A French girl born in 1625 is believed to be “the first white child” born in what is now New York. She was raised in the Dutch colony of New Netherland.
Sarah Rapalje (1625-1685) was the daughter of Joris Jansen Rapelje (1604–1663) and Catalina Trico (1605–1689), Walloon Calvinists who sailed on board the ship Eendracht from the Dutch Republic in 1624.
Sarah Rapelje died in 1685 in Boswijck, a village that became the modern Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. By the time Rapelje died the colony had been ceded to the English in 1664, and was rebranded the Province of New York.
In the historical fiction Salt People of the Cloud Houses: The Story of Sarah Rapalje and Dutch Manhattan (Self Published, 2025) Fawn Brokaw Doyle explores her life and the history of her times.
In the book, Sarah helps her parents run their tavern on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, serving merchants and fur trappers. She looks after her siblings and works alongside Indigenous people to farm the land. But in the rowdy trade outpost, she grows up quickly.
She married Hans Hansen Bergen in 1639 with whom she had eight children, seven of whom lived into adulthood.
Just as she thought she’d found security in marriage, Kieft’s War (1643–1645) breaks out, pitting her colony against her Native friends. As she navigates war, love, and destruction, she must start over, again and again.
(Bergen died in 1653 and the following year Rapelje married Teunis Gysbertse Bogaert (1625-1699) with whom she had seven more children.)
In the novel, one peril leads to another, forcing Sarah to question — are the biggest threats to her family from the Natives, the English, or the Dutch West India Company that has failed to protect New Netherland? She must ensure the survival of her family, but at what costs?
It’s a coming-of-age story for a frontier woman, but also for the city that would become New York.
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