François Adriaan van der Kemp

[1] Having been a promising student in Groningen, Franeker and Amsterdam, he led the local militia (exercitiegenootschap) in Wijk bij Duurstede and ended up in captivity.

Van der Kemp was released on 9 December 1787 for a ransom of 45,000 guilder and emigrated to the U.S.A.[2] Adriaan was the son of an army officer, his mother was related to Willem Jacob 's Gravesande, a scientist.

From the pulpit Van der Kemp proclaimed: In America the Sun of Salvation has risen, which will also cast its rays upon us if we so wish: only America can teach us how to counter the degeneration of the national character, to curb the corruption of morals, to ward off bribery, to suffocate the seeds of tyranny and to restore to health our dying freedom.

In 1783 Van der Kemp moved to Wijk bij Duurstede and became the leader of the local patriots.

[8][9] The arrest of Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia at the end of June 1787 demanded a response, and so Van der Kemp and Adriaan de Nijs were taken prisoner on 5 July, near Wijk bij Duurstede by a regiment of soldiers from Baden-Durlach and taken to Amersfoort.

Van der Kemp was linked to and visited in Kempwick by various Founding Fathers: John Adams, with whom he had an extensive and fascinating correspondence, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.

Van der Kemp withdrew from political life and threw himself into a new project at 'Nieuw Rotterdam', now called Constantia, in Oswego County.

The Holland Land Company, that had taken into its service Gerrit Boon from Rotterdam, had meanwhile set up a proper village, planted ahorns and had a sugar mill built.

[13] He persuaded Thomas Jefferson to anonymously publish his religious work a "Syllabus of an estimate of the doctrines of Jesus compared with those of others".

[17] The governor of the state of New York, Dewitt Clinton, named him the most scholarly man in the U.S.A.[18] In 1820 he received an honorary degree from Harvard University, and was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1822.