Customer Reviews

Zion on the Hudson: Dutch New York and New Jersey in the Age of Revivals

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I enjoy reading about history and now have realized that my family not only comes through Peter Haring, but also through Cosyn, his brother. How exciting. I love the way the author weaves the lives of the family into history. You can almost picture these families and all their terrible hardships. Good read.

"With the publication of this volume, Dr. Fabend has earned the distinction of being the most knowledgeable writer on the history of the Reformed Church in America during the nineteenth century." Elton J. Bruins, Hope College, Reformed Review
"This book, with her earlier A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, establishes Fabend as the premier historian of Dutch American culture. . . . Highly recommended for its lucid, engaging style, solid research, and content." C. H. Lippy, University of Tennessee, Choice
"Fabend grounds her conclusions on previously untapped archival sources that . . . support her main thesis that the Reformed Dutch Church nurtured Dutchness while also being a powerful de-ethnicizing modernizing force." Robert P. Swierenga, Hope College, "Powerful, persuasive, with shrewd insights and acute descriptions and analyses." Paul Mattingly, New York University, de Halve Maen
"A rich and comprehensively researched study -a very fine book." Donna Merwick, William and Mary Quarterly
"A very scholarly work, but one that is enjoyable to read. A pioneering study." The N.Y. G&B Record
"In perhaps her most fascinating chapter . . . Fabend does well at identifying the forces that pushed and pulled the Reformed Dutch in opposite directions in the nineteenth century and deepens and complicates current understandings of how ethnic groups became Americanized." Richard Pointer, American Historical Review

Fascinating stuff about the survival of dutch culture well into the end of the 19th century based on the traditions of the dutch reformed church. Apparently communities on the Hudson were so deeply rooted in the Dutch reformational tradition that they survived and became stronger adapting to the new context. Full of exemples, fact based with interesting figures.
At the end of the book a report of a dying scene in the early 19th century somewhere on the Hudson, that reminded me of a similar scene in my family in the Netherlands some 40 years ago.

What became of all those Dutch settlers from New Netherlands, once the British took over and renamed the whole place New York? Well we might ask. This is a part of our national history that we were NOT taught in school because, as the old adage goes, the victors - the English in this case - get to write the histories, their own way and to their own glorification.

This book, however, gives some balance to the story. Here we learn how and where our Dutch ancestors lived, how they preserved or invented their "Dutchness" for nearly two centuries after the British took control of what had once been New Netherlands, and how they both contributed to and participated with others in the ultimate process of Americanization. And a really good story it is.

This book can be read as a history of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Hudson River region. It can also be read for its excellent insight into how a minority group within a larger society formed and maintained its own, distinct identity, even as it had to adjust to local conditions and evolve away from its "old country" ways, causing deep and lasting internal fractures in the process. Finally, it can surely be enjoyed as a social history of some crucial, formative elements in what was to become, eventually, our shared American culture and character.

The following are excerpts from reviews of Zion on the Hudson: "Simply fascinating local religious history and simply good regional history." Douglas Jacobsen, Messiah College, in Church History, September 2001.

"A good and well-written book that reflects prodigious research. Zion on the Hudson makes a strong case for the importance of religious institutions as mediators between individuals and the larger culture." Randall Balmer, New York History, October 2001.

"This study explores how the Dutch community of New York and New Jersey responded to the accelerating pace of social change in nineteenth-century America. . . . In reaching her conclusions, she makes good use of a rich array of previously untapped sources. . . .All told, this is a solid contribution to the study of ethnicity in nineteenth-century America." Keith Mason, University of Liverpool, in The Historical Association, October 2001.

The following are excerpts from reviews of Zion on the Hudson: "Simply fascinating local religious history and simply good regional history." Douglas Jacobsen, Messiah College, in Church History, September 2001.

"A good and well-written book that reflects prodigious research. Zion on the Hudson makes a strong case for the importance of religious institutions as mediators between individuals and the larger culture." Randall Balmer, New York History, October 2001.

"This study explores how the Dutch community of New York and New Jersey responded to the accelerating pace of social change in nineteenth-century America. . . . In reaching her conclusions, she makes good use of a rich array of previously untapped sources. . . .All told, this is a solid contribution to the study of ethnicity in nineteenth-century America." Keith Mason, University of Liverpool, in The Historical Association, October 2001.