1600’s Symposium:The Beginning of the City
Jaap Jacobs (PhD Leiden, 1999) is affiliated with the University of St Andrews. He has specialized in the early American history, specifically the Dutch in the Americas in the early modern period. He has taught at Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and the University of St Andrews. His books include A firm peace and sincere friendship? Four Centuries of Dutch-American Stories; The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America. He is currently working on a biography of Petrus Stuyvesant.
Zachary Edinger is a graduate of Queens College (CUNY) and Fordham Law School. He has held positions at Morgan Stanley and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Since 2011, he has served as the Sexton of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish community in North America, where his family has worshipped since the mid-19th century.
Reverend Edinger is passionate about sharing the rich history and customs of Congregation Shearith Israel with a wider audience through engaging tours and educational classes. He regularly hosts a Zoom class titled “A Random Walk Down Mill Street,” delving into the congregation’s storied past.
Russell Shorto is the author of the bestsellers Smalltime, Revolution Song, Amsterdam, and The Island at the Center of the World. His most recent book is TAKING MANHATTAN: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America. He is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical and senior scholar at the New Netherland Institute. In 2009 he was given a knighthood by the Dutch government for advancing Dutch-American historical awareness. In 2018 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
Sandra Lazo has been a Trustee of the New Amsterdam History Center (NAHC) since 2023.
She holds an S.B. degree from M.I.T. and an M.A. degree from N.Y.U., both in Economics. Sandy worked in economic consulting, with clients primarily in regulated industries, such as electric utilities. An avid researcher into her family history, Sandy became fascinated by colonial Dutch New York after discovering that she is an eleventh-generation descendant of Cornelis Antonissen Van Slyck, who immigrated to Rensselaerswyck in 1634. A long-time member of the New Netherland Institute, Sandy has funded NNI’s Van Slyke Article Prize almost since its inception. She also supported NAHC’s presentation “The Prize Papers Collection – The Vrooman Letters” by Dr. Frans Blom at Columbia University in the spring of 2023.
Oscar Hefting is a cultural entrepreneur. He graduated in Classical Archaeology at the Amsterdam University (UvA) and specialized in Dutch Heritage Overseas. As Director of the New Holland Foundation he organizes projects, and stimulates research, education and promotion on colonial heritage and its effects on todays societies.
Peggy King Jorde fights to preserve the stories buried beneath our feet. This Harvard Loeb Fellow helped spark a movement that saved New York City’s African Burial Ground—a discovery that rocked the nation when archaeologists unearthed the remains of over 400 enslaved and free Africans in Lower Manhattan.
As Special Adviser to Mayor David Dinkins and later Director of Memorialization, King Jorde was one of the masterminds behind the creation of America’s first African Burial Ground Monument and Interpretive Center, transforming a forgotten cemetery into a powerful symbol of remembrance. She personally oversaw the design competitions for the memorial and advised on the sacred repatriation ceremony that returned ancestral remains to their final resting place.