lady of Dutch descent whose connection with American statesmen and soldiers might make her life one of general interest. Born in 1782 in New York State, married in 1802 and removing to New Jersey, she lived till 1883, retaining all her faculties till the very last. Her recollections were full of information. She has often re- peated the fact of her never having heard a sermon preached in English till after she was forty years old. This can hardly, in these times of amalgamation, be the ease even in the hill towns back of the Hudson, where the Dutch speech lingered longest; but the Dutch surnames are still very widely spread in New York and New Jersey, and Dutch sentiment is yet strong enough to cause a great deal of pro-Boer feeling in the race. It was slow to absorb by marriage, Theodore Roosevelt, Governor of New York, and Republican candidate for Vice- President of the United States, having but just now asserted that he has not a single ancestor of English blood.—I am,
Previous page
