USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82
44
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
and that not his nationality, but the flag under which he sailed, fixed the sovereignty of his discoveries. Furthermore they had followed the discovery by a return voyage in 1610; by the grant of a trading charter in 1614; and by the organization of the Dutch West India Company in 1621 ; and not only so, but had bought the land from the natives who originally owned it.
The English replied to the latter argument that the Indians were nomads who were not bona fide owners of the land, and had no right to sell it. Each nation held to its ground, but internal troubles made the English hesitate to enforce their claims, and without admitting the Dutch contention they postponed further action and released the Eendracht. Minuit thus dropped out of the history of Manhattan. He was again in America, however, in 1638, planting a Swedish colony on the Delaware River on behalf of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.
The administration of Minuit seems to have been characterized by zeal and efficiency. It was a time of beginnings, and the settlements in New Netherland were small, the total population of Fort Amsterdam two hundred and seventy in 1628, which included the Dutch settlers of Fort Orange who had been called from there to Fort Amsterdam because of the unsafe conditions up river where there had been trouble with the Indians.
Several industries were begun upon a primitive scale. There was a gristmill, operated by horse power, to which a sawmill was added; brick- making was tried, but proved a failure; but the principal industry aside from farming was that of cutting timber, of which the supply was greater than could be utilized in the colony or shipped, with the facilities at hand. There were two Walloon shipbuilders who had looked with wonder at the tall and straight timber of the region, and they conceived the idea that it would be a most profitable thing in itself, besides being a valuable exhibit of the timber resources of the colony, if a vessel larger than any that then sailed the seas should be built there and launched. Director Minuit encouraged the project and insured its success, by guaranteeing a financial backing from the West India Company, with the result that there was built and launched in the har- bor of New York, in 1630, the ship New Netherland, said by some authori- ties to have been of twelve hundred tons burden, but at any rate sufficiently large to merit the name of "The Great Ship."
A familiar view of social conditions in Fort Amsterdam during the administration of Peter Minuit was discovered in 1858 among the archives of the Classis of Amsterdam, in a letter dated August 1I, 1628, from Rev. Jonas Michaelius, the first regularly ordained clergyman in New Netherland, to a brother clergyman, Rev. Adrianus Smoutius, of Amsterdam. Another letter from Michaelius, to Johannes Foreest of Hoorn, was found in 1902. He went to New Netherland in 1628 with his wife, two little girls, and a boy,
45
BASTIAEN JANSZEN CROL'S ADMINISTRATION
meeting such hardships and privations that his wife died seven weeks after his arrival at Fort Amsterdam. Another of the incidents told of Director Minuit's administration has been derived from this letter, and from one written by Isaac de Rasières, secretary of the colony.
Before the arrival of Domine Michaelius the religious interests of the small settlement had been looked after by two laymen, Bastiaen Janszen Crol and Jan Huygen, who were what was called Krankenbezoeckers, or visitors of the sick; and in addition to the duties indicated by their name they read to the people on Sundays "from texts of Scripture with the creed." The meeting place in these earliest days had been over the horse-mill, in "a spacious room sufficient to accommodate a large congregation," and above it a tower, surmounted by church bells captured by the Dutch from the Spaniards in Porto Rico. Pastor Michaelius at his first service had fully fifty communicants, Walloons and Dutch, which was a goodly number for a settle- ment of less than three hundred persons. Because some of the Walloons understood but little Dutch, the pastor administered the Lord's Supper to them in French, and read his sermon in French, not feeling sure enough of his own French to attempt extempore preaching in that tongue. For elders of his church, in the organization formed by Michaelius, he had the two krankenbezoeckers above mentioned, of whom Crol was director of the post at Fort Orange, and Jan Huygen was the West India Company's storekeeper, and a brother-in-law of Governor Minuit, who also served as elder, an office he had formerly filled in the French or Walloon Church at Wesel. The consistory formed by these elders with Pastor Michaelius is still alive under the name of the Consistory of the Collegiate Church of the City of New York, the oldest organization in America representing the Presbyterian system, and the first organization of the church now officially known as the Reformed Church in America, but still in popular speech the "Reformed Dutch Church."
Director-General Minuit was succeeded as director-general of New Netherland by Bastiaen Janszen Crol (or Krol), mentioned above, who held the office until the arrival of Wouter (or Walter ) van Twiller in 1633. It has generally been accepted as history that Van Twiller was the direct suc- cessor of Peter Minuit in the office, but Mrs. Schuyler van Rensselaer, in her recently published History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Cen- tury, shows conclusively from the Van Rensselaer papers that Crol had been appointed by the directors of the West India Company to the office, as he him- self describes it, of "Director-General of New Netherland at Fort Amsterdam on the island Manhates lying in the mouth of the aforesaid North River also named Mauritius, and served in this office thirteen months." It is quite probable that his was only an ad interim appointment, but he filled the office for the period named and exercised the executive authority.
le
er Je
[
it
e
a
1 -
46
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
NEW AMSTERDAM (NEW YORK) ABOUT 1667
C H A P T E R
F I V
E
NEW AMSTERDAM UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION OF DIRECTOR-GENERAL WOUTER VAN TWILLER
Wouter van Twiller, third of the directors-general of New Netherland, was a nephew of the patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer. He had been in New Netherland before, probably in connection with the selection of the lands about Fort Orange, for his relative, in 1629. When appointed director-general he sailed for Fort Amsterdam on the ship Soutberg (Salt Mountain), which reached its destination in April, 1633. Jan van Remund, who had succeeded De Rasières as secretary a year or two before the recall of Peter Minuit, and had made the complaints which had led to Minuit's dismissal, was sent back as secretary, in the Soutberg, with Van Twiller; but part of its former duties had been separated from that office and were conferred upon Cornelis van Tienhoven, who came on the same vessel, with the title of Bookkeeper of Wages. There also came Domine Everardus Bogardus, a clergyman sent by the company to take the place of Michaelius; and Adam Roelantsen, who was the first schoolmaster officially sent to Fort Amsterdam, although the school itself had already been established by Domine Michaelius. This school has continued to exist ever since, except for the interruption of the Revolu- tion, and is now known as the School of the Collegiate Reformed Church in the City of New York. Mrs. Van Rensselaer calls attention to the fact, that as it was "founded two years before the Boston Latin School, it is the oldest school in the United States." The other passengers on the Soutberg included a company of one hundred and four soldiers, and the four members of Van Twiller's council-Captain John Jansen Hesse, Martin Gerritsen, Andreas Hudde and Jacques Bentyn. Conrad Notelman, who had served as schout- fiscal, or sheriff, under Crol, was retained in that office.
One of the incidents of the voyage of the Soutberg had been the capture of a Spanish bark, or caravel, laden with sugar.
One of the partners in the patroonship of Swanendael on the South (Delaware) River was David Pieterz de Vries, of Hoorn, who was an explorer and mariner of distinction. After the massacre of the first colony on the South River he had tried to plant another at the same place, first going to the land and making satisfactory arrangements with the Indians. But he found settlers shy about going to a place where their predecessors in settlement had been butchered, and after a visit to Virginia, where he was pleasantly received by the governor, Sir John Harvey, he sailed north, and anchored off the island of Manhattan, April 16, 1633, and at once made the acquaintance of the director-general, Van Twiller, who had arrived a few days before, and
48
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
to whom also he had brought some goats and a ram as a present from the governor of Virginia.
Two days later an English ship, The William, sailed through the Nar- rows and anchored in New York Bay, off Fort Amsterdam. The vessel, owned by a company of London merchants, was commanded by Jacob Eelkens, who had formerly been the agent of the Dutch West India Company at Fort Nassau. Eelkens, incensed at his dismissal, had entered the English service and had now arrived with the intention of sailing up the river to trade with
WRATH OF VAN TWILLER
the natives. De Vries tells us that Eelkens made Van Twiller acquainted with his purpose to the effect that he had come to the possessions of the English king to trade on Hudson's River which had been discovered by Henry Hud- son, a subject of His Late Majesty, James I, and set forth the other points of the argument for English sovereignty. Van Twiller replied that the river was not Hudson's, but the Mauritius River, and that all the surrounding regions were the possessions of their High Mightinesses the States-General and the Prince of Orange, their Stadtholder. He ordered the Orange colors to be displayed from the flagstaff at Fort Amsterdam, and three shots to be fired in honor of the prince. Eelkens in defiance ran the English ensign to the fore, and fired three shots in honor of King Charles, then weighed anchor and sailed up the river.
49
JACOB EELKINS SENT HOME WITHOUT A CARGO
De Vries stands high as a veracious chronicler, and he tells how Van Twiller broke out in a rage; but instead of using his forces to intercept the intruder, he called upon the people of Fort Amsterdam to assemble on the riverbank just outside the fort, then, ordering a cask of wine to be brought, he called upon them to drain a bumper to the confusion of The William and its commander and to the success of the Prince of Orange. However satis- factory this may have been to Van Twiller, it disgusted De Vries, who had made several voyages to the East Indies, where similar encroachments of the English had met a very different reception. He berated Van Twiller for cow- ardice, and said that had he had the command he would have made Eelkens obey "by the persuasion of some iron beans sent him from our guns, and would not have allowed him to go up the river." He suggested that there was yet time to defeat the plans of Eelkens. The well-armed Soutberg, which had brought the director-general from Amsterdam, was still at anchor- age, and a force of over one hundred soldiers was under his command. Why not pursue The William and prevent the success of its errand?
Van Twiller, after several days' deliberation, sent under command of Crol, the former director-general, a pursuing force up the river, including a part of the soldiers, but not the man-of-war; the expedition including a pinnace, the caravel captured by the Soutberg and a hoy. Eelkens had established him- self on an island near Fort Orange and was carrying on a successful trade with the Indians. The Fort Orange settlers beat the Indians who came to trade with Eelkens, so far as they could catch them, but offered no personal resistance to Eelkens himself. When the soldiers from Fort Amsterdam arrived he had collected a large supply of furs, ready to load the vessel. The soldiers forced Eelkens to stop trading operations, made the English sailors put the furs on board The William, convoyed that vessel to Fort Amster- dam, and when they arrived there Eelkens was made to give up the peltries and return to England without a cargo.
The owners of The William complained to the English Government and a claim for damages was made through the Dutch ambassador to the States- General, by whom it was referred to the West India Company. The whole matter again came up for argument, the result being a request by the West India Company that the two governments should amicably settle the dispute by agreeing upon a boundary line between New Netherland and New Eng- land. In anticipation of this being done, Van Twiller bought from the Indians large areas of land, including the tract which now includes the City of Hart- ford, and other lands within the region claimed by the Dutch by right of dis- covery. This action met with opposition from the Plymouth and Massachu- setts colonists, who sent companies to settle on the Connecticut lands. The details of these disputes, or of those which arose in the South in regard to
4
D
L
50
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
English claims to the land occupied by the Dutch on the Delaware have only an incidental connection with the history of the City of New York. They were very real and very troublesome to Van Twiller.
The director-general had somewhat improved the settlement, and espe- cially the fort, which was unfinished at the time of his arrival. This he repaired and rebuilt, adding one or more stone bastions. Inside the fort, on what is now Pearl Street between Broad and Whitehall Streets, he built a wooden church, into which Domine Bogardus' congregation moved from the room over the horse-mill; and a house and stable for the Domine; built a house for the cooper, the smith, and the corporal; another house for the mid- wife-all of these being servants of the company, and also built a bakery, a stable for the goats which the Governor of Virginia had sent, and which increased quite rapidly ; and he threw a bridge across the creek which flowed through the centre of the town. Conrad Notelman, the schout-fiscal, was superseded in 1634 by Lubbertus van Dincklagen, who was a doctor of laws, and afterward proved a serious trouble to Director-General Van Twiller.
That official was not a person calculated to build up a new colony to greatness. He was much addicted to wine, and De Vries, who while trading much all over New Netherland, made his headquarters at Fort Amsterdam, has told of many orgies in which Van Twiller took part which ended in drunken quarrels. He and his companions took care of themselves in the way of grants, the director taking not only Nut Island, since called Governors Island, but also several islands in the East River, then called Hell Gate, and with Andreas Hudde, a councilor; Wolfert Gerritsen, a relative of Councilor Gerritsen; and the trumpeter at the fort, Jacob van Corlaer, he obtained pos- session of fifteen thousand acres, now comprised in the town of Flatlands on Long Island, and later called New Amersfoot by another settler, after the town in the province of Utrecht, from which he came. The title to the fif- teen thousand acres was purchased from the Indians, but was not confirmed by the West India Company, which was not notified of the transaction. In Manhattan several farms or bouweries were granted to families by Van Twiller. One of these comprising thirty-one morgens (about sixty acres) was granted to Roelof Janssen, who with his wife and children, had been sent out to Rensselaerswyck in 1630. He removed to Manhattan and secured the grant, which was located in the region north of the company's Bouwerie No. I, and south of the swampy ground on which Canal Street was afterward laid out. He died soon after the grant was made, and his wife, commonly known as Annetje or Anneke Jans, inherited the farm. She was a daughter of the official midwife, for whom a house was built at the fort. She did not remain a widow very long, for Domine Bogardus, who was a widower, mar- ried her, and the farm was popularly known as the Domine's Bouwerie. This
51
CHARACTER OF WOUTER VAN TWILLER
grant was afterward confirmed to Mrs. Anneke Bogardus by Governor Stuy- vesant, in 1654, after the shipwreck and death of the Domine, to whom she had borne four children to add to the family of four she had borne her first husband. After the English captured the province the grant was confirmed to her heirs, who sold it in 1671 to Colonel Lovelace, though one of the heirs failed to join in the conveyance. It was then joined to the King's Farm (formerly known as the Company's Bouwerie No. I), adjoining, and with it was presented in 1703 to Trinity Church. Under the name of "Anneke Jans' farm" it became the subject of numerous lawsuits in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
Jacobus van Corlaer, who had obtained the first recorded patent on Long Island, also received one in the most eastern part of Manhattan, still to be identified by the name of "Corlaer's Hook," which survives, and another in the fertile flatlands then known as Muscoota, but later by the name of Har- lem Flats. It was the first plantation in Harlem and the site of the town of Harlem founded in later years.
Near that Corlaer grant was one settled by Henry and Isaac de Forest, sons of Jesse de Forest. They came to Fort Amsterdam on the ship Rensse- laerswyck in 1637, Henry de Forest being mate and supercargo of that ship. Their lands included part of what is now Mount Morris Park. Henry de Forest died soon after receiving the land, but Isaac, who became a resident of New Amsterdam, was the father of fourteen children, and is the progen- itor of all the American De Forests, among whom many have attained dis- tinction in New York and elsewhere. In 1638 the De Forest brothers were joined by their sister and her husband, Jean la Montagne, a French physi- cian, who was the founder of the well-known La Montagne family of New" York, and who soon after his arrival took a prominent place in the govern- ment of New Netherland.
Van Twiller appears in the light of history to have been a very incom- petent governor. He lacked, in the first place, the training for executive position. His uncle, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, wrote to him frequently, giving him good advice, but he was neglectful of many things. He seldom reported to the company, he was too fond of wine, he neglected the buildings he had erected for the company, cultivated the company's Bouwerie No. I for his own benefit, used the company's negroes in the cultivation of his private tobacco plantation, and used his office to enrich himself.
De Vries makes much of his cowardice with the English ship The William; but it may have been prudence rather than cowardice which inspired him then, as he was under explicit instructions from the company to avoid armed con- flicts with those nations which were at peace with the Netherlands. Van Twiller on behalf of the company had bought back all of the patroonships in
it
52
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
New Netherland except that of Rensselaerswyck, which belonged to his uncle, in whose interests his enemies charged him with exhibiting too much zeal. Another source of weakness to Van Twiller was his quarrel with Domine Bogardus. The latter was a very different sort of pastor from Michaelius, who seemed to have the temperament, as he had the experience to fit him for the building up of a church in a new place. Bogardus had a violent temper, and Van Twiller had no special respect for the cloth. Among the complaints against Van Twiller which reached the company some of the strongest came from the Domine. Still stronger was the report made by Lubbertus van Dincklagen, who had succeeded Conrad Notelman as schout-fiscal, to which office he had brought excellent abilities and legal training. He protested against the conduct of Van Twiller, who was so incensed that he refused to pay the salary of the schout-fiscal and finally dismissed him and sent him back to Holland. This proved to be the undoing of the director, for Van Dincklagen made complaint against Van Twiller before the States-General. He was referred backward and forward, but his legal ability enabled him to compel a hearing and prove his charges, with the result that the directors sent a letter of recall to Van Twiller, and on September 2, 1637, Wilhelm Kieft was commissioned his successor. It was several years, however, before Van Dincklagen collected his salary from the company.
Van Twiller was not without his good points; his dealings with the Indians were marked by firmness and justice, and he showed in these transac- tions that he was capable of good administration; but his local official acts and his personal conduct justify historians in placing him among the most incom- petent and least honorable of men ever intrusted with important governmental powers.
C
H
A
P T E R
S
I
X
THE ADMINISTRATION OF WILHELM KIEFT AS DIRECTOR-GENERAL TROUBLE WITH THE INDIANS
Wilhelm Kieft, the new governor, sailed for New Netherland in Septem- ber, 1637, but wintered in Bermuda and did not arrive in the colony until March, 1638. The settlement had come to be called "New Amsterdam" instead of "Fort Amsterdam," though the fort remained as the chief feature of the town. Kieft found the town to be in bad shape. The fort and build- ings erected by Van Twiller were badly in need of repairs; only one of the three windmills was in working order; the company's employees were engaged in smuggling, and its cattle had been sold to up-river settlers and their lands had gone out of cultivation; and most of the vessels were leaky or for other reasons out of commission.
Cornelis van Tienhoven, who had been Bookkeeper of Wages under Van Twiller, was promoted Koopman or Secretary of the Province. Ulrich Lupold, who had served as schout-fiscal since Van Dincklagen had been sent to Holland, continued in that office until the arrival, in 1839, of Cornelis van der Huyghens, sent out to be schout-fiscal by the company, at which time Kieft appointed Lupold commissary of stores. Kieft arranged the government of the province on a more autocratic plan than that followed by his predecessors in the director-generalship. He was permitted to choose councilors for him- self, and chose only one, the newly arrived Huguenot physician, Dr. Jean la Montagne, who had one vote in council, the director-general retaining two votes.
Van Twiller, though summoned home by the company, did not return to Holland for more than a year. He leased the company's Bouwerie No. I from Governor Kieft, from whom he also secured a grant of a hundred mor- gens of land near the Bossen Bouwerie, and leased from Jacobus van Corlaer his Long Island "flat-lands." He returned to Holland in 1639, but long retained his property in New Netherland, where Governor Kieft acted as his agent.
Domine Bogardus remained at his post in New Amsterdam. Van Dinck- lagen, in Holland, had taken reports to Amsterdam about Bogardus, not much more complimentary than those he had carried about Van Twiller. The Domine wrote to the officials of the Classis of Amsterdam asking leave to go to the Fatherland to defend himself against the charges of the deposed schout- fiscal, but the reply came for him to remain at his post, "so that the Church of God may increase more and more every day."
54
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
Prior to the administration of Governor Kieft there are no official records now existing except a few land patents. The records of the administrations of Minuit, Crol and Van Twiller were doubtless taken to Amsterdam by the latter when he sailed thither in 1639; as Kiliaen van Rensselaer in a letter of that date claimed that Van Twiller had shown all his books and papers to the directors of the company in disproof of Van Dincklagen's charges against him; and an affidavit of Cornelis Melyn tells about getting from Van Twiller, in 1840, written information with a copy of the deed or bill of sale connected with the purchase of Staten Island by Governor Minuit. These most ancient of official papers were possibly included in the waste-paper sale in Amsterdam, in 1828, of which mention has formerly been made.
The earliest ordinances of Kieft's council of two, preserved in the State archives, relate to the traffic in furs, which was forbidden to all free persons except as the Charter of Freedoms prescribed, while employees of the com- pany, high and low, were absolutely prohibited from taking any part in the fur trade, and the selling of guns or ammunition to Indians was declared to be a capital offense. The ordinances were not only directed against these manifestly public offenses, but also included regulations against the absence of sailors from their ships after nightfall; fixing hours for beginning and ceas- ing daily work and prohibiting idleness and slackness during the working hours; establishing a passport system, which prohibited all persons from leav- ing the island without written permission; restricting the liquor traffic; and ordinances against rebellion, theft, perjury, slander, "carnal intercourse with heathens, blacks or other persons;" and establishing an excise and inspection system for tobacco.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.