Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker
Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker (ca. 1648 – ca. 1720) was a Dutch colonist in New Netherland.
Occasionally Harmen added the surname van Wijhe (often in more formal legal matters) indicating he came from Wijhe.
Harmen married Elizabeth Bogaert, the daughter of Jan Bogaert and Cornelia Everts of Harlem, New York. Before 1682, Harmen settled near what is now Albany, New York, and there in 1704 he bought through Harnie Gansevoort one-fourth of the land in Dutchess County near Red Hook, which had been patented in 1688 to Pieter Schuyler. In 1722, Shuyler deeded seven (of thirteen) lots in the upper fourth of his patent to the seven children of Knickerbacker. The eldest of these children, Johannes Harmensen, received from the common council of the city of Albany a grant of 50 acres (200,000 m2) of meadow and some acres of upland on the south side of Schaghticoke Creek. This Schaghticoke estate was held by Johannes Harmensen's son Johannes (1723–1802), a colonel in the Continental Army in the War of Independence, and by his son Herman, (1779–1855), a lawyer, a Federalist Party (United States) representative in Congress in 1809-1811, a member of the New York Assembly in 1816, and a famous gentleman of the old school, who for his courtly hospitality in his manor was called the "prince of Schaghticoke," and whose name was borrowed by Washington Irving for use in his (Diedrich) Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809).
Largely owing to Irving's book, the name Knickerbacker/Knickerbocker has passed into current use as a designation of the early Dutch settlers in New York and their descendants. The son of Herman, David Buel Knickerbacker (1833–1894), who maintained the original spelling of the family name, graduated at Trinity College in 1853 and at the General Theological Seminary in 1856, was a rector for many years at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in 1883 was consecrated Protestant Episcopal bishop of Indiana.
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