ELVIS Presley was rooted here. The skyline of Bunschoten, the Netherlands.
His great-grand was named Rachel van Bunschoten. Her husband’s name was Jan who walked around carrying a hat, Dutch: hoed. Upon landing in America, he became registered as Jan Hoed, later spelled Hood. A family tree with almost exclusively male descendants. All the way down to Minnie Mae Hood, Elvis’ grandmother. She rests beside him at Graceland.
His relative Fred Thompson sprouted from the same family tree, and therefore also counted Bunschoten as his roots. Fred was a US Senator in Washington for nine years, representing Tennessee, but people know him mostly as an actor in Law & Order, Red October and other Hollywood movies.
The Tesla originated in Bunschoten, along with the Kindle and all the other e-readers. Marc Tarpenning is a descendant of Bunschoten’s Gerrit Teerpenning, and he was fascinated by batteries at a young age. Marc developed the Rocket, the very first tablet carrying multiple books from which the Kindle also emerged, and then he went on to design the Tesla.
Electricity: Thomas Edison of Den Oever, Edam and Reusel – de Mierden often gets first prize in history books, but it was George, the son of Emeline Vedder of Bunschoten, who gave America its power grid. George Westinghouse’s AC won out over Edison’s DC, alternating current versus direct current, and all households have been connected to it ever since.
George was a great uncle of another celebrity of Bunschoten origin, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. Harm Vedder was the first of the lineage to make the crossing to America, encouraged by his uncle Kiliaen van Rensselaer from neighboring Nijkerk. The uncle was director of the West India Company and the founder of New Netherland and New Amsterdam in what would later become known as America. The Vedders moved there, as did the Van Bunschotens, the Korlaars, the Van Twillers, essentially neighbors one and all.
Wouter van Twiller became governor of New Amsterdam, Jaap Korlaar built Hartford, Connecticut, but finally settled as a school teacher on the edge of Manhattan, at the corner from where the bank bends north. Korlaars Hoek, it was called, now Corlears Hook. Prostitutes did their business there, finding sailors coming ashore. Hookers, they were referred to. And that’s what they’re still known as.
(Photo: Onja Boudewijns)
