Research results 2021-2025 (part 1 of 2)

The past five years have not been my most productive, as followers of this blog may have observed. But research was done, writing has occurred, and some of that has been published too. You can always check the ‘About’ page for an overview of all publications, but I think it’s good to provide some detail on recent developments too. Let’s dive into the results.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

Most of the research during this time focussed on Dutch gardeners, nurserymen, landscape architects and/or surveyors, who at the end of the 18^th century moved from Haarlem, between Amsterdam and the North Sea coast, to Philadelphia.¹A message from Wim de Koning Gans started this whole project, for which I am very thankful. The United States of America is celebrating its 250^th birthday this year, so now is as good a time as any to highlight this aspect of garden history.
It seems most men and their families had a negative reason to move to their new life. This may come with the territory of having a land-bound occupation: you need a very good reason to uproot your entire existence for an unknown future on unfamiliar soil.

How it started

During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), representatives of Amsterdam merchants tried to circumvent the British to start a direct trade relationship with the new republic. The discovery of that plot lead to the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784). When both wars ended, trade opportunities became more widely available.²Although years earlier, one Philip de Haas in Philadelphia advertised in The Pennsylvania Packet of 20 February 1781 that he had for sale bulbs and seeds, freshly imported from ‘Holland’. In 1785, a Haarlem company (Groenewoud, Voorhelm, & Co) started to advertise the bulbs and seeds it had for sale in American newspapers, for example in The Pennsylvania Packet of 14 September 1785.³Van der Eijk, H.; ‘Haarlemse kwekers en hoveniers in achttiende-eeuws Philadelphia‘, in: Cascade bulletin voor tuinhistorie, Jaargang 31 (2022), p31.
But they stayed in Europe.

Already a year before that, a nurseryman from Haarlem set sail to Philadelphia and established himself there as the first (as far as I know) florist from Haarlem – and more would follow. You can read all about that here (in Dutch). Below is a rough outline.

Flo(we)rists from Haarlem in Philadelphia

• Pieter Crouwels possibly travelled alone when he embarked on a ship to Philadelphia in September 1784.⁴His first advertisements mention that he arrived in a ship called Mercury, sailed by Captain Budden. This ship arrived in Philadelphia late November, early December (according to The Independent Gazetteer of December 4, 1784). From December 1784 onwards, he quickly changed his name to Peter and started to advertise as a tradesman of bulbs (or ‘florist’, as he labelled himself), saying he brought his produce from Haarlem.⁵It is tempting to speculate that he was sent to Philadelphia as an unofficial agent of the Groenewegen firm, but there is no evidence for this assumption and his reputation may speak against this. He started his business from the Golden Swan in Third Street, and moved about quite a lot before settling one mile north of Philadelphia ‘at the place called Hartsfield’. Only a few months after arriving in Philadelphia, he expressed to its citizens his intention to return to Europe soon, and invited prospective clients to place commissions ‘for the purchase of Fruit and other trees, Flower Roots, Seeds, &c., which he intends to collect himself, (…)‘.⁶Advertisement in the Philadelphia Packet of 29 March 1785, page 3. Whether he took that trip, from which he planned to return in the Fall, remains unknown. In 1790 he suddenly appeared in New York, where he occupied a garden ‘in Eagle-street, between the Bowry-lane and the East River‘ (now Hester Street). He returned to Philadelphia in 1797. No information about his further whereabouts is known.
  In Haarlem, Crouwels had been part of a very public spat between former business partners in 1775, who, after splitting up, both claimed to be the rightful owners of their former business venture.⁷He had been a partner in the company of the Veen brothers (Gebroeders Veen en Crouwels), who ran a florist shop in the center of Haarlem. He probably lost that battle but managed to set out on his own and even bought some property in Haarlem in 1782 and 1783. In the months before his departure, insolvency was declared on his wife Maria Vester, but his recent purchases were never mentioned in that process. In august 1784 she was referred to as ‘the widow Pieter Crouwels’.⁸Noord-Hollands Archief, toegang 3111, inv.nr 592: ‘Boedelregisters’, registers van akten betreffende onder curatele of sequestratie gebrachte boedels. The remark about her being a widow is written in the margin of the page. Were they… pretending he died, to avoid claims from creditors and to facilitate his departure to the United States?

• Jacobus Gans was all too familiar with creditors, and I have written extensively about his unfortunate financial adventures earlier.⁹Van der Eijk, H.; ‘Harde en Evergreene Heester Trees, Shrobbs. De catalogi en kwekerij van de achttiende-eeuwse kweker Jacobus Gans‘, in: Cascade bulletin voor tuinhistorie, Jaargang 2015 (24), nr 1, p9-33. In short: he struck gold when he found a financier for his ambitious business ventures but encountered massive problems when that man unexpectedly died at the young age of 45, leaving Jacobus Gans with crippling debts. For a long time, Gans was untraceable after 1787, but he ‘recently’ resurfaced in Philadelphia.¹⁰Wim de Koning Gans, a descendant, found this during his genealogical research a few years ago. It appears that Jacobus left the country around the same time as his sons Bastiaan (London, UK) and Albertus (Essebequo, now Guyana). Just like Crouwels he changed his name (from Jacobus to James), and published the above advertisement in The Pennsylvania Packet of 17 November 1788 to announce his arrival (apologies for the poor printing quality).
  He labelled himself as Gardener, but we regularly see him selling goods from the permanent market stalls in High Street (also known as Market Street), located ‘before the house of Doctor Franklin‘.¹¹Dunlap and Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, 24 November 1788, p1. Gans remained ambitious: a few months after arriving, he sent a box full of living plants to one of the best known nurserymen in the Netherlands, Zacharias Brakel in Utrecht. For some reason, possibly because he didn’t expect a delivery, Brakel opened the box with a notary present – all but one plant had perished during the trip.¹²Van der Eijk, 2015 (op.cit.) p36. This was a very helpful tip from Lenneke Berkhout. Gans could have known that sending seeds instead of living plants would have been more successful, but he was probably trying to impress Brakel into setting up a transatlantic business with him.
  Like Crouwels, Gans initially moved around a lot. In December 1789 he settled in a familiar place north of Philadelphia: Hartsfield.¹³Dunlap and Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, 11 December 1789, p4. Did he move into the plot that was vacated when Crouwels went to New York?¹⁴Crouwels was still there on the 31st of October 1789, according to an advertisement in The Pennsylvania Packet of that date. Did they work together? They must at least have known of each other’s existence, both in Philadelphia as well as earlier in Haarlem, when they were both there. Years later, Gans would associate with a new arrival from Haarlem.

• Daniel Engelman left Haarlem for different reasons than the first two, but he probably also felt forced to leave. Early in the year 1795, French troops invaded and occupied the Netherlands. They forced all kinds of tradesmen out of their jobs and Engelman, as a surveyor, fell victim of this approach too. He also had a nursery in Haarlem and was trained as a gardener. By August 1795 he had arranged all his business dealings and left the country. Whether he and his family went straight to Philadelphia is unknown, but in 1810 he claimed to have been in the city for fifteen years. The first time he appears in local records is in November 1799, as a witness to a marriage. Gans and Engelman joined forces in 1801.¹⁵Advertisement from The Philadelphia Gazette, 18 April 1801, p4. Engelman seems to have tried to pick up his surveyor work (there must have been tons of work for him in Philadelphia and surrounding areas), but for some reason that didn’t materialize.

Engelman will be the subject of part 2, because there is lots more to say about him.