Prologue
Boudewijn Janssen was nineteen, when he left the Netherlands in the early 1620s for the New World. Actually it wasn't him who left, but the ver Planck's and as he happened to be their gofer, he happened to end up in a small Dutch colony at the Delaware River. What use they could have for a gofer in this solitude that didn't have shops, not even proper streets, was beyond him, still they always had paid and treated him good and as Boudewijn wasn't the kind of boy who liked changes, he decided to go with them. Better working for people he knew in a foreign country than working for people he didn't knew in his own country, he told himself. Besides, he liked the scullery-maid of the ver Planck's. Actually he liked her very much and spent a huge amount of time daydreaming more or less x-rated scenarios, although (and because) the scullery-maid couldn't have shown less interest in him. Still Boudewijn hoped to win her over in the land without shops and streets that - as he figured out – therefore would have a lack of men and possible competitors as well.
Boudewijn was unlucky however as Katrine (the scullery-maid who stared in Boudewijn's more or less x-rated daydreams) was one of the girls, who speculated for a social raise through marriage. She only went with the ver Planck's because she had figured out that such a marriage would be much easier to achieve in a land that didn't offer men a wide range of potential candidates for marriage than in a country with thousands of girls.
As she was personable and ambitious, Katrine actually succeeded in winning the attention and favour of the middle Verplanck, the scion of another expatriated Dutch merchant family. But while she already saw herself as the future Mrs. Verplanck, the middle Verplanck only saw her as cheap compensation for his desperately missed Amsterdam prostitutes. Stupidly poor Katrine didn't have the birth control knowledge of those Dutch cocottes and after six years of longing Boudewijn finally was not only the man of the hour, but the man a pregnant and sullen Katrine saw herself forced to say "Yes" to.
Despite the fact, she was married to a gofer without any other ambitions than sharing bed with her, Katrine had no intentions to let the dream of a better life and status go and she was smart enough to use Boudewijn and his blind love and lust alongside the money she had procured from the middle Verplanck after the birth of his bastard son, to influence the faith of the family.
A constantly growing family (Katrine never learned the secrets of the Dutch cocottes the middle Verplanck would mourn until the day he died) with a constantly growing fortune (Katrine had decided that Boudewijn would take part of the profits of the exclusive trading rights of the Dutch West India Company instead of being a gofer for the rest of his life) and when Katrine died in 1661 she did not only leave four children (actually she had given birth to nine, but none of the other five ever saw the age of two), seven grandchildren and five great-grand children (if she would've lived long enough, she would've witnessed the birth of six more), but also a devastated Boudewijn and the cornerstone of what would eventually turn into the empire of the Johnson Trade Inc. (The family changed the name from Janssen to Johnson with the final British takeover of the Dutch colonies). And although the members of the family soon enough looked down on everyone below their status and money; and gofers and scullery-maids were nothing more than a necessary evil in their eyes; they were proud to be one of the first families whose substantial fortune and reputation had its origin in hard and ambitious work. The Johnson's, a descendant of the Dutch gofer and his scullery-maid said on the occasion of a family wedding in the late 1880s, virtually invented the famous American dream.
But just as every family has its black sheep, actually every generation of the Johnson's had one or two of them through the 300 years of American family history. The first one was the Verplanck bastard (Willem Janssen, 1628-1672, who actually had no other faults than being the son of the wrong man), then there was a gambler with a drinking problem (Boudewijn Johnson III, 1689-1757), a alcoholic with a gambling problem (Arthur Johnson, 1713-1762), a alcoholic and gambler (Michael Johnson, 1753-1817); and there was Gilbert Johnson (1755-1832), who neither was a gambler nor a alcoholic, but still happened to be the first one to be repudiate by the family, because he unfortunately had fallen in love and married a dark-eyed Native American beauty in 1774 . The family however welcomed Gilbert back in their (so called) loving arms 27 years later as the Johnson's suffered a family shortage around 1800 (the male/female percentage was 1:7) and Gilbert happened to be the only male Johnson alive without a drinking and/or gambling problem and a male descendant (Carl Johnson, 1776-1859) without a drinking and/or gambling problem and someone simply had to continue family business, even if it were a man who was married to a savage and a man who was a half-savage by blood.
For the following one hundred years there were surprisingly no more black sheep (may it be gamblers, alcoholics or men with a soft spot for dark-eyed savages), only most of the female Johnson's were duffers and as their excesses fortunately had no real input on the healthy male family-line and all had been married away to mercenary bachelors in Europe or Australia, they didn't count or even exist anymore in the minds of the inner family circle. Those one hundred (more or less scandal-free) years can be seen as the calm before the storm; a storm that broke out around the turn of the 20th century with the birth and adolescence of Baldwin Johnson V (1899-1973) and his younger brother Carl Johnson II (1902-1991).
Actually none of both drank or gambled or had a soft spot for dark-eyed savages during their whole lives (which had been the known problems of the male Johnson's so far); however both were predestined to be black sheep thanks to some other innateness.
Baldwin's problem was that he simply had no business sense or interest in politics, economy and trading. He couldn't help this lack, he simply was born with it, and still it turned him into the known maverick of the family (although his younger brother Carl had just the same potential to be the known black sheep of the generation), who probably would've ended in the streets, if Carl (who became the manager of the Johnson Trade Inc. due to Baldwin's lacks) wouldn't have been fair-minded enough to support him with the same interest of the family business he received monthly, although Baldwin never lifted a finger.
Of course Carl wasn't unselfish; he simply had to cope with his own problems: He had no interest in ever getting married as he did not have any interest in the female gender at all. Moreover, growing up between some particularly strange specimens, like hell he would let a woman into his house voluntarily, not even for the purpose of keeping up the appearance. But Carl loved the business and he wanted the business to stay in the closest family line. Therefore, he supported Baldwin financially and in return Baldwin was supposed to give Carl an heir for the family business.
To be honest, Baldwin hadn't much interest in the other gender as well, but unlike Carl it wasn't due to the sexual and romantic preference of men, but due to his over-all and almost abnormal love for art: Baldwin could've died happily between his canvas' without getting married at all. Still Carl pegged away and eventually managed it to set up his already thirty-nine year old brother with the twenty-one years younger Lillian Goldsmith in 1939.
Despite his successful matchmaking and planning Carl failed. Not only did he have to wait years until the first child of Baldwin and Lillian finally was born (Emily Katherine Rose Johnson, 1944), moreover the child was a disappointment for Carl as it was a girl and therefore did not answer his purpose. Same applied for the second child of his brother and sister-in-law (Henriette Pauline Johnson, 1949), who turned out to be another female Johnson (The male/female percentage in the Johnson family was 1:8 by then).
"Listen to me, Baldwin, I'm not going to talk to you until you manage it to procreate a boy. And not another cent - ", Carl yelled at his older brother not five minutes after the birth of Henriette, "- you won't get a single cent anymore until I finally get my nephew", he added, stormed out and never came back as Henriette was the last child Baldwin procreated. Carl never stopped paying Baldwin his fair interest, however. The potential mothers of the looked-for family heir, Carl felt after he had calmed down in the arms of his long-time lover and secretary, shouldn't have to suffer under a bootless and useless father. Besides history had proofed that no reputable man ever had been crazy enough to marry a Johnson woman who had not at least a decent education and an enormous marriage portion. And hell, if he wanted a suitable heir, he had to make sure that those girls would marry reputable men.
To be continued
Author's note: Yes. It's in English :P Thanks to Melanie therefore, my first Beta in donkey's years.