Jacobus van der Puije (c. 1754 – 24 June 1781) was an administrator of the Dutch West India Company. He became President of the council (acting Director-General) of the Dutch Gold Coast in 1780.^[1]

Jacobus van der Puije was born in Middelburg to a family that originally came from Sint-Maartensdijk.^[2] His father was William van der Puije (born 1703).^[3] He was governor of Fort Crèvecoeur in Accra from 1776 till 1780, when he succeeded Pieter Woortman as the colonial governor of the entire Dutch Gold Coast.^[4]

Jacobus van der Puije had a daughter named Anna van der Puije with an enslaved African woman named Asoewa. Anna van der Puije herself was also enslaved and freed for 1 mark of gold, paid for by Jacob Rühle, who subsequently married her.^[4] He also had a son, Peter van der Puije (born c. 1775), with a local Ga woman from Accra by the name of Madam Ayeley Ablah.^[3]

Jacobus van der Puije is the direct patrilineal ancestor of the Vanderpuije (sometimes spelt as Vanderpuye) family in Ghana.^[1] Descendants include politicians Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye and Isaac Nii Djanmah Vanderpuye, newsreader Claudia-Liza Armah-Vanderpuije, actor William Vanderpuye, and musician Joseph Bartlett-Vanderpuye.

• Doortmont, Michel R.; Everts, Natalie; Vrij, Jean Jacques (2000). "Tussen de Goudkust, Nederland en Suriname. De Euro-Afrikaanse families Van Bakergem, Woortman, Rühle en Huydecoper: IV Rühle". De Nederlandsche Leeuw. 117 (11–12): 490–557.
• Doortmont, Michel (2004). The pen-pictures of modern Africans and African celebrities by Charles Francis Hutchison: a collective biography of elite society in the Gold Coast Colony. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9789004140974.