Nieuw Amsterdam: a Dutch City in the New World 26th Annual Rensselaerswijck Seminar Weekend September 19 -21, 2003 The 26th annual Rensselaerswijck Seminar will be held at the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society at 122 East 58th St. New York City on the 20th of September 2003. The occasion will be the commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the chartering of Nieuw Amsterdam as a municipality on February 2, 1653 and also the building in 1653 of the original northern defensive wall (now called Wall Street). Additional events will be held Friday evening, Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Seminar title is “Nieuw Amsterdam: a Dutch City in the New World.” Saturday, 10:30.- 4:00 Topics to be covered by six speakers: Jaap Jacobs: “ ‘To favor this new and growing city of New Amsterdam with a court of justice’. The 1653 Municipal Charter of New Amsterdam.” Dennis Maika: “The Struggle for New Amsterdam’s Charter in an Atlantic Context.” Mark Peterson: “Cities on the Margins: Boston and New Amsterdam in 1653.” Lunch 1:00-2:30. Leo Hershkowitz: “Chance or Choice: New Amsterdam 1654, a Jewish Contact.” Joyce Goodfriend: “Petrus Stuyvesant and the Failed Calvinization of New Amsterdam.” Martha Shattuck: “ ‘back under obedience to their High Mightinesses the Lords States General’: From New York to New Orange 1673-1674.” Saturday evening. 6: 00 - 10:30 A narrated dinner cruise around lower Manhattan aboard the World Yacht's “The Empress” and presentation of the Hendricks Award. Sunday, 9:00 - 12:30 Breakfast at the South Street Seaport Museum. Tour of Schermerhorn Row and exhibits of the SSSM, followed by a walking tour of the original northern defensive wall built in 1653 (now called Wall Street). Friday, September 19 6:00 - 8:00 Cocktail party and reception for the speakers and honored guests. The audience for this Seminar weekend is educators, researchers, scholars, journalists, museum curators, genealogists, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and others interested in the early colonial history of America both in the United States and from abroad.