


Some of them were admitted to England during Oliver Cromwell's occupation of it in the 17th century during the English Civil War. Sephardic Jewish merchants came to the Netherlands from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century after being expelled from those nations. DNA studies have shown that these people are of mainly European descent, with little, if any, African or Native American DNA in them. Many of these so-called “Black Dutch” are still in New York today while other families migrated south and west to other states. The darker complexions were usually due to intermarriage or out of wedlock births with Spanish soldiers during the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands. The most common designation of “Black Dutch” refers to Dutch immigrants to New York who had swarthier complexions than most other Dutch. Knowing your ancestral origins and some of your family histories will help you put the term “Black Dutch” in context with your own family. The term “Black Dutch” is something you may encounter in your genealogy research, or maybe you've heard it mentioned in your family as being part of your ancestry? But what does it mean, exactly? Who were the Black Dutch? If you're just getting started on your genealogy adventure, you may not know.īlack Dutch is a term that is used in historical documents to refer to several different groups.
