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Jeremy Bangs
American historian and author From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Dr. Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs (20 January 1946 – 26 August 2023) was an American historian, scholar, and the former director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum. Bangs was known for his research on the pilgrims and authored eleven books covering early modern Dutch, English and American history.
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Early life and education
Bangs was born on 20 January 1946 in Astoria, Oregon. He had two siblings; Carl and Jeanne.[1]
His father, Carl O. Bangs PhD'58 (1922 - 2002), was a church historian and theology professor, who taught at Olivet Nazarene College, and later at the Saint Paul School of Theology.[2] Carl was an expert on Jacob Arminius, and in later years, wrote Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (1998).[3]
His mother, Marjorie Friesen (1922 - 2002) grew up in a Russian Mennonite family, and was a member of the American Guild of Organists.[4]
Bangs was raised in Chicago and Missouri. At high school, he was interested in art and history, but as a talented bassoonist, was accepted into the Julliard School.[5]
Despite his musical talent, he studied Art History at the University of Chicago. In 1968, he left for London after his friends suffered police brutality during the U.S. summer riots.[6]
He completed his doctorate at Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in 1976, where he wrote his dissertation on 16th-century Dutch tapestry weaving and church furnishings.[7]
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Career
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His doctorate led to a position working at the Leiden Municipal Archives, where he became an expert on the Pilgrims in Leiden. In 1986, he was Visiting Distinguished Professor of Art History at Arizona State University.[8]
Bangs worked as Chief Curator at Plimouth Plantation from 1986 to 1991. He then worked as Visiting Curator of MSS at Pilgrim Hall Museum and as Assistant Archivist at Scituate Town Archives from 1993 to 1996. After travelling to Holland accessioning historical artefacts, Bangs emigrated there in 1996.
On Thanksgiving Day in 1997, Bangs opened the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, on the ground floor of the city's oldest[9] townhouse, built around 1367-1370.[10] The museum reportedly saw 2,000 visitors annually.[11]
In 1998, The New York Times reported that the Dutch government had ordered Bangs to repatriate himself to the U.S. during widespread arrests on unauthorised migrants. [12]
In October 2000, Bangs was invited to the annual Leiden Ontzet feasts, to commerorate the end of the Siege of Leiden (1574). He asserted that the Pilgrims adopted this tradition in the New World, originating from a Dutch Calvinist philosophy of 'rejecting the fixed medieval ecclesiastical calendar in favour of holy days'.[13]
Further, Bangs argued that English Separatists who sailed on The Mayflower had developed a sense of religious tolerance through their persecution, that led them to carry the principle of a separate church and state.[14] His 2009 work, Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation, states that, unlike the English Puritans who sought to a establish a theocracy in Massachusetts, Pilgrim colonists were far more tolerant of other faiths, and allowed women to speak in church.[15]
Dr. Bangs spent much of his career transcribing the Plymouth Colony archives.
In his later years, Bangs walked with a cane after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.[16] On 26 August 2023, he died following a period of ill health.
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Honours
In 2017, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and the Pilgrim Academic Research Committee awarded him the annual Pilgrim Academic Research Award.[17]
Bangs was named as a Knight on the Order of Oranje-Nassau by King Willem-Alexander. At the King's birthday celebrations on 27 April 2018, the mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink, presented his knighthood.[18] The civilian title given is 'Ridder'.
In 2019 he was honorarily adopted by the Cothutikut Mattakeeset Massachusett tribe, and presented with a wampum belt and blanket in recognition of his work on Indian deeds.[19]
Publications
- Cornelis Engebrechtsz.'s Leiden (1979)[20]
- The Pilgrims in the Netherlands Recent Research : Papers Presented at a Symposium Held by the Leiden Pilgrim Documents Center and the Sir Thomas Browne Institute[21] (1985)
- The seventeenth-century town records of Scituate, Massachusetts[22] (1999)
- Church Art and Architecture in the Low Countries Before 1566 (1997)[23]
- Pilgrim Life in Leiden: Texts and Images from the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum (1997)
- Indian Deeds: Land Transactions in Plymouth Colony, 1620-1691 (2002)[24]
- Pilgrim Edward Winslow: New England's First International Diplomat : a Documentary Biography (2004)[25]
- Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners: Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation (2009)[26]
- The Travels of Elkanah Watson: An American Businessman in the Revolutionary War, in 1780s Europe and in the Formative Decades of the United States (2015)[27]
- New Light on the Old Colony: Plymouth, the Dutch Context of Toleration, and Patterns of Pilgrim Commemoration (2019)[28]
- Letters on Toleration: Dutch Aid to Persecuted Swiss and Palatine Mennonites 1615-1699[29]
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References
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