The Fonda Blog

I came across this record last year sometime, and the exercise to determine the voyage date spurred my memory.

The first tangible record of Jellis (Gillis) in America has been established as that found in Fort Orange on October 15, 1651 when he received permission from the court to distill liquor in Greenbush, a small village near Albany.

Early Albany Court

However… a new record has been found in the book “Early Irish in Old Albany” which places him there a couple of months earlier. Not a big difference, but nonetheless, this appears to be the earliest tangible record of a Fonda in the New World: Early Irish in Old Albany, N.Y.: with special mention of Jan Andriessen, “De Iersman Van Dublingh”, Danaher, Franklin M., Boston, MA, American-Irish Historical Society, 1903, p. 17:

[…the court records show that on August 18, 1651, “Thomas Konnig abused the court as an unlawful court, taking materials from the sayings of Dyckman, who sang the 82nd Psalm and called the high council rogues and tale bearers in presence of Evert Pels, Art Jacobse and Gillis Fonda.”]

Evert Pels was also listed in the October 15 court record as the party selling distillation equipment to Gillis for the production of liquor. It is odd that the men were in court merely observing two months prior to their court date. Perhaps they were preparing for their upcoming petition.

Jellis had been an innkeeper and blacksmith in Amsterdam. Brandy was a product of high value in New Amsterdam. The skills and knowledge needed may have been similar. Although none of the early Fonda’s were known as anything but pious in nature, the making of spirits was a worthwhile commercial venture in the fur trading environs of early Albany.

written by admin \\ tags: America, Fonda Family, History

The “Famous Frisians in America” book had a record for the burial of Abraham Fonda, youngest child of Jellis Douw, in Amsterdam on October 28, 1650.  This new information has led me to revise the thinking on the voyage to America.  Here is the account I just posted on the main website:

Jellis Douw Fonda – Voyage to America

Although we do not know upon which ship Jellis Douw Fonda and family made their voyage to America, we can make an educated guess or at least narrow it down.

Schooner

The following two facts serve as a window for the timing:

1. The youngest child of Jellis and Hester, Abraham, was baptized on April 14, 1647 in Amsterdam, Netherlands (“Amsterdam Records of the Fonda Family”, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol. 119, No. 1).  He was buried on October 28, 1650 according to Amsterdam burial records. (“Famous Frisians in America”, p. 108-109).

2. The first record of Jellis (Gillis) in America was in Fort Orange (now Albany, NY) on October 19, 1651 when he received permission from the court to distill liquor in Greenbush, a small village near Albany (“A Career Woman in 17th Century New York”, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, New York, Vol. 95, No. 5)

So we know that the migration took place between November 1650 and October 1651. According to “A Career Woman in 17th Century New York”, when Jellis arrived in Fort Orange in 1651, “he was accompanied by his wife, Hester Jans, and three children, a son Douwe, aged about eleven years, and daughters Geertien and Sara, aged about nine and seven years, respectively”.

No ship passenger lists have yet been found which show any names resembling Jellis/Gillis Fonda and his family.  So, if you look at the ships that DO NOT have passengers lists, maybe we can narrow it down some.

We know that Jellis did not enter into a contract with the Rensselaerswijck Colony (typically three to six year terms of farm labor in return for the ship’s passage).  He must have been a free colonist, paying for his own ships fare, since he was not encumbered with any work contracts that we know of.

Albany Settlement

According to the Marine Museum (translated from the original Dutch by Willem Rabbelier and Cor Snabel of the Netherlands, published with their permission on The Olive Tree Genealogy pages):

“The book/thesis of Jaap Jacobs contains a list of about 500 ship crossings between Amsterdam, the Netherlands and New Amsterdam over the period 1609-1675. In only 56 cases the presence, but not the names, of colonists on board is mentioned.” (De Scheepvaart En Handel Van De Nederlandse Republiek Op Nieuw-Nederland 1609-1675 by J.A. Jacobs 1989) http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/nn/mm_shipamny.shtml

There were only 5 ships sailing from The Netherlands to America in 1651:

1. WATERHONT particulier Amsterdam 5 5 1651 Nieuw-A’dam 1651
2. BONTE KOE particulier Amsterdam 1651 Nieuw-A’dam voor 13 6 1651
3. HOFF VAN CLEEF Adriaen Blommaert particulier Amsterdam 1651 Nieuw-A’dam voor 15 6 1651
4. GELDERSE BLOM W. van Twiller Amsterdam na 20 3 1651 Nieuw-A’dam voor 31 7 1651
5. PRINS WILLEM Juryaen Andriessen WIC Amsterdam 1651 Nieuw-A’dam voor 19 9 1651

Three had passenger lists which do not list any names resembling this family.  The ships in this list which DID NOT have passenger lists are:

1. BONTE KOE particulier Amsterdam 1651 Nieuw-A’dam voor 13 6 1651
2. PRINS WILLEM Juryaen Andriessen WIC Amsterdam 1651 Nieuw-A’dam voor 19 9 1651

So unless there are more ships that we don’t know about, you can conclude that Jellis Douw Fonda, his wife Hester Jans and his three young children, Douwe, Grietje and Sara sailed on one of these two ships… the BONTE KOE or the PRINS WILLEM. These are the only ships which fit in the correct time frame, from the correct location and do not have passenger lists.

written by admin \\ tags: America, Fonda Family, History, Holland

According to Wikipedia, the Frisian people are characterized by the R1b subclade U106 DNA profile:

Dutch Provinces

“Based on Y-DNA studies, it is believed the Frisian Y-DNA Haplogroup to be from the Haplogroup U106/S21 and its downstream subclades. Reference Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA). U106 is defined as R1b1b2a1a by Family Tree DNA. U106 subclades include R1a1b1b2a1a1, R1a1b1b2a1a2, R1a1b1b2a1a3, and R1a1b1b2a1a4.”

Further, the page on Haplogroup R1b indicates the following genetic origin of this group:

“R1b’s frequency is highest in the populations of Atlantic Europe and, due to European emigration, in North America, South America, and Australia. In Ireland and the Basque Country its frequency exceeds 90% and approaches 100% in Western Ireland.[4] The incidence of R1b is 70% or more in parts of northern and western England, northern Spain, northern Portugal, western France, Wales, Scotland. R1b’s incidence declines gradually with distance from these areas but it is still common across the central areas of Europe. R1b is the most frequent haplogroup in Germany, and is common in southern Scandinavia and in Italy.”

Being a Fonda, I had my DNA tested and I am in Haplogroup I1, which has the following description:

Map of the early Nordic Bronze Age, where I1 first became prominent. The Nordic Bronze Age is often considered ancestral to the Germanic peoples.

“Haplogroup I1 is a Y chromosome haplogroup occurring at greatest frequency in Scandinavia, associated with the mutations identified as M253, M307, P30, and P40. These are known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). It is a subclade of Haplogroup I. Before a reclassification in 2008,[1] the group was known as Haplogroup I1a.[2] Some individuals and organizations continue to use the I1a designation.”

“The group displays a very clear frequency gradient, with a peak of approximately 40 percent among the populations of western Finland and more than 50 percent in the province of Satakunta,[3] around 35 percent in southern Norway, southwestern Sweden especially on the island of Gotland, and Denmark, with rapidly decreasing frequencies toward the edges of the historically Germanic sphere of influence.”

“I1 Anglo-Saxon (I1-AS) has its peak gradient in the Germanic lowland countries: northern Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, as well as England and old Norman regions of France.”

I assume that all the Fonda’s descended from Jellis Douw Fonda would also be Haplogroup I1 (unless my parents didn’t tell me something… lol).  If you would like to get tested, go to the Fonda DNA Group on Ancestry.com and order the Paternal Lineage (Y-46) test.  This test is only valid for males.  I do not know if you must be a member of ancestry.com to join the DNA project.  If there are other DNA comparison groups which are available I would be glad to transfer my results for comparison.  I believe that ancestry.com shares its data with other DNA databases.  Note: I have now entered my data on Y-Search, which is free access.

So far, we only have three Y-46 tests.  The other two are from a Slovenian Fonda and an Italian Fondi who are both R1b’s.

Some further interesting commentary:

“In the book Blood of the Isles, published in North America as Saxons, Vikings & Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland, author Bryan Sykes gave the name of the Nordic deity Wodan to represent the clan patriarch of I1, as he did for mitochondrial haplogroups in a previous book, The Seven Daughters of Eve. Every male identified as I1 is a descendant of this man.”

“Another writer, Stephen Oppenheimer, discussed I1 in his book The Origins of the British. Although somewhat controversial, Oppenheimer, unlike Sykes, argued that Anglo-Saxons did not have much impact on the genetic makeup of the British Isles. Instead he theorized that the vast majority of British ancestry originated in a paleolithic Iberian people, traced to modern-day Basque populations, represented by the predominance of Haplogroup R1b in the United Kingdom today.[44] A similar, more broad-based argument was made by Ellen Levy-Coffman in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy.[45] The book When Scotland Was Jewish is another example. These are direct challenges to previous studies led by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Siiri Rootsi and others.[46] Cavalli-Sforza has studied the connections between migration patterns and blood groups. There has been some discussion of this on a mailing list at RootsWeb.[47]”

Useful links:
Y-Search (A Free Public Service from Family Tree DNA)
Family Tree DNA – Genetic testing to answer your genealogy questions
Whit Athey’s Haplogroup Predictor
Eupedia: Geographic spread and ethnic origins of European haplogroups

written by admin \\ tags: America, DNA, Fonda Family, Holland, Italy

The book, “Famous Frisians in America” is now available for purchase.  There are 8 pages on the Fonda Family which detail the history of Jellis Douw Fonda, who emigrated from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam in about 1650.  It provides some ideas on his origins in Holland including some new angles on how he came to live in Eagum (Friesland) near Leeuwarden, ending up in Amsterdam, marrying Hester Jans, and then taking the voyage to America with a young family of five.  It goes into the colorful life of Hester Fonda, long after Jellis passed away, and the plentiful progeny they created, including many modern-day Fonda’s talented in acting and the arts.

My father and I were honored to be present at the Friesland Day ceremony on New York City’s Governor’s Island on September 12, 2009, which unveiled the book.  We were very pleased to meet the book’s editors, Peter de Haan and Kerst Huisman, as well as the Queens Commissioner of Friesland, John Jorritsma, and also many others from the Frisian Provincial contingent and fellow Frisian-American descendants.  The book is a wonderful accomplishment, providing the history of Friesland’s support of United States sovereignty, based on a solid basis of exchange between the two regions which continues to this day.  There are many prominent Frisian families in the US including such names as Stuyvesant, Douw, Jansen, Banta, Fonda, Isaacs, Dykstra, Hyma, De Vries, Fridsma, Hofstra, De Jong and Hageman.

The book is available on Amazon and is highlighted on-line at the New Netherland Institute, US Embassy The Hague, and Calvin College Dutch Department.

Albert Mark Fonda, admin
(12th Generation Descendant of Jellis Douw Fonda)

written by admin \\ tags: Achievements, America, History, Holland, Surnames

I was back east last month (September 2009) and I took three days to go cemetery hopping in Upstate New York, taking as many photos of Fonda gravestones as I could.  I hit 11 cemeteries in 5 counties and shot about 150 gravestones of Fonda’s, most of which have not been taken before, to my knowledge.  Here is the list… if you would like any of these images I would be glad to forward a high-res file, or you can wait until I get them all posted on Find-A-Grave in med-res within the next month (now done).  I have about 110 Fonda gravestone photos already posted there from various sources.  I appreciate all those who have contributed to this collection.  Special thanks to Adrienne Buckland Knight who accompanied me at the Caughnawaga and Evergreen cemeteries and to Darlene and Larry Nielsen who pointed me in the right direction in Albany.  Here are a few of the nicer gravestone photos which I just took:

[Show as slideshow]

written by admin \\ tags: Cemeteries, Fonda Family, New York