Login
Login

List of Dutch Americans

{{Short description|none}}

{{More citations needed|date=March 2023}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2020}}

{{Americans}}

The first Dutch settlers arrived in America in 1624 and founded a number of villages, a town called New Amsterdam and the Colony of New Netherland on the East Coast. New Amsterdam became New York when the Treaty of Breda was signed in 1667. According to the 2006 United States Census, more than 5 million Americans claim total or partial Dutch heritage. Today the majority of the Dutch Americans live in the U.S. states of California, New York, Michigan, Iowa, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This is a list of notable Dutch Americans, including both original immigrants who obtained American citizenship and Americans of full or partial Dutch ancestry.

List

=Arts and literature=

  • Earl W. Bascom (1906–1995), artist, sculptor, inventor, author, known as the "dean of rodeo cowboy sculpture"
  • Edward W. Bok (1863–1930), author, publisher, editor of Ladies Home Journal
  • Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973), writer and novelist, first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature{{cite journal |last=Smylie |first=James H. |date=January 2004 |title=Pearl Buck's "Several Worlds" and the "Inasmuch" of Christ |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004057360406000407 |url-access=limited |journal=Theology Today |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=540–554 |doi=10.1177/004057360406000407 |quote=Carie, Pearl's mother, was born a Stulting in Hillsboro (where Pearl also was born), of Dutch stock leavened by French yeast stirred into the ancestral mix. |access-date=January 23, 2024}}
  • Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), abstract expressionist painter
  • Peter DeVries (1910–1993), author and editor; wrote Tunnel of Love; editor and staffer for Poetry magazine and The New Yorker
  • Barthold Fles (1902–1989), literary agent, author, editor, translator and publisher
  • Charles Fort (1874–1932), author, wrote Book of the Damned, father of ufology, cryptozoology and critic/satirist of mainstream, dogmatic science
  • Frederick Franck (1909–2006), painter, sculptor, and author of 30 books who was known for his interest in human spirituality[http://www.tricycle.com/issues/from_archive/3430-1.html] Dutch born
  • Marius Jansen (1922–2000), American academic, historian, and Emeritus Professor of Japanese History at Princeton University.
  • Herman Melville (1819–1891), author and poet, wrote Moby Dick[http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126] Melville "came from Dutch and English stock"
  • Milton J. Nieuwsma (born 1941), author, film writer and producer
  • Erwin Timmers (born 1964), Dutch-American environmental "green artist", glass sculptor and teacher
  • Raeburn van Buren, magazine and comic strip illustrator best known for his work on the syndicated Abbie an' Slats
  • Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), modernist poet{{cite web |url=https://wallacestevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Stevens-Dutch-Graves.pdf |title=Dutch Graves in Bucks County |website=wallacestevens.com |publisher=The Wallace Stevens Society |access-date=January 28, 2024 |quote=Stevens' father was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and was of Dutch descent}}
  • Edward Stratemeyer, (1862–1930), author
  • Janwillem van de Wetering (1931–2008), Dutch-American author of police procedurals, Zen autobiographies and children's books
  • Philip Van Doren Stern (1900–1984), author
  • Hendrik Willem Van Loon (1882–1944), author, historian and journalist
  • Gloria Vanderbilt (1924–2019), artist and socialite[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0888742/bio] Vanderbilt "is of Dutch, Chilean, Spanish, and Irish descent."
  • Walt Whitman (1819–1892), poet[http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126] Whitman "came from Dutch and English stock"
  • Jeff VanderMeer (born 1968), author

=Entertainment=

File:Dick Van Dyke 2 crop.jpg

File:Captain Beefheart in Toronto.jpg

File:Bruce Springsteen - Roskilde Festival 2012.jpg

= Journalism =

File:Anderson Cooper.JPG

  • Rachel Maddow (born 1973), MSNBC journalist, paternal grandmother is of Dutch descent
  • Anderson Cooper (born 1967), CNN journalist, mother is Dutch-American socialite Gloria Vanderbilt{{cite web |url=http://www.kerberosworld.com/Anac-to-Apc/anderson_cooper-andersen_cooper.php |title=The anderson cooper Resource Page |access-date=November 16, 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929031350/http://www.kerberosworld.com/Anac-to-Apc/anderson_cooper-andersen_cooper.php |archive-date=September 29, 2007 }} Cooper "is of mostly English, Irish, and Dutch ancestry"
  • Walter Cronkite (1916–2009), CBS Evening News journalist
  • Watson Spoelstra (1910–1999), sportswriter for the Detroit News, grandfather of Erik Spoelstra
  • Greta Van Susteren (born 1954), Fox News journalist
  • Michiel Vos (born 1970), journalist, made documentary Diary of a Political Tourist

=Military=

File:Hoyt S Vandenberg.jpg

=Politics=

File:Martin Van Buren by Mathew Brady c1855-58.jpg

File:Hamilton Fish - Brady-Handy.jpg

File:Portrait of Theodore Roosevelt.jpg

File:Arthur H. Vandenberg.jpg

File:Franklin D. Roosevelt - NARA - 196715.jpg

=Sciences=

File:Nicolaas Bloembergen 1981.jpgFile:Cornelius Vanderbilt Daguerrotype2.jpg

  • George David Birkhoff (1884–1944), mathematician
  • Nicolaas Bloembergen (1906–1982), physicist{{cite web|url=http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz161221dba38.html|title=Dutch Nobel Prize Winners|work=funtrivia.com}}
  • Hendrik Wade Bode (1920–2017), engineer, inventor, and a pioneer of modern control theory
  • Bart J. Bok (1906–1983), astronomer, director of Steward Observatory
  • Dirk Brouwer (1902–1966), astronomer[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9016671] Dutch-born
  • Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (1902–1978), physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck
  • Richard Hamming (1915–1998), mathematician
  • Anthony Heinsbergen (1894–1981), muralist considered the foremost designer of North American movie theatre interiors[http://historicfresno.org/bio/heinsber.htm] Dutch-born, naturalized US citizen
  • John Houbolt (1919–2014), aerospace engineer, Apollo 11 route planner{{cite news |last=Barnes |first=Bart |date=April 30, 2014 |title=NASA scientist John C. Houbolt, whose ideas helped put a man on the moon, dead at 95 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-scientist-john-c-houbolt-whose-ideas-helped-put-a-man-on-the-moon-dead-at-95/2014/04/30/4d46209e-cfda-11e3-937f-d3026234b51c_story.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |quote=The son of Dutch-born farmers |access-date=January 25, 2024}}
  • Arend Lijphart (born 1936), political scientist
  • Willem Johan Kolff (1911–2009), inventor of hemodialysis treatment
  • Gerard Peter Kuiper (1905–1973), astronomer
  • Willem Jacob Luyten (1899–1994), astronomer{{cite web |url=http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/gerard/old_web_page/dutchastro.html |title=Famous Dutch Astronomers |access-date=May 17, 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060519000813/http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/gerard/old_web_page/dutchastro.html |archive-date=May 19, 2006 }} Listing under "Famous Dutch Astronomers & Physicists"
  • Robert Moog (1934–2005), a pioneer of electronic music and inventor of the Moog synthesizer
  • Jan Schilt (1894–1982), Dutch-born astronomer, inventor of the Schilt photometer, Rutherford Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University
  • Maarten Schmidt (1929–2022), Dutch-born astronomer who measured the distances of astronomical objects called quasars
  • Hubert Schoemaker (1950–2006), chemist and biotechnological pioneer[http://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2002/08/19/story2.html] Dutch born
  • Benjamin Spock (1903–1998), paediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care[http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/dutch_americans/benjamin-spock/] Benjamin Spock – described as Dutch-American
  • James Van Allen (1914–2006), astronomer for whom the Van Allen belt is named
  • Robert J. Van de Graaff (1901–1967), physicist, developed the Van de Graaff generator
  • Peter van de Kamp (1901–1995), astronomer{{cite web|url=http://www2.jsonline.com/news/gen/dec02/101840.asp|title=Page Not Found|work=jsonline.com|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060115222211/http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/dec02/101840.asp|archive-date=January 15, 2006}}
  • Lodewijk van den Berg (born 1932), chemical engineer and astronaut, payload specialist STS-51B Space Shuttle Challenger[https://web.archive.org/web/20090429041154/http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761583383/van_den_Berg_Lodewijk.html] "van den Berg, Lodewijk, born in 1932, Dutch-American astronaut."
  • Willard Van Orman Quine – logician and philosopher{{cite magazine |last=MacFarlane |first=Alistair |date=2013 |title=W.V.O. Quine (1908-2000)|url=https://philosophynow.org/issues/95/WVO_Quine_1908-2000 |magazine=Philosophy Now |quote=Willard’s mother Harriet (née Van Orman) was born in a village near Akron, and was of Dutch descent. |access-date=January 22, 2024}}
  • John Hasbrouck Van Vleck physicist{{cite journal |last=Anderson |first=P.W. |date=1989 |title=John Hasbrouck Van Vleck 1899–1980 |url=https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/van-vleck-j-h.pdf |journal=Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences |quote=The Van Vleck family is of the patrician Dutch stock that has given the nation three presidents, among other eminent citizens. |access-date=January 22, 2024}}
  • Albert Vander Veer (1841–1929), surgeon
  • Mary van Kleeck (1883–1972), social scientist, feminist, and economic researcher

=Businessmen=

=Sports=

File:Bert Blyleven.jpg

File:Erik Spoelstra in 2009.jpg

=Theology=

=Fictional characters=

=Others=

  • Gertrude Baniszewski, American murderer; father was of Dutch ancestry
  • Jack Dangermond, founder of ESRI, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software company
  • Sante Kimes, American murderer; mother was of Dutch ancestry
  • Linda Kolkena, murder victim
  • Alfred Peet (1920–2007), founder of Peet's Coffee and Tea, credited with starting the gourmet coffee revolution in the United States
  • Jan Pol (born 1942), Dutch-American veterinarian featured on the Incredible Dr. Pol television series, emigrated to the United States from the Netherlands
  • Leslie van Houten, former Manson family serving life sentence for murder

References

{{reflist|30em}}

Dutch Americans

*

Americans

Dutch