1786 New York Girl’s Cyphering Book Documenting Early Republic Education & Practical Economics in the Pioneering New Amsterdam Bergen Family

On offer is the original 1786 manuscript cyphering book of Johanna Bergen, great-great-granddaughter of foundational New Amsterdam settlers whose family landholdings helped lay the groundwork for Williamsburg, Wallabout Bay, parts of Brooklyn. The manuscript is also a rare surviving record of early post-Revolutionary education, preserving the practical arithmetic and penmanship training of a ten-year-old girl in the new republic.

Johanna “Annetje” Bergen (1776–1833) was the great-great-granddaughter of Hans Hansen Bergen (1610–1653) and Sarah Rapelje (1625–1685). The Bergens were among historic New York’s foundational colonial families, closely tied to the early settlement, landholding, and civic development of Brooklyn and New York. Hans Hansen Bergen, a Norwegian-born shipwright and early Manhattan tobacco cultivator, became a significant Wallabout Bay landholder, establishing a Bergen family line deeply connected to Brooklyn, Williamsburg, the Brooklyn Navy Yard area, Long Island, and New Jersey. His wife, Sarah Rapelje, is widely recognized as the first female child of European descent born in New Netherland, the Dutch colony later ceded to the English in 1664 and renamed the Province of New York.

Johanna Bergen’s biography, full lineage, and connection to Hans Hansen Bergen and Sarah Rapelje can be found in the biographical notes at the end of this listing.

Johanna Bergen grew up in Kings County, New York, during a period of profound social disruption. Born on October 2, 1776, just over a month after the devastating Battle of Long Island, her early childhood unfolded during the British military occupation of New York and the post-Revolutionary rebuilding that followed. As the daughter of a prominent Dutch-American family, her 1780s education would have reflected her family’s heritage, faith, social position, and the expectations placed upon young women in early American households.

Begun on October 11, 1786, just days after Johanna Bergen’s tenth birthday, this cyphering book documents the formal arithmetic education of a young woman from one of Kings County’s leading Dutch-American families. Its carefully ruled pages move through numeration, money, division, compound multiplication, land, cloth, liquid, dry, Winchester, apothecaries’, avoirdupois, and troy measures, showing that Bergen received structured instruction in the practical mathematics of trade, household management, land, goods, and account keeping.

The book does not name her school or teacher, but its format is consistent with the local post-Revolutionary Kings County school world, most likely instruction by a private schoolmaster, tutor, or local academy-style teacher serving Dutch-American families in Brooklyn, Flatbush, Gowanus, or the surrounding communities.

A small later notation at the back names Johanna Bergen’s niece, Sarah Conover, spelled “Connover” in the manuscript, adding an important layer of family provenance. Sarah Conover was the daughter of Rachel Bergen Conover, Johanna’s sister and a fellow daughter of Tunis Bergen and Annetie Stoothoff. The inscription therefore firmly places the cyphering book within the extended Bergen family and the broader Bergen-Rapalje lineage of early New Netherland.

Condition: The book measures approximately 13.5 x 12 inches and contains 41 complete pages, with writing on the recto and verso of most leaves. The protective boards are rubbed, the text block is loose from the boards, and the pages show brittleness, light chipping, and some splitting. The manuscript text remains clean, bright, legible, and substantially intact, written throughout in a lovely period hand. Overall better than fair.

Biographical Notes:

Johanna Bergen was born in New Utrecht, Kings County, New York, on October 2, 1776, in the opening months of the American Revolution. She stood at a symbolic crossroads in New York history: a great-great-granddaughter of New Amsterdam pioneer Hans Hansen Bergen, she represented one of the old Dutch colonial families entering the new American era.

On March 15, 1798, she married Stephen Samuel Stryker (1776–1851), and together they had at least six children: Maria (1798–1875), Tunis (1800–1852), Samuel (1803–1876), Johanna (1807–1837), Anna (1809–1869), and Sarah (1814–1865). They lived on Stryker’s farm, located between Gravesend and New Utrecht. Johanna Bergen died on June 22, 1833, in Gravesend, Kings County, Long Island, New York.

Line of Descent: Johanna Bergen

I. Hans Hansen Bergen (1610–1653) m. Sarah Rapalje (1625–1685)
The founding generation. Bergen arrived in New Amsterdam in 1633. His wife, Sarah Rapalje, is widely recorded as the first female child of European descent born in the New Netherland colony.

II. Michael Hansen Bergen (1646–1732) m. Femmetje Theunise Denyse (1650–1715)
Son of Hans Hansen Bergen and Sarah Rapalje.

III. Hans Michael Bergen (1689–1731) m. Rachel Dirck Bensen (1689–1752)
Son of Michael Hansen Bergen and Femmetje Theunise Denyse.

IV. Tunis / Teunis Bergen (1730–1807) m. Annetie / Johanna Stoothoff (1743–1819)
Son of Hans Michael Bergen and Rachel Dirck Bensen.

V. Johanna “Annetje” Bergen (1776–1833)
Daughter of Tunis Bergen and Annetie Stoothoff.

Hans Hansen Bergen arrived at Fort Amsterdam in 1633 as a Norwegian shipwright aboard the Dutch West India Company’s de Zoutberg, becoming an important figure in the multi-ethnic origins of colonial New York. His 1639 marriage to Sarah Rapalje, widely celebrated as the first female child of European descent born in New Netherland, tied the Bergen family directly to the colony’s earliest European-born generation. Bergen later moved from maritime carpentry into early Manhattan tobacco cultivation and, in 1647, secured a substantial patent at Wallabout Bay, land historically associated with the later development of Williamsburg and the Brooklyn Navy Yard area.

For institutional researchers and private collectors, surviving manuscripts and ephemera from the Bergen lineage are desirable because they offer a direct material link to the formation of Kings County and early New York. These documents do more than trace the descent of a prominent family whose name remains visible in Brooklyn’s geography; they help illuminate early colonial landholding, Dutch-American family networks, women’s education, and the economic development of New York from the New Netherland period into the early republic.