Roosevelt Oud-Vossemeer Foundation

The Zeeland roots of the American presidents

The ancestor of the Roosevelt family of New York is Claes Martenszen van Rosevelt. Between 1650 and 1658, he had five children baptized in the Nederduits Gereformeerde kerk in Nieuw-Amsterdam, a trading post of the West India Company in America. In 1655 Claes bought a farm on the island of Manhattan. His wife died in 1660 and was then already a widow. New Amsterdam was conquered by the English a few years later and grew into the metropolis of New York.

Claes Martenszen left the Republic of the United Netherlands for the New World, as the colony in America was called. From the Zeeland island of Tholen, where there was a corner of land between Poortvliet, Tholen and Oud-Vossemeer that was already known in 1481 as the Rosevelt. This must be sought in the north of the Fiftienhundredmeterenpolder, against the Kadijk and the Roolandsedijk. In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, Pieter Jorisse in 't Rosevelt lived here on a farm. His father lived on the Hoogkamer farm in the Oud-Vossemeer polder. And Pieter's son Joris Pieterse bought a farm in that village in 1648. A younger brother of Joris was a notary in Tholen and was appointed steward of Vossemeer towards the end of the seventeenth century.

In various rooms of the Roosevelt Information Center attention is paid to the history of Oud-Vossemeer, the craftmanship, origin and family trees of the American and Dutch Roosevelt families and finally the three most important members of the American branch: Franklin Delano, Theodore and Eleanor. All this is located in the craftsman's house: the former law and town hall of Oud-Vossemeer that was built by the craftsman in the years 1767-1768. At that time, Johan Willem van Rosevelt was one of the master craftsmen and that is why the coat of arms of the Dutch Van Rosevelt family can be found in the fireplace.

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