The Genealogical Society of Bergen County invites you to attend its monthly meeting and informative program led by Firth Haring Fabend.??Further information at website,?http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njgsbc/?or by email to Burgenlaenderin@aol.com.? There is no fee to attend; light refreshments are available. Margaret Kaiser GSBC Program Chair? Monday, February 23, 7:00 p.m., Ridgewood Public Library, 125 North Maple Ave. Ridgewood, NJ 07450 Lecture/Slideshow, "Patroons and Plowmen, Pietism and Politics: Dutch Settlers in the Hudson Valley in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries"? Historian Firth Fabend presents a brief overview of the Dutch people who settled in the Hudson Valley in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She illustrates her talk with eighty slides, in forty pairs for purposes of comparison. She asks, Who were these Dutch people who replanted themselves in the Hudson Valley when it was a wolf-infested wilderness?? Why did they come to America? What did they do when they got here? And why is their cultural influence still felt in the area today? She touches upon the fur trade, slavery, the patroon system of land tenure vs. the English manorial system, farming practices, family structure, domestic architecture and house furnishings, the religious culture, and the schism in the Dutch Reformed Church that paralleled the divisions between Patriots and Tories in the War of Revolution.