Catharina Trico, born at Prisches (then part of the
Spanish Netherlands) emigrated in the early 17th Century to
Amsterdam. On 13 January 1624, at the age of 18, she married a fellow Walloon immigrant, Joris Raparlie from
Valenciennes, the record of their marriage surviving in Amsterdam archives. The two of them soon afterwards boarded a Dutch ship bound for North America and were among the founders and original inhabitants of
New Amsterdam - which eventually became the present
New York City. Further surviving documents indicate that Catharina and Joris had eleven children, that he died in 1662 but that she was still alive in 1680 - when an English missionary encountered her on
Long Island as an old matriarch with 145 descendants. Genealogists estimate that more than a million people now living, in the US and elsewhere, can trace their descent to her. ==Heraldry==