Lawrence Gwyn van Loon

Lawrence Gwyn Van Loon (1903, New York City - 7 November 1985, Gloversville, New York)[1] was an American general practitioner, amateur historical linguist and forger.

L.G. Van Loon
Van Loon (1931)
Born
Lawrence Gwyn Van Loon

1903 (1903)
New York City
Died7 November 1985 November 7, 1985(1985-11-07) (aged 81–82)
Gloversville, New York
Occupation(s)physician, linguist, forger

Biography

Van Loon was possibly a direct descendant of Jan Van Loon, who had emigrated from Liège to New Netherland in the seventeenth century.

He learned the remains of the Mohawk Dutch language, the taol, from his maternal grandfather, Walter Hill (1856-1925), a schoolteacher. At the age of ten he went to Reading, New York, for a journey to the Mohawk Valley.

During the summers of 1930 and 1932 he spent an internship at the Wilhelmina Hospital in Amsterdam. In 1932 he married a Dutch woman, Grietje Prins. Between 1955 and 1967 he was medical director on Hawaii.

He was a member of the Holland Society and of the Dutch Settlers Society of Albany. Van Loon was also keeper of the records and translator of the Association of Blauvelt Descendants, descendants of Gerrit Hendrickszen (Blauvelt), who moved from Deventer to New Netherland in 1638.

His lifelong relationship with the Dutch language made him an authority on the old Dutch language spoken on the East Coast of the United States. However, several of his publications seemed to be suspect.

In 1980 it was established that work of Van Loon was based on forged documents.[2][3] Among his suspect findings is the Tawagonshi treaty. Other discoveries by Van Loon that proved to be false before publication were an early deed to Manhattan, a map of Albany from 1701, and a map of the Hudson River.

Personal life

Van Loon married to Grietje Prins in Alkmaar on 25 August 1932. He retired and moved to Gloversville in 1982, and died there in 1985.

Publications
  • Bachman, Van Cleaf, Alice P. Kenney & Lawrence G. Van Loon. 1980. ‘ “Het Poelmeisie”. An introduction to the Hudson Valley Dutch dialect’. New York History 61, 161-185.
  • Van Loon, L.G. 1938. Crumbs from an old Dutch closet. The Dutch dialect of Old New York. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • Van Loon, L.G. 1939. 'Ave atque Vale, Jersey Lag Duits Verdwijnt'. Onze Taaltuin 8, 91-95, 107-119.

References
  • Sijs, Nicolien van der (2009) Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops. The influence of Dutch on the North American languages Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
  1. Charles T. Gehring, William A. Starna & William N. Fenton: 'The Tawagonshi Treaty of 1613: The Final Chapter'. In: New York History, October 1987, pag. 393
  2. Ch. Gehring: 'Dutch colonial manuscript'. In: De Halve maen. Quarterly magazine of the Dutch colonial period in America, vol. 54 (1979-1980), nr. 3, pag. 4-5, 21
  3. Anthony F. Buccini: 'The dialectal origins of New Netherland Dutch'. In: The Berkeley Conference on Dutch Linguistics 1993. Dutch linguistics in a changing Europe. Lanham, Md, University Press of America, 1995
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