Ancestors Behaving Badly: Maria Du Trieux Viele Peek

 

Not Her Tavern, But Typical of the Architecture

 Randy Seaver with his GeneaMusing’s column has posted before about relatives behaving badly. I have another one that has popped up on my family tree.

I can picture my great-grandparents talking about their ancestors. In reality, they probably didn’t know anything about the ones as far back as I’m thinking of. However, it is fun to imagine the following conversation:

Grandpa John: my 7th great-grandmother was quite a character. She ran a tavern in New Amsterdam and after her first husband died, she married who would become my great-grandfather and continued to run it.

Grandma Maria: That’s funny, my 6th great-grandmother was a tavern keeper in New
Amsterdam as well. I wonder how many there were?

Grandpa: Well, mine was quite a character. Not only did she run it herself, but she got charged with serving alcohol not only on the Sabbath but during prayers! Then in 1663, she got banished for selling alcohol to the Indians!

Grandma: Gasp! Mine did too! She went to Fort Orange after that and lived with her son. I wonder if they knew each other….

Hmm, we wonder at the coincidences, don’t we? Would these women have known each other? Grandpa would have said his grandmother was Maria Peek. Grandma would have said her’s was Maria Viele. The truth of the matter was that each would have been often referred to by her maiden name of Du Trieux. The same maiden name? The same first name? Something is happening here.

Yes, it is true, my paternal great-grandparents are actually distantly related through that great-grandmother, Maria Du Trieux Viele Peek. Every once in a while when searching back in the tree, I find some odd relationships popping up in the database. This one came to my attention when I noticed that while Cornelius Viele was my 10th great-grandfather; his wife, Maria Du Triuex was my 9th great-grandmother. They should, of course, be the same number as they would be the same generation. Further investigation found two sons from which descent occurs. Following the lines down, I found where John and Maria (Titus) Ward, my paternal great-grandparents were both descendants of this woman through her two husbands.

Was this woman actually behaving badly? As what seems usual for my relatives, it depends on how you look at it. As with many people’s ancestors, the “bad” depends on the context of the period and its culture. Short of something like murder, or armed robbery, I think we can all see where the “behaving badly” is a subjective decision.

In New Amsterdam during the mid-1600s, church attendance was definitely the norm for people. Ones who did not attend services were looked at askance. These weren’t the services that we experience today. Church services were for most of the daylight hours on Sunday. There was no time for recreation on a Sunday, it was a religious day to be spent in solemn activities: church, Bible reading, prayer. As little work as was necessary to feed man and beast was allowed. However, absolutely no frivolous activities were allowed.

Maria, no matter how religious she might have been, had a business to run. We don’t know if she was deeply religious, or if she agreed with the laws and customs in general. What we do know is that for whatever reason, she made the decision that she had to open her doors on the Sabbath and serve those thirsty men who wanted alcohol instead of being in church.

The fact that she opened up at least occasionally on the Sabbath was bad enough, but at some point she perhaps knowingly, perhaps quite innocently, sold alcohol to at least one person who was an Indian. This was too much for the local lawmakers and she found herself banished from New Amsterdam (present-day New York City). Luckily for her, an adult son lived at Fort Orange (present-day Albany). She fled up the Hudson River to him while her husband, apparently stayed in New Amsterdam. Although some records show that he disappeared in 1663, the same year she was banished.

I have seen references to the existence of legal records on this ancestor of mine and how she behaved badly. However, I haven’t had a chance to look into them yet to get all the real details, but have relied on published records only at this point. Hopefully, I will soon get a chance to investigate where these records are and find more details on her scandalous history.