Sebastian Croll was a
Dutchman said to have been made the first
commissary of
Fort Orange in 1617, which was built on the site of the present-day city of
Albany, New York.
He was also an elder in the "Church in the Fort," which was founded by the Rev.
Jonas Michaelius in 1628.
The last name ''Croll'' is pronounced in
Dutch, similar to the English pronunciation, but according to an upper class widow living in
Hudson, New York in 1909, one Mrs. Anna R. Bradbury, ''Croll'' is pronounced as "crull" in Dutch. Thus she claimed that he introduced the
cruller to the New World, and that she thus believed him to be the
eponym for the pastry. This belief has been repeated in other later US works.
References
People of New Netherland
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