I grew up in the 1950s in upstate NY and my father used phrases and words that now, looking back, he may have gotten from his grandmother who was a Dezer [Van Dusen] from "English Neighbordhood", New Jersey.  It didn't occur to me at the time but a friend spent some time in Europe about two years ago and wrote phrases that I recognized.  I can't spell it but he would say "Come here" in the language which meant, to us, not to go anywhere near him because he was angry.  His grandmother was noted for her temper and this insight was a revelation to me.  He unfortunately is no longer here to ask.  He also said things like be careful not to hit your "noggin" and dumbkopff (sp).
  Otherwise there was little to no mention of having Dutch ancestry.

Honor

>>> [log in to unmask] 11/12/02 11:46AM >>>
When I was a little boy in the early 1950's, in one of the hill towns of Albany County, there was a vigorous old farmer who still spoke Dutch, learned from his family, who were among the early 17th century settlers in New Netherlands. There are also some Dutch borrow-words peculiar to the hilltowns and Schoharie County.

>>> [log in to unmask] 11/07/02 06:01PM >>>
The message below was sent to the Mountain Top Historical Society in Haines
Falls (Greene County, NY) and subsequently forwarded to me, requesting that I
pass it along to someone who might be able to help this gentleman. Please
contact him at <[log in to unmask]> if you can help. Thanks. Patricia
Morrow, Windham Town Historian
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Delivered-To: [log in to unmask]
From: "Marco Evenhuis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002

Hi,

I am interested in the remains of the Dutch language as a language of
colonists abroad. I visited your website and thought that maybe your society
could help me find some more information about the linguistic heritage in the
Catskill region.

A friend of mine wrote me the following: "I used to own a house on a
mountaintop in the Catskills and several of my neighbors who were born just
before or after WW II told me that Dutch was spoken in their homes as a daily
language when they were growing up."

Since Dutch linguists never did any research in the area that was once the
colony of New Netherland, they assumed and still assume that what a few local
scholars wrote them, was correct: "The Dutch dialects of Jersey Dutch, Albany
Dutch and Mohawk Dutch, spoken in NJ en NY State, died out around 1900. There
are no speakers left."

I find that this statement, that has been copied over and over again into all
popular and scientific publications about the Dutch language in America, is
incorrect and needs to be refined. Almost without any effort, I already found
some people who claim that a family member still spoke Dutch in the 1950s and
60s.

The reason that I write you this e-mail is to see if you can help me with the
following question: do you have any idea untill when (colonial) Dutch was the
home language for a significant part of Dutch descended families in the
Catskills region and do you know if there might still be some people around
that maybe still know (some of) the language? The latter sounds more far
sought then it actually is given the information that my friend came up with
as well as the fact that in 1998 I found a handful of speakers of Berbice
Creole Dutch in Guyana, a language that was considered to have already died
out in the 1880s or 90s.

If you cannot help me answer these questions, maybe you know someone who can
help me. I am not really interested in the help of 'professional linguists',
because they tend to follow the general assumption the language already died
out a century or at least half a century ago without any further research.

Greetings from the Netherlands!

Marco Evenhuis