DE HULSTER was their name, because that was where they originally came from, the southern Dutch town of Hulst. They had moved west from there, closer to the North Sea. Schoondijke, IJzendijke, Groede, and Sarah’s parents had even crossed the sea, to England. Away from the violence, away from the war against Philip II’s Spanish soldiers. Just about half of the town of Norfolk was Dutch. At the time, it was but a day’s sailing from the Dutch beach, while a trip to London took six days. Thousands of Protestants sailed to the nearest opposite shore. So did some De Hulsters from Zeeland.
They helped build a pier, “the Old Dutch Pier,” because they knew a thing or two about dams and dikes. They drained the hinterlands of Norfolk, King’s Lynn and Yarmouth, led by Kees Vermuyden. And when they were all somewhat settled, and it became common to marry Englishmen, that’s what Saartje de Hulster did. She married Tommy White. Together, they had a daughter, Jane. And Jane fell in love with a blacksmith, also a Tommy. His last name was Franklin.
Dutch Saartje’s daughter was Benjamin Franklin’s grandmother.
NO, HE did not invent electricity, as is sometimes falsely assumed. And no, he was never president of the United States. But he did take Piet van Musschenbroek’s Leyden Jar outside to see what lightning would do with it. And after he had witnessed how Stadtholder Willem V of Orange Nassau did his best to sabotage Dutch efforts to support the American fight for independence, he decided that a head of state ought to be able to be deposed. Benjamin Franklin came up with impeachment as a punitive instrument against a president.
He was the first US ambassador to Paris, helped John Adams find Dutch bankers in Amsterdam and The Hague to help finance the war of independence against England, and lived on as large a footing as his finances allowed. Benjamin Franklin descended from a Zeeland girl, but us bin zunig (“we live thrifty”) never became his motto. Oh, and to his embarrassment, he lost a game of chess against the wife of a British admiral.
