Francis Adrian Van Der Kemp

Background

François Adriaan van der Kemp was born on May 4, 1752, in Kampen, Overijssel, in the Netherlands. He was the son of John Van der Kemp, an army captain, and his wife, Anna Catharina (Leydekker).

Education

For several years, Francis Adrian was a cadet in an infantry regiment and at the same time cultivated the classical languages. In September 1770, he entered Groningen University, where he devoted himself to linguistic and philosophical studies.

At the end of three years, he left the institution because his deistical ideas and his attachment to a celebrated teacher who was charged with Arminianism made his presence intolerable.

He next became a student in a Baptist seminary at Amsterdam, where he engaged in an examination of the Christian religion, giving his attention to the New Testament apart from dogmatic theology.

Career

Satisfied of the truth of the Gospel, Van Der Kemp was admitted as a candidate for the ministry on December 18, 1775. The following year, November 13, he was installed pastor at Leyden. Disputes with his consistory, principally over a demand for his subscription to a creed, ended in victories for the young preacher. A burning interest in political agitation earned for Van der Kemp the friendship of the leaders in the Patriot movement, which sought to reduce the power of the Stadtholder and to restrain the House of Orange within constitutional limits. In behalf of this movement, he wrote books and pamphlets, often anonymously. When to shield the printer, he announced his responsibility for a certain publication, he was involved in criminal procedures, which dragged along a year or two and ceased in 1782 with his acquittal.

In 1775, the Patriot party found itself in natural sympathy with the American colonies in the uprisings which led to independence, and Van der Kemp publicly advocated the principles which were the foundation of the American cause. With John Adams, who appeared in Amsterdam as American commissioner in the summer of 1780, he formed a friendship to which a correspondence of many years bears witness. As the political struggle in Holland verged on civil war, the Mennonite pastor became captain of a militia company, withdrawing from the charge of his peaceful congregation. In the first clash of opposing forces, the court party was victor and Van der Kemp was taken, prisoner.

When, in 1787, the wife of the Stadtholder, a Prussian princess, maneuvered successfully to bring a Prussian army to Amsterdam, the only banishment remained for prominent Patriots. Accordingly, the following year Van der Kemp sailed with his family for New York, arriving May 4. The exile's reception by eminent Americans included an invitation to the hospitality of Mount Vernon. After six years devoted to experimental agriculture near Kingston, New York, he established a home by Oneida Lake on a tract which he named Kempwyk, near Bernhard's Bay. Here he entered on a life which, if not idyllic, had consolations for ill fortune.

He was appointed a justice of the peace, and he organized a society of agriculture and natural history. His impaired fortunes, however, compelled him to seek a new home, and his final residence was in Olden Barneveld (the present Barneveld). Farming, correspondence, discursive studies, and literary work filled up his remaining years. At the solicitation of Gov. DeWitt Clinton, he translated the Dutch colonial records of New York. The resulting twenty-four manuscript volumes were burned in the fire that destroyed the capitol in 1911. Some examples of his miscellaneous writings in Dutch are in American libraries.

Van der Kemp began to write his autobiography, but died of cholera on September 7, 1829, at the age 77 and is buried in the Olden Barneveldt cemetery Trenton, New York. Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts received his library.

Achievements

• Van Der Kemp was one of the Dutch radical leaders of the Patriots, a minister and publicist who gave the Patriot movement a Christian tint in his blazing speeches. In 1820, he received an honorary degree from Harvard University, and was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1822.

Connections

Van Der Kemp was married, May 20, 1782, to Reinira Engelberta Johanna Vos; three children were born to them.

Father:

John Van der Kemp

Mother:

Anna Catharina (Leydekker)

Wife:

Reinira Engelberta Johanna Vos

References

• ... History of Oswego County, New York