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 East Coast of what is now the United States of America. Van Salee was commonly known as Anthony the Turk due to his religion. It is unknown if van Salee was actually Muslim; if so he may have been the first free Muslim settler and landholder"The New York of Anthony Jansen van Salee", Tom Verde. Aramco World. November–December 2021. Accessed September 10, 2026 in the land that would later become the United States. He was recorded as owning a Quran.
Anthony's line married into European families (with Vanderbilt and other patrician descendants). Descendants of van Salee, in possession of his belongings, said he was the son of Jan Janszoon van Haarlem. Abraham Janszoon van Salee, his brother, also came to New Amsterdam, and operated the privateering ship La Garce out of the colony.
Van Salee owned the Wallenstein property in Lower Manhattan, but 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, including Coney Island. He returned to Manhattan, and by 1674, was listed in "The 1,000", a tax list of the wealthiest citizens of now-New York. He is said to be buried beneath the Harriman Building on Broadway in Lower Manhattan.
Early life
Anthony Janszoon van Salee was born in 1607 in Cartagena, Spain.Fulfilling God's Mission: The Two Worlds of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607-1647, Willem Frijhoff, Myra Heerspink Scholz. BRILL, 2007. . p. 461 His descendants say he was the son of Dutch privateer Jan Janszoon, who operated raids on Spain during this period. He is said to have grown up in Salé, Morocco.
Van Salee obtained a marriage license on December 15, 1629, in Amsterdam to marry Grietse Reyniers, a 27-year-old German native from Wesel. She had been a widow for 2 years following the death of Aelbert Egberts from Haarlem, and formally worked in Pieter de Winter's tavern. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society has suggested he hid his pirate background to get a marriage license. The Dutch West India Company regulated immigration, including religion, with a preference to the Dutch Reformed religion in public.
According to Dutch records, at the time of the license issue, he was Anthonis Jansz, a seaman born in 1607 in Cartagena, Spain and staying at Haringpakkerij, now Prins Hendrikkade, where global sailors converged on the IJ Harbor. His parents weren't present. The license was issued two days before their ship sailed and they eloped on board. It is believed Anthony preferred a ship captain instead of a Dutch minister to marry him.
In 1630, at the age of 22, van Salee arrived with his wife in New Netherland, as a colonist of the Dutch West India Company. By 1632, there were only about 300 residents in New Amsterdam, mostly huddled in homes near the fort on Manhattan Island.
Arrival in New Amsterdam In New Amsterdam, all records prior to 1638 are not available. By 1638, he had become van Salee. In 1638, he acquired a farm on the island of Manhattan which was named "Wallenstein", in memory of Albrecht von Wallenstein, supreme commander of the armies of the Habsburg monarchy.New Amsterdam and Its People: Studies, Social and Topographical, of the Town Under Dutch and Early English Rule, John H. Innes. C. Scribner's sons, 1902. pp. 312-313 The plot was located on the north side of the defensive stockade across Lower Manhattan, along present-day Wall Street. The bouwery was surveyed from Broadway to the East River between Ann Street and Maiden Lane. Van Salee transferred the deed the following year.
At the sale of this property to Cornelis van Tienhoven, it was noted "that he had found 12 apple, 40 peach, 73 cherry trees, 26 sage plants.., behind the house sold by Anthony Janszoon van Salee to Barent Dirksen [Dutchmen],... ANNO 18th of June 1639." This is one of the first references to cherry trees being planted in North America.
By 1639, at the age of 32, Anthony had become one of the largest landholders on the island of Manhattan, as well as a prosperous farmer. His property on Manhattan Island is included on the Manatus Map of that year.
Initial disputes Between 1638 and 1639, the couple accounted for fifteen of ninety-three recorded court cases. During this period, many private quarrels were brought to the Dutch colonial court. The charges against the couple included petty slander, brought by Anneke and Dominee Bogardus (a minister) after Grietse accused of them of lying; Grietse's display of private parts to the naval fleet, and van Salee's occasions of drunkenness.Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes, Peter Lamborn Wilson. Autonomedia, 2003. , . pp. 206-211
Van Salee was engaged in many legal disputes, which ranged from demands for compensation because his dog attacked the hog of Anthony the Portuguese (described as a black townsman), to charges that he had pointed loaded pistols at slave overseers from the Dutch West India Company. He is said to have defended the weak, and learned in the pirate port of Salé growing up the respect of fear.
It is unclear to what extent animus against Van Salee's ethnic and religious identity drove these conflicts, or if he was himself reluctant to submit to church authority. Following numerous legal disputes, including with representatives of the Dutch Reformed Church, whose council reprimanded van Salee and his wife for not behaving as "pious Christians", he was ordered to leave New Netherland.
Turk's Plantation
After he appealed to the Dutch West India Company, van Salee was allowed to settle on Long Island. Though his first application for land on Gravesend Bay was not accepted, Director Willem Kieft in 1643 (backdated to 1639) deeded him 100 Morgens — acquired from Penhawitz in what would become New Utrecht and Gravesend, and specifically in the modern sub-neighborhood of Bath Beach, Brooklyn. Van Salee rented goats for the farm from Andries Hudde. This property was popularly known as the "Turk's plantation", and after a lease to Edmund Audley in 1646 and subsequent sale to Nicholas Stilwell in 1660 (which van Salee tried to retract) and then Francis de Bruyn in 1664, it became known as Bruynnsberg or the Old Bowery. It also appears that perhaps one of the islands in the bay was known as "Turk's island". He became one of the largest and most prominent landholders on the island, owning the main farm and also a more southerly smaller one to which it was loosely associated, known as "The 12 Morgens". In 1643 his Long Island property was also subject to a raid by the English privateer Seven Stars who stole 200 pumpkins, but abandoned their quest for the hogs on Coney Island after learning that those were owned by Deborah, Lady Moody.
The remains of some of his farm buildings were thought to have been uncovered in 1879. Van Salee's 1643 deed to land in Coney Island was acquired by the Brooklyn Historical Society at auction in 2019.
He was the first grantee of land on Conyne Eylandt (Coney Island). Van Salee helped found Long Island settlements including New Utrecht and Gravesend. In 1660 he founded Boswijck (now known as Bushwick), along with twenty-three other settlers, including free blacks Francisco and Anton.Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1863, Graham Russell Hodges. UNC Press Books, 1999. , 9780807847787. p. 35 In 1661, a grant for Gysberts Island was denied.
Return to New Amsterdam In 1643, van Salee purchased a house on Bridge Street in New Amsterdam, in defiance of the court order excluding him from that settlement. It was known as a tall house. He also purchased another property on the Heere Gracht at Hoogh Street. He became a successful merchant and creditor in New Amsterdam, while owning several properties throughout the region. By this time he was considered a mini patroon. He had his own boat to traverse between his properties. His personal attorney was William Jansen van Borckelo. In 1656, he transferred a portion of his property on Manhattan Island to Isaac Kip, son of Hendrick Hendricksen Kip, witnessed by Schepen Jacob Stryker.
In 1669, he left his Long Island properties to his son-in-law Ferdinandus van Sycklin and turned his Bridge Street property into an inn after Grietse died. While his property portfolio was no longer extensive in 1674, he was listed in the "1,000". That year he was fined for quartering an Englishman named Edward Brambi during the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
Identity and social history Van Salee's ethnic and religious background were highly unusual for a prominent colonial landholder and have led to discussions about his place in social history. It is uncertain how much these identity issues drove Van Salee's social and legal conflicts.
Faith Van Salee's religious faith is unknown. A Quran said to have belonged to van Salee was sold in the ca. 1886 estate sale of Joachim Rule, among other heirlooms of the Van Siclen and Gulick families, as documented by descendant Robert Bayles of the Market and Fulton National Bank of New York. Qurans were not printed or sold in New Amsterdam, and during this period were typically reserved to more wealthier individuals. Anthony's Quran was in the Arabic language and considered old.
Van Salee petitioned to have Christian missionaries assigned to new settlements. Once he was fined for housing an English Quaker at his home on Bridge Street, as they were excluded as Dissenters from the English colony; the man was there to repair a Dutch church.
Van Salee appeared to be on good terms with his neighbor Lady Deborah Moody, the founder of Gravesend. John Edwin Stillwell wrote that van Salee had disputes with her husband Sir Henry Moody,Historical and Genealogical Miscellany: Data Relating to the Settlement and Settlers of New York and New Jersey, Volume 5, John Edwin Stillwell. Genealogical Pub. Co., 1970. p. 223 but he had died in England. Lady Moody was a widow by 1629, a decade before she left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where she lived before settling in New Netherland.Cooper, A Dangerous Woman: New York's First Lady Liberty, Heritage Books, 1995.
The Iconography of Manhattan Island writes of van Salee: "A Hollander, whose father, possibly in the course of commercial ventures to the Barbary states, is said to have embraced the tenets of Islam, he was also frequently alluded to as Anthony the Turk."
Ethnicity and appearance Van Salee was described as unusually tall, with superior strength. He was known as "a 'Turk'" or "semi-Dutchman from Algiers", some say from Morocco;"Better Prospects", History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century: New Amsterdam, New York: Macmillan, 1909, p. 161 Berber, of "tawny" complexion.Gad J. Heuman, "From Creole to African", The Slavery Reader, Vol. 1, p. 455Black Crescent: the Experiences and Legacy of African Muslims, Cambridge University Press. Michael A. Gomez. 2005, p. 182 He was credited with the "first dwelling erected by Europeans" in what became New Utrecht, about 1643.C. Benjamin Richardson, "Was Anthony Jansen van Salee a Huguenot?", The Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America, New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1862, pp. 172-173; Retrieved 30 Sept 2009. In court records, van Salee was noted as "Turk", suggesting that record keepers classified him by appearance or culture."Etchings", The Century Illustrated monthly magazine, p. 776, Retrieved 30 Sept 2009.
Anthony's brother, Abraham Janszoon van Salee, a fellow New Netherland settler who was involved in privateering, was described as a "mulatto", in recognition of his mixed-race ancestry, and married a black woman named Fortuyn.