Isaac Hendricksen Kipp

Born January 1627 in Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands. About 1637: Came to America with his parents and siblings. He married February 8, 1653, in New Amsterdam, New Netherland. He died July 1678, in New Harlem, New York.

A Yacht Captain on the Hudson

Isaac Hendricksen Kipp was born in January 1627 in Amsterdam and baptized at the city's Nieuwe Kerk, emigrating to New Netherland with his parents and siblings around 1637. He made his living as a yacht captain, running river sloops on the month-long round trip up the Hudson between New Amsterdam and the frontier settlements of Esopus (Kingston) and Fort Orange (Albany), carrying European goods, wine, and tools upriver and furs, grain, and lumber back down. In 1657 he was granted the rights of a Great Burgher of New Amsterdam, placing him among roughly twenty families eligible to hold public office in the colony — a distinction abolished in 1668 for want of enough offices to go around. He petitioned successfully to have Stone Street, where his house stood, paved with cobblestones, making it one of the first paved streets in New Amsterdam and giving the street its modern name.

Magistrate of New Harlem

Isaac owned extensive property in lower Manhattan, including land in the city's Sheep Pasture (in what is now the Financial District) and a lot at Pearl and Wall Streets acquired jointly with his brother-in-law. He and a neighbor, Hendrick Jansen, feuded for years over a shared fence — accusing each other of piling firewood against it and of Isaac's hens damaging Hendrick's garden — until the city's burgomasters intervened in 1663 and ordered both men to keep their hens' wings clipped. In 1674 Isaac was appointed stamper for New Amsterdam, and the following year, as English rule returned and King Philip's War threatened the colony's frontier, he was nominated magistrate of New Harlem and served in its night watch. Nassau Street in Manhattan was named Kip Street in his honor for running through his land. Isaac died in New Harlem in July 1678.