The following (follows my name/address) was picked up from the _NYHIST-L@listserv.nysed.gov_ (mailto:NYHIST-L@listserv.nysed.gov) list. I hope this information is useful or, at least, interesting. Regards, Walter Greenspan Great Falls, MT & Jericho, NY Historian Eric Ruijssenaars is available for public lectures Fall and Winter 2011/2012. Dr. Ruijssenaars, the New Netherland Research Center’s first Senior Scholar in Residence, is the founder of Dutch Archives, a historical research firm in Leiden, the Netherlands. Although a specialist in the history of Russia and the Netherlands, he is also a scholar of the Brontë sisters in Brussels and has published two books on the subject. Currently he is researching the life of Abraham Staats. In 1642, Abraham Staats arrived in the Dutch colony of New Netherland to serve as a surgeon on patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer’s vast estate, Rensselaerswijck, now part of Albany and Rensselaer counties. Over the course of his life, Staats became a magistrate of the court, a captain of the burgher guard, the owner of a sloop that made regular trips to New Amsterdam (New York City), and an Indian language translator. Something of an oddity in rough-and-tumble New Netherland, he remained a very respectable man and was, for that reason, regularly called on to mediate disputes between his less respectable and more litigious neighbors. The New Netherland Research Center is a partnership of the New Netherland Institute and the New York State Office of Cultural Education, which is comprised of the State Library, the State Archives, the State Museum, and the Office of Educational Television and Public Broadcasting. The NNRC promotes and supports both New Netherland scholarship and educational opportunities for teachers, students, and the public. It continues and extends the work of the New York State Library's New Netherland Project, which since 1974 has preserved, transcribed, translated, and published 17th century documents in order to make the history of the Dutch colonial presence in North America more broadly accessible for study. For more information or to schedule a presentation, contact Ann Pfau, _apfau@mail.nysed.gov_ (mailto:apfau@mail.nysed.gov)