Known for curating several important exhibitions in the 1980s, Willem Frederik (Eric) Nooter (1950-2000) was one of the first scholars to use Dutch documents for the study of a New Netherland community. The result of this work was his 1994 Ph.D. dissertation, Between Heaven and Earth: Church and Society in Pre-Revolutionary Flatbush, Long Island. Before his death, Eric gave his papers to the Jacob Leisler Papers Project and Dr. David W. Voorhees, who later incorporated them as part of the Jacob Leisler Institute’s foundational collection. The bulk of the materials in the Nooter Collection concern Long Island (including Brooklyn) before 1800, and include church registers, maps, copies of original records, published and unpublished scholarship, archaeological field notes, and more.
A finding aid for the Willem Frederik (Eric) Nooter Collection is in progress.
A selection of Dr. Nooter’s scholarship
“Poor Relief in Pre-Revolutionary Long Island,” de Halve Maen vol. 79, no. 1, Spring 2006, 11-14. Online. This is a chapter excerpt from Dr. Nooter’s dissertation.
Between Heaven and Earth: Church and Society in Pre-Revolutionary Flatbush, Long Island. Ph.D. dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1994.
Between Heaven and Earth: The Dutch Reformed Church in Flatbush Society, 1654-1664,” de Halve Maen vol 66, no. 4, Winter 1993, 66-74.
With Patricia Bonomi: Colonial Dutch Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach. New York University Press, 1988.
“Colonial Dutch Architecture in Brooklyn,” de Halve Maen vol. 60, no. 1, June 1987, 12-16.
“Colonial Dutch Architecture,” de Halve Maen vol. 59, no. 1, July 1985, 1-6.
The Old Dutch Homesteads of Brooklyn. The Long Island Historical Society, 1984. [Relating to an exhibition at the Society which later that year was renamed the Brooklyn Historical Society.]
