Gerrit Boon

Gerrit Boon (or Garrett Boon) (Delft, May 15, 1768 - ?) was the son of a Lutheran minister Johan Michiel Boon. His father had studied in Helmstedt and moved in 1752 from Amersfoort to Delft and in 1774 to Rotterdam. Gerrit Boon became a sugar refinerer in the city. He went to the America in 1790 with John Lincklaen, both under the direction of the Holland Land Company.

Boon worked to develop company lands in New York, first settling in the town of Trenton, New York, where he founded the village now known as Barneveld. Also the Village of Boonville and the Town of Boonville in Oneida County, New York are named after him. He had a budget of $30,000 (approximately $4 million in today's dollars) to hire carpenters, masons and other workmen to create a village for the affluent.

Some of Boon's efforts were unsuccessful due in part to incomplete knowledge of the region and bad luck. He built a dam and a mill that were washed away by flood waters and believed that harvesting maple syrup could be a year-round activity, so slavery on the sugar plantations could be avoided.

In 1798 Boon returned to Holland. His assistant Adam Gerard Mappa took over as the agent of the Holland Land Company and lived in his house until 1809, today called Boon House.

Boon died after 1833.

External link

* http://villageofbarneveld.org/content/History
* http://www.archive.org/stream/francisadrianvan00vand/francisadrianvan00vand_djvu.txt
* http://oneida.nygenweb.net/misc/wager/ch46.html