Inventory of the Estate of Margrieta Van Varick
“Inventary of the Estate of Margrita Van Varick Deceased, late widdow relict & administatrix of Do.Rudolphus Varick taken by Nicholas Bayard, Charlis Lodwick and John Harperdingh Executors of the last will and Testament of the said Margrita Van Varick,” fo. 1 and fo. 2., compiled between January 7, 1696 and January 19, 1697. New York State Archives. Court of Probates. Inventories and Accounts, 1666-1822.
Margrieta van Varick was born in the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and baptized on November 11, 1649. She was one of fourteen children born to Jan Gerrits Visboom and Grietje Jans. Her father and paternal grandfather were butchers and her mother came from a family involved in the textile trade. While little is known about either family business, the Visbooms were able to commission portraits of their family members, a sign of wealth in seventeenth-century Holland.
Margrieta’s father died in 1664 and her mother died three years later, leaving her an orphan at the age of seventeen. Her younger brothers and sisters were placed in the homes of relatives, but there is no record of what became of Margrieta until 1673. That year, she appears in the marriage records of Malacca, Malaysia. Malacca was one of the most important ports in the Dutch empire. Ships carrying spices, cotton, coral, amber, elephants, coconuts, diamonds, gold, and enslaved people to and from India, Persia, China, Macao, Japan, and other countries passed in and out of the harbor daily.
Margrieta probably lived with her uncle, Abraham Burgers. Abraham was a merchant and the fifth-most senior officer of the Dutch East India Company in Malacca. Because of her uncle’s status, Margrieta was part of the most elite circles of Malacca. She made many connections that would serve her later in life. In 1673 Margrieta married one of her uncle’s colleagues, assistant merchant Ebert van Duins. Ebert rose to the seventh-highest position within the Dutch East India Company in Malacca, but he died in 1677. After his death, Margrieta returned to Amsterdam, leaving her uncle and sister behind in Malacca.
When she returned to Amsterdam, Margrieta reunited with Rudolphus van Varick. Rudolphus had once been the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Malacca. They may have been drawn together by their shared memories of life overseas. They married in 1679 and moved to the village of Hem in West Frisia, where Rudolphus served as the village minister. While living in Hem, Margrieta gave birth to two children. After Margrieta’s sister died in 1684, the couple adopted her four children.
In November of 1685 Rudolphus was reassigned to the Dutch Reformed Church in Flatbush. Flatbush was a small town across the river from New York City in what is today known as Brooklyn. In the spring of 1686 Margrieta boarded a ship to New York with her children to start another new life in the English colonies. The Van Varicks settled into a comfortable life. In 1690 and 1692 Margrieta gave birth to two more children.
It was at this time that Margrieta began to use the connections she had made as a young woman in Malacca. While Rudolphus focused on his parish duties, she opened a shop to sell luxury goods from all over the world. Records indicate that her shop carried items like silk fabric, ebony furniture, and fine jewelry, a luxurious selection by the standards of life in Flatbush.
Margrieta’s shop carried items like silk fabric, ebony furniture, and fine jewelry, a very exotic array by the standards of life in Flatbush.
Margrieta was a Dutch immigrant living in an English colony that had once been under the control of the Dutch. To further complicate matters, she lived at a time when tensions between England and the Netherlands were running high. When Rudolphus spoke out against the crimes committed during a Dutch rebellion in 1690, he was imprisoned by the rebellion’s supporters for six months. Margrieta was forced to flee Flatbush with her children, leaving her home and store behind. When Rudolphus was released, the family tried to return to their normal lives, but their community turned against them. They decided to seek their fortune elsewhere. In 1693 Rudolphus requested that the church transfer him to another community, but he died before he received an answer.
Margrieta was left to make the best of her difficult circumstances. The biggest problem was money. The community owed her £300 of back salary that her husband had never been paid, in addition to debts for goods purchased at her store. But her husband’s actions during the rebellion meant that no one wanted to pay her the money she was owed.
Unfortunately, Margrieta had very little time to set things right. She passed away in December of 1695, leaving behind four children. An inventory of Margrieta’s possessions was made, and directions were given for the distribution of her wealth to her four surviving children. This inventory is one of the most thorough documents of its kind for a woman in the colonial era. The goods found on the list come from across the globe. They stand as a testament to Margrieta’s life as a world traveler and successful entrepreneur in an era when many women faced limited options.
Click here to read a transcription of Margrieta’s inventory.
Vocabulary
- baptize: A religious ceremony that makes a person part of a Christian community.
- Dutch East India Company: A Dutch trading company founded in 1602 to oversee Dutch trading interests in the Indian Ocean.
- Dutch Reformed Church: The main Christian church of the Netherlands.
- ebony: A black or dark brown wood from the tropical tree.
- Malacca: A port city on the southern end of the Malay Peninsula in the Pacific Ocean.
- minister: A person who can lead Christian religious services and a congregation.
- textile: Cloth or woven fabric.
- West Frisia: A region in the northern Netherlands.
Discussion Questions
- Where did Margrieta van Varick travel and live over the course of her life? How did she use what she learned on her travels later in life?
- What does Margrieta van Varick’s inventory reveal about her life? What does it reveal about the trade networks of colonial New York?
- Why was Margrieta van Varick punished for the actions of her husband? What does this reveal about the status of women in colonial New York?
Suggested Activities
- APUSH Connection: 2.7 Colonial Society and Culture
- Teach this document in any lesson about business and trade in the English colonies. This life story helps students understand how the Dutch and English colonies around the world were connected through trade.
- Ask students to find the places where Margrieta lived and worked on a world map. What do her travels say about the possibilities of life in the seventeenth century?
- Combine this life story with Life Story: Teuntje Straatmans and A Woman of Business to explore how women could escape the legal and traditional restrictions placed upon them in the English colonies and pursue careers in trade. What circumstances allowed these women to pursue business? What challenges did they face?
- Women participated in trade throughout the North American colonies. Combine this resource with any of the following for a larger lesson about the role of women in colonial trade:
- Margrieta’s success was due in no small part to her intimate network of family and friends. This kind of unacknowledged power network allowed women in many different colonial societies to exert influence far beyond what was culturally and legally available to them. Use any of the resources below to explore this idea of intimate power networks further with your students:
Themes
WORK, LABOR, AND ECONOMY; IMMIGRATION, MIGRATION, AND SETTLEMENT; DOMESTICITY AND FAMILY
