“ Newcomers illuminates a vibrant, teeming story of ambition, struggle, and hard-won success, unfolding in a world that the standard accounts banish to the footnotes.” ―John Matteson A man thought to be a Muslim from Morocco and a German barmaid fleeing poverty are hardly the images we have of America’s august founders. In Newcomers , Alan Mikhail upends the traditional story of America’s origins through the revelatory tale of a seventeenth-century immigrant couple by the names of Anthony and Grietje. Married in Amsterdam, the destitute pair emerged from lives of piracy and prostitution in Europe and arrived in 1630s Dutch New Amsterdam, hoping to build a new life. Upon landing on New York City’s shores, the swarthy Anthony was attacked for being the Muslim he was not, while Grietje, branded a whore by crude harbor denizens, would become the model of an independent colonial American woman, defiantly mooning her attackers rather than accepting their derision. They endured intense bigotry on crooked neighborhood warrens and in the primitive watering holes of New Amsterdam, battling Dutch authorities and brawling with their neighbors, their appearances in court so frequent that their rebellious existence is seared into the records of early America forever. Eventually ejected from New Amsterdam by Dutch authorities in 1639, they were exiled to the “frontier,” to what is now Gravesend Brooklyn, where they and their four daughters farmed and seized land from Native Americans while fighting English colonists from the north. After Grietje died, Anthony moved back to what had become English Manhattan and ended up being one of the richest men in seventeenth-century New York. What is ironic is that this rowdy couple’s descendants include some of the most distinguished names in American social and political history, among them the Vanderbilts and President Warren G. Harding. “Through meticulous research” (Russell Shorto), Mikhail has done nothing less than reframe America’s original family story, in the process showing that where we have immigration, prejudice trails never far behind. Indeed, we learn of harsh, anti-Muslim sentiment through Anthony and of female defiance, rare that it was, through Grietje. “Promising to change the way we understand Colonial Gotham’s formative first years” (Susanah Shaw Romney), Alan Mikhail’s Newcomers tells the story of America’s fledgling beginnings in a way that it has never been depicted before. 20 illustrations, 4 maps "In Newcomers , Alan Mikhail tells the rollicking tale of two of New York’s most misunderstood founders: Anthony ‘the Turk’ and Grietje Reyniers. Combining detailed research and riveting storytelling, this book promises to change the way we understand Colonial Gotham’s formative first years." ― Susanah Shaw Romney, New York University, author of New Netherland Connections "Alan Mikhail rescues two of the most intriguing figures of New Netherland from the farthest margins of history, giving Anthony ‘van Salee’ and Grietje Reyniers center stage as actors in their own remarkable story. Through meticulous research, he reconstructs the lives of the couple―figures of grit and determination who were despised as ‘other’ but rose to power and prominence in their adopted American home. Was Grietje really New Amsterdam’s proudly defiant prime prostitute? Was Anthony America’s first Muslim―or even Muslim at all? Mikhail tackles the myths head-on, and provides a concise, engaging account that is as revealing as it is readable." ― Russell Shorto, New York Times best-selling author of The Island at the Center of the World and Taking Manhattan "Alan Mikhail reveals the captivating story of Anthony and Grietje―a couple from across the Atlantic who carved out success against all odds in seventeenth-century New Amsterdam. Their motley lives embodied the grit and diversity that would come to define the spirit of New York." ― Wendy Warren, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist New England Bound "Alan Mikhail brings to life the history of New York before New York, told through the story of two outcasts from Amsterdam―he who was called a Muslim but was not, she a former barmaid and occasional sex worker―who were among the first settlers of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. Anthony and Grietje start a farm in lower Manhattan, but they brawl with neighbors and thumb their noses at colonial authorities, so they are banished to ‘Breukelen.’ Their banishment is also a colonial toehold for native dispossession and, with it, opportunity for personal prosperity and political redemption. Newcomers is both an astonishing tale of how the hardscrabble reinvent themselves in the New World and an honest account of the dynamics of colonial prejudices and the violence of slavery and dispossession." ― Mae Ngai, author of The Chinese Question "A spectacular feat of historical research and recovery, Newcomers energetically assembles the scattered pieces of an engagin