Staggs Family History

My ancestors in the United States

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    Aachtje Jacobs (1654-1710)

    BIRTH: Abt. 1654, Flatlands, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
    DEATH: Bef. 1710
    FATHER: Jacob —-
    MOTHER: Unknown
    SPOUSE: Johannes Thomaszen (1650–1711)

    Aachtje Jacobs was born in 1654. She married Johannes Thomaszen on October 31, 1677, in New York City, New York. They had six children in 12 years. She died in 1710 at the age of 56.

    The Life of Aachtje Jacobs

    A Dutch Daughter of New Netherland

    In the middle years of the seventeenth century—when the streets of Manhattan were still sandy lanes and the houses along the East River bore steep Dutch gables—a girl named Aachtje Jacobs was born. Her birth, around 1654, came at a moment when New Netherland was changing hands, yet still unmistakably Dutch in its language, customs, and faith.

    Her world was small but vibrant: the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, the creak of ships at anchor, the mingled voices of Dutch settlers, enslaved Africans, and Indigenous traders. The colony was a crossroads, but its families were tightly knit, bound together by the Dutch Reformed Church and the old-country traditions they carried across the Atlantic.

    Aachtje grew up in this world of transition. She learned to spin flax into linen, to tend the hearth, to keep a household in order. She learned her prayers in Dutch, and she heard the stories of the old provinces—Holland, Zeeland, Brabant—from elders who still spoke of them as home. Yet she was also a child of New Netherland, shaped by the rhythms of a colony that was becoming something new.

    A Marriage in the Dutch Church

    On 31 October 1677, in the stone church of the Collegiate Dutch Reformed congregation in Manhattan, Aachtje stood beside Johannes Thomaszen, a young man who had crossed the ocean as a child from Loon op Zand in the Dutch Republic. The marriage record, written in the old Dutch script, preserves their names and the date—one of the few surviving traces of her life.

    Their union joined two strands of Dutch colonial society:

    • Johannes, the immigrant son of Thomas Janszen,
    • Aachtje, the daughter of a Dutch colonial family already rooted in Manhattan and Long Island.

    Together they began a household in a city that was still more Dutch than English, despite the new flag flying over Fort James.

    A Dutch Colonial Household

    Aachtje’s life after marriage followed the pattern of Dutch women in early New York—quiet, industrious, and central to the survival of the family. She bore children regularly, each one baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church, each one welcomed into a community where kinship ties were strong and long‑lasting.

    Between 1678 and 1691, she brought at least six children into the world: Grietje, Jannetje, Jacob, Caterina, Thomas, and Rachel.

    These children grew up speaking Dutch, learning the catechism, and absorbing the customs of a people who still thought of themselves as Nederlandsche, even as English law and language crept into daily life.

    Her son Jacob, born in 1683, would one day become the father of Sampson Sammons, the Revolutionary War patriot. But in Aachtje’s lifetime, he was simply one of many Dutch boys running through the narrow streets of Manhattan, learning the ways of a world that was slowly changing around him.

    A Woman Between Two Eras

    Aachtje lived through one of the most transformative periods in New York’s early history. She was born under Dutch rule, married under English rule, and raised her children in a city where Dutch customs persisted stubbornly despite political change.

    She witnessed:

    • the renaming of New Amsterdam to New York,
    • the arrival of English merchants and officials,
    • the blending of Dutch and English legal systems,
    • the slow shift from patronymics to fixed surnames.

    Her own children would be among the first to adopt a permanent family name—Sammons, an Anglicized form of Thomaszen—a sign of how Dutch families adapted to the new world around them.

    Her Final Years

    Aachtje did not live to see the eighteenth century. She died before 1710, still in Manhattan, leaving Johannes a widower with children ranging from young adults to infants. Her burial place is unrecorded, but it was almost certainly in one of the early Dutch churchyards—perhaps the yard of the old Garden Street Church, where so many early Dutch families were laid to rest.

    Her husband died the following year, in 1711, closing the first chapter of the Sammons family in America.

    Legacy of Aachtje Jacobs

    Though no portrait, letter, or personal artifact survives, Aachtje’s legacy is unmistakable:

    • She is the matriarch of the Sammons family in America.
    • Her children carried Dutch traditions into the English colonial era.
    • Her descendants helped settle the Mohawk Valley and fought in the Revolution.
    • Her name appears in the earliest church records of New York, anchoring the family’s origins in the Dutch colonial world.

    Aachtje Jacobs lived a life typical of Dutch women in early New York—quiet, steady, foundational. Yet through her children and their descendants, her influence stretches across centuries. She stands at the root of the Sammons lineage, a woman whose life bridged the old Dutch colony and the emerging English province, and whose story continues through every generation that followed.

    Parents

    FATHER: Jacob —- (“Jacobs” simply means “daughter of Jacob.”)
    MOTHER: Unknown

    Married

    Johannes Thomaszen (1650–1711) married October 31, 1677, in New York City, New York, New York, USA

    Children

    • Gretie Sammons (1678–1742) married Ellas Brevort (1676-1742)
    • Jannetie Sammons (1680–?) married Arien Van Schaaijk
    • Jacob Sammons (1683–1750) married Catalyna Benson (1688–1755)
    • Caterina Sammons (1684–?)
    • Thomas Sammons (1689–?)
    • Rachel Sammons (1691–?) married Christoffel Van Nes

    Documents

    • Birth Records
      • None
    • Marriage records
      • Netherlands, Marriage Index, 1524-1899 > Name: Johannes Thomaszen; Marriage Date: 31 okt. 1677 (31 Oct 1677); Marriage Place: New York; Residence Place: Sapponicam; Spouse: Aechtje Jacobs
      • New York City, Compiled Marriage Index, 1600s-1800s > Name: Johannes Thomaszen; Spouse Name: Aechtje Jacobs; Marriage Date: 1677; Marriage Place: New York City, New York, New York; Marriage ID: 2220322131
    • Death records
      • None
    • Other

    Relation of Aachtje Jacobs to Steven Barry Staggs: 7th great-grandmother

    Page last updated May 3, 2026

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