Eric Knickerbocker
October 1, 2000
The name Knickerbocker is associated with virtually everything New York and Dutch. While the name itself was coined in America, the ancestors who contributed to the name were undoubtedly Dutch. These were colonists looking to establish the fur trade through the Dutch West India Company, settling in what we now know as New York.
The Dutch were not the first to arrive at New York, though they weren’t far behind, arriving in 1609. The first to enter the New York Harbor was an Italian ship captain named Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing in the service of France. Then, in 1603, the northern boundaries of New York were explored by Samuel de Champlain and a group of French fur traders. In 1609 Champlain discovered the lake that now bears his name. That same year the Dutch finally arrived in the form of English captain Henry Hudson, the man the Hudson River is named after. When he reported back to his Dutch employers, they were excited and quickly sent several more ships to acquire furs. In 1613, Adriaen Block’s Dutch dispatched ship caught fire, and he was forced to winter at Manhattan Island. But none of these visits resulted in any extensive amount of colonization.
The Dutch West India Company was established by the States-General of the Netherlands in 1621. In 1624 this company sent out its first boatload of colonists. They founded a colony they named New Netherlands, which was later renamed New York when King Charles II of England overtook the region, giving the land to his bother James, Duke of York and Albany. The primary resource of New Netherlands was the furs the Native Americans brought in to the scarce few Dutch traders. Soon a few more boatloads of Dutch immigrants arrived, though the colony grew very slowly as the Dutch favored its trading with the rich West Indies through its older and active sister company, The Dutch East India Company. In 1629, The Dutch West India Company offered patroonships (large estates) to its members if they could recruit Dutch colonists. Even this was not very successful, as few Dutch wanted to leave their native land.
In 1664 Dutch immigration all but ceased for a time when Charles gave New Netherlands and a second colony called New Amsterdam (now New York City) to the Duke of York and renamed the settlements accordingly. Soon thereafter, the Dutch West India Company folded in 1674, with a few floundering attempts to regain its footing. By 1848, Dutch immigration was once again on the upswing.
There was a certain Dutchman, now most commonly referred to as Herman Jansen Knickerbacker, who was known by several names. He was also known as Herman Jansen van Bommel (which indicates that he hailed from Brommel in North Brabant, Holland), and in 1682 he signed a contract with Anthony van Schaick identifying himself as Hermen Jansen van Wyekycback(e). Hermen Jansen was a member of the ancient family of Van Wye, whose sons frequently bore the surnames of Hermen or Johannes, or both. The Van Wye’s can be traced back to at least the fourteenth century with the Governer of Neder-Betuwe (which included Brommel), Hermen Van Wye.
According to tradition, Hermen Jansen sailed with De Ruyter’s fleet in the Battle of Solebay on June 7th, 1672 during his discourse in the Dutch Navy. The following year (1673) he was involved in a fierce battle that took place off the Dutch dunes at a place called Kijk where he suffered a wound across his cheek.
Genealogist Katherine Knickerbacker-Viele writes in the 1916 publication Sketches of Allied Families Knickerbacker-Viele:1
. . . I could not but note its similarity to the “Kyc” in the ancestor’s name, especially when “back” (cheek) gave such an easy reading as—Hermen Jansen van Wye-Kijk—back—Kijk cheek—or cheek marked at Kijk!
In the effort to read the name, the “Wye,” which might easily be mistaken for “Nye” (it has been read in both ways by different clerks), was so interpreted and the name became Niekicbacker-Niekerbacker, from which the transition was easy to the final form of Knickerbacker.
The clerk in the first document, that of 1682, writes the name “kinne ker backer.” Kinneback is jawbone—kinnekycbacker—man with the Kijk-jawbone, falls into line as a suggestion, but as to form it is more far-fetched.
There is no such name as Knickerbacker in Holland and since we have the signature of the ancestor to go by we must bear in mind that he does not call himself Knickerbacker, but “van Wyekycback(e).”
In this manner, the name Knickerbacker was slowly Americanized and reasonably stable. But it was yet to go through one more transformation—the addition of the infamous “o.” And who better to do this? None other than Washington Irving, or Diedrich Knickerbocker as was his pseudonym throughout part of his writing career. Irving had a friend in Congress by the name of Hermen Knickerbacker, and he was intrigued by the name and perhaps the affluence as well. Irving had a habit of spinning the fanciful with the real, and with a literary twist he deftly dropped the “a” and adopted the “o” as it appears today. The first name also included a skillful maneuver, as Hermen’s cousin, then a young boy, was named Derrick Knickerbacker after his mother’s father, Derrick Van Veghten.
Irving turned out such internationally renowned classics as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Headless Horseman, made popular under the pen name of Diedrich Knickerbocker. Interestingly enough, these creations based on German folktales were first released under the title The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., under the pseudonym Geoffry Crayon.
As Diedrich Knickerbocker, he also gave Americans their first detailed information about Santa Claus in his Knickerbocker’s History of New York, (which, incidentally in later printings after his death in 1859 was illustrated by the talented American artist Maxfield Parrish, much of whose work I greatly admire). Santa Claus was based on the Dutch legend of Sinter Klaas. Irving was not the first to introduce Santa Claus, however. As early as 1773 the American press wrote of a “St. A. Claus.” It was to be Clement Clarke Moore, famed for A Visit From Saint Nicholas, better known as The Night Before Christmas, who fully Americanized Santa as we know him today. Moore’s line, “lays his finger aside his nose” was taken directly from Irving’s 1809 concoction.
Washington Irving was the first American writer to achieve international acclaim and is largely responsible for shaping American legends, borrowing liberally from folklore outside the U.S. According to Charles Dudley Warner:2 “This little man in kneebreeches and cocked hat was the germ of the whole Knickerbocker legend—a fantastic creation which in a manner took the place of history and stamped upon the metropolis of the New World the indelible Knickerbocker name and character—and even now in the city it is an undefined patent of distinction to have descent from ‘an old Knickerbocker family.’”
I haven’t been able to find the “missing link” from Irving to the other Knickerbacker families, unless they changed their names accordingly, which seems to be the case, as all the information I’ve found attribute the current Knickerbocker spelling to Irving. However it happened, from Irving on, the Knickerbocker name became known abroad as a name signifying everything Dutch and New York. It also became a name associated with beer, as noted by Howard Knickerbocker—overseer of The Knickerbocker Family Web Page (no immediate relation to me)—being asked so often if he had ties with the company growing up as a boy.
Perhaps more common is its association with baseball. Alexander Cartwright, known as the Father of Modern Baseball, was an avid fan of rounders, a British game resembling baseball. In 1842, he led a group of young men known as the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. By 1845, the team developed a set of fourteen to twenty rules (depending on which account you read) that was instrumental in turning rounders into the American sport of Baseball. These rules called for the nine-person team, the baseball diamond, and the elimination of plunking or plugging, which was the practice of putting out runners by throwing the ball at them. (Ouch!) In addition, the foul zone provided spectators opportunity to sit very close to the playing area, though in the early days of the Knickerbockers, spectators were few. Today we best know this team as the New York Knicks.
Another famous incident was the money panic in 1907. Theodore Roosevelt was in office and while he was a very conscientious and moral leader, he had little interest or aptitude for economics. In 1907 banks were totally dependent on their own resources, so when the huge and powerful Knickerbocker Bank in New York City went under, it set off a panic. Theodore appointed his secretary of the treasury George B. Cortelyou to oversee the issue, giving him free rein. The government’s offer to put money into approved banks temporarily put a stop to the panic. However, the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933 was soon to follow, during which time the Federal Reserve System (founded in 1914) underwent a major overhaul.
From time to time the name pops up in unusual places. In 1938, German-American composer Kurt Weill wrote the Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday. This same work had libretto written by the American playwright Maxwell Anderson. The name also showed up with an actor in the 1981 movie Porkey’s: Will Knickerbocker played the bartender. Then in 2000, Eric Knickerbocker wrote this essay to be turned into his professor, Mike Casey.
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