Life Story: Lisbeth Anthonijsen
Note to teachers: This life story contains descriptions of violence and abuse.
Wampum
Barry Keegan, Wampum, 2014. Photo by Victor Reyes.
Lisbeth Anthonijsen was born in the free Black community of New Amsterdam around the year 1650. Very little is known about her parents. Her last name, Anthonijsen, means “daughter of Anthony,” but her father does not appear in any known colonial documents. Her mother Mary is mentioned only once in Lisbeth’s court records.
The free Black community Lisbeth grew up in was formed by enslaved people from New Amsterdam who petitioned for their freedom. The Dutch West India Company granted the people they freed small plots of land so they could support themselves. The newly freed Black people who lived on those parcels of land banded together for support and survival, and the area received the nickname “Land of the Blacks.” When Lisbeth was born, the free Black community was only a few years old, and the status of the free Black people of New Amsterdam was still uncertain.
Lisbeth worked as a servant in the households of New Amsterdam’s white colonists from a young age. This work allowed her to make money to support herself and her family. But as a young Black woman in a mostly white community, Lisbeth was vulnerable to abuse. In June 1661 Lisbeth’s employer accused her of stealing wampum. Wampum (pictured above) was a valuable commodity in New Amsterdam because it could be used to trade with the local Native American communities. Lisbeth was brought before the New Amsterdam court, where she confessed that she had committed the crime. She told the court she had been pressured into the crime by an older Black woman. Because she was so young, the court punished her by making her mother beat her with a rod. The whole court watched the punishment to make sure that she was beaten severely. Lisbeth was the only child in New Amsterdam court records to be punished in this way.
Lisbeth returned to her work in the homes of New Amsterdam’s white colonists. Her mother might have passed away around this time, because she is not mentioned again in surviving records. This left Lisbeth without any family in the colony.
Lisbeth began to work for the family of Marten Cregier. In 1663 her new employer’s wife accused Lisbeth of stealing wampum and beat her. Since Lisbeth’s reputation as a thief was well known in the community, no one doubted the accusation was true. As a young Black woman, Lisbeth could not take the matter to court, and she had no family to stand up for her.
As a young Black woman without family ties, Lisbeth had no protection against the accusations of her community and the whims of the court.
Lisbeth’s situation worsened in November of 1663. The Cregier house burned down and Lisbeth ran away during the fire. The Cregier family thought Lisbeth’s running away was suspicious. She was captured by government officials and brought before the court in February 1664, this time charged with the serious crime of arson.
At first, Lisbeth insisted that the fire began when she accidentally dropped a burning coal, but the court did not believe her. Lisbeth eventually confessed, possibly because she knew that the court could torture her if she did not give them the answer they wanted. She claimed that she started the fire to punish her mistress for beating her unfairly. This version of events made perfect sense to the court, which believed that without a family to help and guide her, Lisbeth had taken vengeance into her own hands.
The court continued to question Lisbeth even after she confessed. Under pressure, she confessed to more thefts committed against her current and former employers, selling the goods she stole, and having sex outside of marriage. The court decided her testimony proved that Lisbeth was a threat to community order.
The court sentenced Lisbeth to death by strangling at the stake and ordered that her body be burned to ashes. But when she was led out of the room, the court changed the sentence. They wanted Lisbeth to believe she was going to be executed. She would be walked through the town to the stake, and a fire would be started nearby. At the last minute, the officials would announce that Lisbeth’s sentence was changed. Instead, she would be enslaved to the Cregier family to pay for the damages to their home. The Cregiers could do whatever they wanted with her. They could keep her and force her to work for them, or they could sell her to make up the money they lost when their house burned down. The court believed sparing her life was an act of mercy. They probably also believed that by enslaving her they were putting Lisbeth back under the control of the community. Whether Lisbeth felt relieved or enraged by her new sentence goes unrecorded in the official documents. She does not appear in historical records again.
Vocabulary
- arson: The crime of deliberately setting something on fire.
- Dutch West India Company: The company that owned and ran New Netherland.
- New Amsterdam: The capital of the colony of New Netherland, where New York City is today.
- petition: A written request submitted to a powerful person or the government.
- wampum: Small beads made from quahog shells and whelk shells. The beads had important symbolic significance in many Indigenous communities in the Northeast region of North America, and European traders used them to facilitate the fur trade with those communities.
Discussion Questions
- What challenges did Lisbeth Anthonijsen face as a young Black orphan in New Amsterdam?
- Why did the court see Lisbeth Anthonijsen as a threat to community order? Why did the court punish Lisbeth Anthonijsen so harshly?
- How do you think Lisbeth Anthonijsen’s status as a free Black person influenced the court in her sentencing?
- What does Lisbeth Anthonijsen’s story tell you about the condition of slavery and the status of free Black people in New Amsterdam?
Suggested Activities
- APUSH Connections:
- 2.6 Slavery in the British colonies
- 2.4 Transatlantic Trade
- Include this life story in a lesson about life in colonial New Amsterdam to consider the experiences of Black people. How did racism and the practice of slavery impact their daily life?
- Ask students to write an account of Lisbeth Anthonijsen’s life from her point of view. Have them consider the following questions:
- What pressures did Lisbeth Anthonijsen face as a free Black girl in a majority white community?
- What might have led Lisbeth Anthonijsen to take the wampum from her employer?
- How did Lisbeth Anthonijsen’s white employers treat her?
- How do you think Lisbeth Anthonijsen felt facing the court without anyone to stand up for her?
- Children in the New World faced many challenges and dangers. Combine Lisbeth’s life story with any of the following resources for a lesson about childhood in the early colonial period:
- Ask students to compare and contrast this life story with Life Story: Marie-Josèphe Angélique.
- Lisbeth Anthonijsen was not the only woman in the colonies to stand trial for crimes she denied. Compare and contrast her experiences with any of the women in the following resources. Ask students to answer the following questions: Why were these women put on trial? What evidence existed of their guilt? What outside circumstances likely influenced the outcome of their trial?
- Connect Lisbeth Anthonijsen’s story with the modern issue of Black juvenile incarceration. How does the current view of Black youth in America echo the historical one? What has changed?
Themes
POWER AND POLITICS
