Much of the story of the Fonda beginnings in the New World centers around Hester Douw Jans. She was born in the Netherlands and married Jellis Douwes in 1641, when Dutch families commonly used patronymics rather than fixed hereditary surnames. Older Fonda literature sometimes speculated that Hester and Jellis were cousins, largely because both patronymics referred to fathers named Douw. There is no evidence that they were related; the shared patronymic only tells us that both had fathers named Douw. The surviving record instead makes Hester important in her own right: wife, immigrant, mother, widow, and one of the people who carried the family into its first American generation.

Dutch settler family of five with three children, carrying bundles past a ship and a wooden riverside wharf.
Jellis Douw Fonda and Hester Jans arrived in New Netherland with their children Douwe, about eleven, Geertien, about nine, and Sara, about seven. This riverfront scene imagines the family joining the Dutch community at Fort Orange in 1651. Historical reconstruction; details and likenesses are interpretive.
Illustrated riverside Dutch settlement with wooden buildings, a ship, and the Hudson River.
The early Dutch settlement at Fort Orange and neighboring Beverwyck formed the Hudson River setting of Jellis and Hester’s family life. This illustration reuses the website Home page’s view of the emerging community rather than commissioning a duplicate scene. Historical reconstruction; details and likenesses are interpretive.

Jellis Douwse Fonda was born in 1614, the son of Douw Evertse Fonda (1580-1669) of Agum, Friesland, Netherlands. (Note: The father of Jellis is actually unknown, see Fonda DNA and History .) Jellis and Hester married on February 10, 1641 in Diemen, near Amsterdam, and had four children, Douw, Greetien, Sara and Abraham. Jellis worked as an innkeeper and blacksmith in Diemen.

It is not certain exactly when or why the family emigrated to New Netherlands (America), other than the obvious desire for freedom and opportunity. There is no known record of the family on ship passenger lists of the time. The first record is after they arrived in Beverwyck (Albany) in 1651, at which time the children were aged eleven, nine and seven. It could be assumed that they were aboard one of the many ships out of Amsterdam during the initial settlement of the New Netherlands Colony led by Dutch explorer Henry Hudson's discovery in 1609 and the Dutch West India Company trading post operations, starting in 1624. Since the colony was intended strictly as a profit-making enterprise, and not as a means to transplant Dutch culture, the mouth of the Hudson River soon paled in comparison with the beaver-rich unexploited forests farther inland, where the company's traders could be in close contact with the Native American hunters who supplied them with pelts in exchange for cheap European-made trade goods and wampum.

Seventeenth-century Dutch colonial woman presenting a claim before magistrates in a courtroom.
By the late 1650s, Hester Jans was conducting business in her own name and pursuing debts through Beverwyck’s courts. This courtroom scene, reused from eBook Figure 2.1, evokes her claim for three beaver pelts owed on a gun sale. Historical reconstruction; details and likenesses are interpretive.

On October 19, 1651 Jellis was granted permission by the court to distill liquor in Greenbush, a small village across the Hudson River from Albany, in the region called Rensselaerwyck. The young family took the ferry across the river to Greenbush to establish their distillery next to the house belonging to Evert Pels, who himself operated one of the many breweries in Rensselaerwyck. Another record indicates that on June 16, 1653, Jellis brought suit against his neighbor, Jan Van Bremen, for failing to deliver a hog for which Jellis paid ½ anker of brandy, about 5 gallons. Jellis won judgment for 1.30 florins.

Jellis and Hester and their children remained in Greenbush at least through 1654. By 1658 they had crossed the river again to return to Beverwyck, the settlement outside Fort Orange. Around this time Jellis had fallen ill and had become incapacitated. He died the following year at the age of 45. While Jellis was still alive, Hester started up her own business as early as 1658, engaging in the lucrative beaver trade. Her commercial ventures continued for many years and she survived three husbands and an Indian Massacre and supported herself up to the time she died at age 75.

In 1658, while she was living in Beverwyck, she sued Hans Vos demanding payment of three beaver for a gun she sold him. The court ordered him to settle his account with Mrs. Fonda. In the same year she was sued by Ludovicus Corbus who charged that she had removed his wife's petticoat (from the fence). Hester answered that she had not taken the petticoat but that the plaintiff had pawned it for beaver. The case was continued for lack of evidence. Corbus again charged Hester with taking an apron without his consent. Hester explained that the plaintiff's wife had given her the apron as a pledge for 5½ beaver and she not being satisfied with the apron as a pledge, the plaintiff's wife also gave her an undershirt. If all this petty litigation sounds contemporary, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, the first Patroon, shrewdly noted in his records that, "they stir one another up, suing one another more as a diversion than for the redress of wrongs."

Dutch businesswoman examining beaver pelts and negotiating with Indigenous traders at a seventeenth-century Hudson River trading post.
While Jellis was gravely ill, Hester Jans began conducting her own business in Beverwyck by about 1658, including the profitable beaver trade. This reconstructed negotiation highlights her commercial independence and ability to support herself and her family. Historical reconstruction; details and likenesses are interpretive.

In 1660 Hester married Barent Gerritsen, a widower several years her junior. He arrived in Fort Orange as a youngster in 1646. Early in 1662, Barent, Hester and Sara, then about 16, moved to the newly settled community of Wiltwyck (Kingston). The settlers lived behind a stockade due to the threatening nature of the Esopus Indians. Barent, also a distiller, became famous for the superior type of brandy he produced and became modestly wealthy. Hester still continued her trading. It was truly a two career family, almost unheard of for another 300 years.

At noon on June 7, 1663, the Esopus Indians beat back the guard at the gate and burned most of the settlement to the ground. Barent was one of the first to be bludgeoned to death. Hester and Sara and most of the remaining settlers were taken prisoner and forced to trek through 22 miles of unbroken wilderness. It was not until three months later on September 7th that Hester was released from captivity, but not without the loss of Sara. Hester never recovered from the shock and exposure and remained deaf for the rest of her life.

That same year Hester returned to Beverwyck where her daughter Greetien and her son-in-law Jan Juriansen Becker, a teacher, and their children Jan and Martina, and her son Douw Fonda were living. She had become guilderless and beaverless due to the tragedy in Wiltwyck. She set about regaining her financial security. She sold her first husband's distillery equipment and she went back to court, the scene of many of her former triumphs. She was successful in collecting debts owed her deceased husband's estate. Then in 1670 she married again, Theunius van Vechten, a man several years her senior. Theunius died in 1685 leaving Hester his modest estate. Even at this time she was conducting business as usual. Her last recorded act before her death in 1690 (no, it was not standing before a judge) was standing before the altar of the Reformed Church of Jesus Christ of Albany at the christening of her grandchild Anna Fonda on February 2, 1690.

Sources and references

  • Mrs. John Spell, “A Career Woman in 17th Century New York,” The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 95, no. 3 (July 1964): 129–137. Secondary account covering the Hans Vos proceeding, Wiltwyck household, 1663 attack and captivity, subsequent commercial activity, and reported later marriage; Sara’s ultimate fate is not conclusively established by the cited account. The underlying 1664 transaction remains to be checked.
  • A. J. F. van Laer, ed. and trans., Minutes of the Court of Fort Orange and Beverwyck, 1657–1660, vol. II (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1923), pp. 116–117. The Hans Vos proceeding distinguishes Hester’s claim of three beavers from the court’s payment order of fourteen guilders.
  • New Netherland Institute, “Esopus,” A Tour of New Netherland, digital exhibition (settlement and stockade background only; does not independently confirm the family’s move; accounts differ on the 1657/1658 stockade date).
  • Year Book of the Holland Society of New York (1904), p. 49, Albany Reformed Dutch Church baptism register, 2 February 1690 (“Anna, of Douwe Jelisz…”); sponsor identification and Hester’s death date are not proven by the transcription alone.
  • Rev. W. A. Williams, Early American Families (Philadelphia, 1916), pp. 24–25, Fonda family excerpt preserved as an image in the Fonda Family History gallery: https://www.fonda.org/assets/gallery/history/EarlyAmericanFamilies_24-25.jpg (original page numbering and historical claims require independent verification).
  • New York State Museum, Colonial Albany Social History Project, biography of Douw Jellis Fonda: https://exhibitions.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/bios/f/jedfonda.html (historical and genealogical context; verify individual claims against the museum account).
  • Fonda DNA and History: https://blog.fonda.org/archives/1362 (legacy website reference; article-level relevance and current accessibility unverified).