Anthony Janszoon van Salee

Common card · No. 260954

Anthony Janszoon van Salee (1607–1676) was an original settler of and prominent landholder, merchant, and creditor in New Netherland, a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the modern-day East Coast of the United States. Van Salee was commonly known as Anthony the Turk due to his abrasive personality. He may have been the first free Muslim settler in the land that would later become the United States. He was recorded as owning a Quran. He also have had North African or Middle Eastern heritage through his mother—while Anthony's line married into European families (with Vanderbilt and other patrician descendants). Van Salee and his first wife Grietse were the subject of considerable scandal and litigation in New Amsterdam, leading to his role in the establishment of Gravesend and New Utrecht, as well as other settlements on Long Island. A theory first posited by a local historian in the 19th century, and repeated widely into the 2020s, holds that Van Salee was the...

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