John Reiniers has written an article in Hernando Today that
describes the embarrassment of finding an ancestor who was a bit less
than an upstanding pillar of the community. As John writes, "It came as
quite shock to me that one of my Dutch ancestors was known as 'Manhattan's first and most famous prostitute.'"
Yes, if your ancestry includes anyone in New Amsterdam in the 1630s,
now is the time to pull out your pedigree charts and look for the name
Grietje Reiniers (sometimes Reyniers). It seems that she had quite a
few children but the fathers are not well documented. We can assume
that most of these children married and spawned more generations,
resulting in many thousands of descendants of Grietje Reiniers being
alive today.
We all have a few unsavory characters hanging around in our family
trees. I would suggest they are the more delightful and interesting
ancestors!
You can read this interesting story at http://www2.hernandotoday.com/content/2009/jun/16/ancestral-embarrassment-or-entrepreneur.
