Transcriber’s Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. Italics are represented thus _italic_. THE OLD TOWN [Illustration] THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO [Illustration: “POST OFFICE.”] THE OLD TOWN BY JACOB A. RIIS AUTHOR OF “THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN,” “HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES,” “THE BATTLE WITH THE SLUM,” ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. T. BENDA New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1909 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. TO ALL WHO LOVE THE OLD HOME AND THE OLD FRIENDS THE OLD AND THE NEW How small this world of ours is, and how close we are, all unknowing, to one another! I had set out to write the story of the Old Town with no thought that it touched the land across the seas and its people in any closer way than through these pages, and through the abiding affection of a few of its children who, like myself, have wandered far from home. And while I wrote there fell into my hands the account of a sale of some building lots half a dozen years ago, in Jersey City, part of a property which for three hundred years had belonged to the Van Riepen family. And the Van Riepen name was shown to mean “from Ribe”--the Old Town itself. This is the historical record: From the port of Ribe there sailed in April, 1663, a ship bearing the name _Te Bonte Koe_, meaning “The Brindle Cow,” bound for New Amsterdam with eighty-nine passengers aboard. Among them was one Juriaen Tomasson, a citizen of Ribe, who, four years after reaching these shores, married Pryntje Hermans--to be exact, on May 25, 1667; and died on September 12, 1695. From their union sprang two well-known families, one that twisted the Danish name of Jörgen (Juriaen in the record) into Jurianse, which later became Yearance; and the other the Van Riepen, or Van Ripen, family, which thus preserved the name of the Old Town in its purity of pronunciation. For Ribe is pronounced Reebė. The Germans to this day call it Ripen on their maps.