Jans, Annetje (c. 1605–1663)

American Dutch settler. Born in the Netherlands around 1605; died in New York in 1663; married Roeloef Janssen (died around 1636); married Dominie Bogardus (a minister), in 1638; children: (first marriage) three daughters and two sons; (second marriage) four sons.

Annetje Jans was one of the many exceptional Dutch women who immigrated to New York during the 17th century. Independent, well-educated, and traditionally included in business affairs, these women often acquired large parcels of property that became extremely valuable after their deaths. Although many of Jans' contemporaries have been forgotten, she is remembered because of a 200-year dispute over her valuable Manhattan holdings.

Jans' family, including her husband Roeloef Janssen, her three daughters, her widowed mother, and her unmarried sister, immigrated to America in 1630, when the New Netherlands colony in New York was just a few years old. Jans' sister Tryntje Jonas , a midwife and nurse, was purportedly the first woman to practice medicine in New York. The family first settled on a farm in Fort Orange (now Albany), but in 1635, moved to the farming village of New Amsterdam, where they acquired 62 acres of land (running along what is now Broadway, between Fulton and Canal Streets). Shortly after the move, Jans' husband died, leaving her with five children to support (two boys were born in America). In 1638, before her second marriage to the colony's minister, Dominie Bogardus, Jans drew up a prenuptial agreement to insure her financial independence. When her second husband died at sea in 1642, Jans, whose family had increased with the addition of four more boys, added his estate to her considerable holdings.

With assistance from her mother, Jans raised and educated her children, including her daughters. Her oldest daughter Sara was a talented linguist who worked as an interpreter with the Algonquin natives. Annetje expanded her real estate holdings and took steps to insure that her land stayed within the family, even to the point of drawing up prenuptial agreements for her daughters. When she died in 1663, her estate was divided equally among her children and grandchildren. Some 75 years later, a descendant of a Bogardus son began a series of well-publicized lawsuits over the property that lasted well into the 20th century. Although they proved fruitless in the end, the lawsuits did insure Annetje Jans her place in the history of early New York.