USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 11
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VOL. I. - H
REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS: Col. Docs., I (398) ; Cal. S. P. Col., 1574-1660 (485) ; Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts (513). GENERAL AUTHORITIES : Wassenaer, Historisch Verhael (216) ; O'Calla-
ghan, Hist. of New Netherland, I (382) ; Brodhead, Hist. of New York, I (405).
WEST INDIA COMPANY TO THE STATES GENERAL (quoted) : Col. Docs., I.
BAUDARTIUS (quoted) : Extract from his Gedenkwaardige Geschieden- issen in Doc. Hist., IV (397).
SARAH RAPELYE: Original of Family Register in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Library ; printed in Valentine's Manual, 1869 (508) .- Bergen, Genealogy of the Descendants of Hans Hansen Bergen (67) ; Ber- gen, The Bergen Family (66) ; Stiles, Hist. of Brooklyn (293) ; Riker, Annals of Newtown (300) - DEPOSITIONS OF CATALINA TRICO : in Doc. Hist., III. - "FIRST-BORN CHRISTIAN DAUGH- TER": Petition of Sarah Joresey in Col. Docs., XIV.
JAN VINJE: Innes, New Amsterdam and Its People (357) ; Riker, Har- lem (209). - LABADIST FATHERS (cited) : Dankers and Sluyter, Journal of a Voyage to New York (530).
PETER MINUIT: Jameson, Willem Usselinx (507) ; Mickley, Some Ac- count of William Usselinx and Peter Minuit (322) ; Cort and Mur- ray, eds., Minuit Memorial Services (319) ; Kapp, Peter Minnewit aus Wesel (320).
SCHAGHEN LETTER: Original in Royal Archives, the Hague; facsimile in Versteeg, Manhattan in 1628 (305), in Mem. Hist., I (408), and in Shonnard and Spooner, Westchester County (538); printed in Col. Docs., I.
TOPOGRAPHY OF MANHATTAN : Hill and Waring, Old Wells and Water- Courses of Manhattan (536) ; Viele, Topography of New York (498).
1
PEREL STRAET : Pearl Street (434).
VAN TIENHOVEN (quoted) : his Information for Taking up Land in New Netherland in Col. Docs., I, and in Doc. Hist., IV.
TOWN AND FORT: Wilson, New York Old and New (413) ; Innes, Neu Amsterdam and Its People; Valentine, Hist. of the Fort in Neu York (190).
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REFERENCE NOTES
DE RASIERES' LETTER TO BLOMMAERT: Original in Royal Archives, the Hague; printed in Morton, New England's Memorial, ed. of 1855 (367), and in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1848 (214).
VAN RENSSELAER (quoted) : in Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts. JACOBSEN MAP : reproduced in Col. Docs., I.
MICHAELIUS : Ecc. Records, I (167) ; Manual of Ref. Church (96). -
His LETTER TO FOREEST, Dutch text and translation in Versteeg, Manhattan in 1628. - His LETTER TO SMOUTIUS : facsimile, Dutch text, and translation in Murphy, Jonas Michaelius (316) ; printed in Col. Docs., II, Appendix, in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1881, in Ecc. Records, I, and in Booth, Hist. of New York, Appendix (404).
REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH: Ecc. Records; Manual of Ref. Church; Records of the Reformed Church (97); Demarest, Hist. of the Re- formed Church (98); De Witt, Discourses (94).
LETTER OF BRADFORD AND ALLERTON : in Amer. Hist. Review, VIII (52).
CORRESPONDENCE OF MINUIT, DE RASIERES, AND BRADFORD : Ply- mouth Colony Records (442) ; Bradford, Hist. of Plymouth Planta- tion (441), and Letter-Book in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1st Series, III; extracts in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1841; Prince, Chronological Hist. of New England (366) ; Morton, New England's Memorial, ed. of 1855.
TREATY OF SOUTHAMPTON : Col. Docs., III; Clarendon Papers (101). CHARTER OF FREEDOMS AND EXEMPTIONS : in Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts [Dutch text and best translation], in Col. Docs., II, in O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Netherland, I, in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1841, and in Dunlap, Hist. of New York, II, Appendix (401).
PATROONSHIPS : De Lancey, Manors in New York (306).
LAND PATENTS : Paauw's in Col. Docs., XIII, and in O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Netherland, II, Appendix; Godyn's in Col. Docs., I and XII; Van Rensselaer's in Col. Docs., I, and [facsimile] in Mem. Hist., I.
STATEN ISLAND : Cornelis Melyn MSS., New York Hist. Soc. Library.
KILIAEN VAN RENSSELAER and RENSSELAERSWYCK: Col. Docs., XIV; Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts; De Roever, Kiliaen van Rensselaer en sijne Kolonie Rensselaerswijck (515) ; Spooner, The Van Rensselaer Family (514ª) ; Schuyler, Colonial New York (395); Barnard, Discourse on the Life of Stephen Van Rens- selaer (514) ; annals and histories of Albany.
CHAPTER IV
MISMANAGEMENT
1630-1636
(GOVERNOR MINUIT, GOVERNOR CROL, GOVERNOR VAN TWILLER)
In the infancy of this country the directors adopted wrong plans and, in our opinion, looked more to their own profit than to the coun- try's welfare. - Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States General of the United Netherlands. 1649.
LITTLE is known of Governor Minuit's administration for, barring a few land patents, the official records have disap- peared. The Michaelius letters, however, the Van Rensselaer papers, and the references to Minuit's time in New Netherland documents of later days suffice to show that there was constant quarrelling on Manhattan and constant disputing among the directors of the West India Company at Amsterdam.
Many evil tongues vilified Minuit, says Van Rensselaer, especially the tongue of the 'crafty knave' Jan Van Remund. Sent out in 1628 to replace De Rasières as secretary of the province, he was doing his best to excite the minister against the governor. The minister's letter to Foreest went by the hands of one of the councillors who, dissatisfied with the Company's course, was thinking of leaving the province for good. He had done 'faithful service,' Michaelius wrote. According to another councillor, Simon Dircksen Pos, no official was doing such service. Writing to Van Rensselaer in the autumn of 1630 Pos said that the farmers on Manhat- tan were daily ploughing and harrowing so much land that they needed more seed-corn from Holland; a good deal of rye and wheat was ready to be delivered, and therefore the
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directors should soon be relieved of one of their 'great ex- penses,' the provisioning of their people. On the other hand there were as yet no more than two or three hundred people on the island, and the governor and the secretary were so 'embittered' against each other that they entirely neglected their duties :
Here all is left to drift as it will. They let trade slip away and show no zeal to increase it, either by sloops or otherwise, but accuse each other in exorbitant lawsuits and defame each other's walk and con- versation to the Lords. The minister, Jonas Michelzoon, is very zealous in stirring up the fire between them; it would beseem him to be a mediator in God's church and community; but he seems to me to be the contrary.
Consequently the 'Lords Directors' heard from their under- lings in New Netherland nothing but 'idle propositions,' one saying one thing and one another while, as none looked after trade, other people in the meantime ran away with the furs. The settlers were sending them away secretly in their chests, and the English were likely to thrust the New Netherlanders from the traffic on Buzzard's Bay.
According to Michaelius also 'some of the directors and heads' had 'by bad management ... rather kept back than helped the people and the country' while many of the people had wanted to live in idleness, saying that if they had to work they might as well have stayed in Holland, and that if they were in the service of the Company it mattered not whether they did much or little. But such persons were 'reshipped home as useless ballast,' things were already going better in 1628, and they would continue to improve if the Company would send out good laborers and take due care to supply its people's needs. Nor does it seem as though Minuit can have been quite as supine as Pos declared, for the exports from the province trebled during the six years that he governed it, amounting in round numbers in 1626 to 45,000 guilders, in 1630 to 68,000, and in 1632 to almost 150,000. The goods received from the Company in these same years were valued
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at 20,300, 57,500, and 31,300 guilders. In 1628, however, the Company had sent out no supplies, in 1631 it had received no furs at all. De Laet gives similar figures in a history of the West India Company which contains no other facts about New Netherland: in the nine years between 1624 and 1632 the Company had received more than 63,000 skins, almost all beavers, worth 454,000 guilders, and had consigned to the province 273,000 guilders' worth of goods, sending once dur- ing a single year four ships, usually two or three, twice only one. More timber was cut and sawed, says Domine Michael- ius, than there were ships to carry away, and various indus- tries were started although not with much success :
They bake brick here but it is very poor. There is good material for burning lime, namely oyster shells in large quantities. The burn- ing of potash has not succeeded; the master and his laborers are all greatly disappointed. There is good opportunity for making salt.
Certainly the governor had shown energy and good sense in opening trade with Plymouth; and he showed energy at least when, in 1631, he subsidized certain Swedish shipwrights who, bringing the timber from far up the North River, built at Manhattan a great ship called the New Netherland. It was fitted to carry thirty guns and according to some accounts was of six hundred tons burden, according to others of eight hundred. It was one of the largest merchantmen afloat, and not for two hundred years was another as large launched in the same waters. Sent at once to Holland and employed in the West India trade, everywhere it excited wonder by its size and by the excellence and variety of the timber used in its construction. But it was so costly that the Company blamed Minuit for building it; and in after years the colonists cited it as one among many proofs that the Company had grossly mismanaged their affairs while in the same sense they complained of the ill-judged attempts to make lime, potash, and salt.
The brig Blessing of the Bay, the first decked vessel built in Massachusetts, which was also launched in 1631, was of but
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thirty tons burden and was intended simply to gather corn from the Indians along the coast. The first New England vessel sent across the Atlantic was built in 1638.
Naturally the fact that things were not going well on Man- hattan strengthened the party in the Amsterdam Chamber which had always opposed colonization; and the quarrel between Minuit and Van Remund intensified the disputing at home, for Van Rensselaer supported the governor while the special commissioner for New Netherland affairs supported the secretary. All this worked against the success of the patroons. In Van Rensselaer's Memorial of 1633 he says that his partners had spent 15,000 guilders in an attempt to colonize the island of Tortugas which was soon taken by the English because the Company did not give its patroons the protection it had promised them; a vessel sent to take pos- session of the Isle du Sable had been captured by the French; twenty-eight persons sent in 1631 to colonize the patroonship called Swanendael (Swan Vale), for which Godyn had claimed lands on the bay of the South River, perished at the hands of Indians whom their leader did not know how to conciliate, and again the Company although urged to do so would not lend a helping hand. Moreover, when the news of the first purchases of land reached Holland and the patroons' agents returned with cargoes that brought some profit, the gain was greatly magnified by the 'contrary minded' who declared that the patroons had appropriated all the desirable lands in the province yet did not intend to colonize them but only to absorb the fur trade to the ruin of the Company. This in- creased the number of the 'contrary minded' and also intimi- dated several persons who had meant to plant colonies, among them Samuel Blommaert who had claimed a tract on the Fresh River. Nor were the patroons' enterprises popular among the classes from which emigrants were drawn. It was hard for them to get any settlers although a number of people were willing to go out as free colonists.
The 'contrary minded' being now in a majority in the
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Amsterdam Chamber it was decided to recall for examination Director-General Minuit and some of his subordinates. Van Remund's accusing reports had had their effect, and as great an effect Minuit's own generosity in the matter of grants to the patroons. The order for his return was sent in August, 1631, by the hands of Coenraed Notelman who was to replace Jan Lampo as schout-fiscal; and on the ship that took him out, the Eendraght (Unity), Minuit, Lampo, some of the coun- cillors, and a number of families who had decided to return to the fatherland set sail from New Amsterdam in the early spring of 1632.
Although Van Rensselaer was no longer a member of the Chamber he still had much influence. Notelman was his nephew; and his own letters show that he had been active in securing the appointment of the director-general named in Minuit's stead, Bastiaen Crol who had been the Com- pany's representative at Fort Orange but also an agent of the patroon in the management of the affairs of Rensse- laerswyck.
This is the name, Bastiaen (Sebastian) Janssen Crol, or Krol, that on the evidence of the Van Rensselaer papers must be added to the list of the governors of New Netherland. Until they were published it was thought that for more than a year the province was administered by such subordinate officials as remained after Minuit's departure. The most im- portant of the papers that make Crol's promotion clear is a synopsis, attested as correct by his own signature, of an exami- nation to which, by request of the patroons, he was subjected before a notary at Amsterdam in 1634. Entitled Examina- tion of Bastiaen Jansz. Crol, former Director of New Nether- land, it relates chiefly to the deeds and misdeeds of one Hans Hunthum who while Crol was governor served as a member of his council and as his successor at Fort Orange. Sum- marizing in the third person Crol's answers to the questions put to him, it says that when asked in what capacity and for how long he had been in the Company's service in New Nether- land he replied (giving no dates) that he had made the voyage
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three times - first as comforter of the sick, the second time in the same capacity, being then appointed to the director- ship at Fort Orange on the North River which post he held for three years, and the third time to fill this post again. For two years he then held it:
After which he was elected 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.
By 'elected' Crol meant appointed by the votes of the directors at Amsterdam. It is more than probable that they put him in the place merely to bridge the interval until Minuit should be sent back or a successor be sent out, for by July of the year in which he took office Van Rensselaer wrote him that Wouter Van Twiller had been named director-general. The fact that documents of later days do not refer to Crol as director-general while occasionally they say or imply that Van Twiller immediately succeeded Minuit, means of course that his administration was uneventful as well as brief. In- deed, only two incidents chance to be recorded in which as governor he played a part. In fear of English aggression the West India Company had ordered that territory be bought of the savages on the Fresh River; and in 1632 agents whom Crol must have sent bought and paid for a point at the mouth of the river which they called Kievit's Hook and in sign of possession affixed to a tree the arms of the Republic, while farther up the stream they arranged for the purchase of several miles above and below the blockhouse, Fort Good Hope, founded by the first settlers in 1623. Of the second incident the Van Rensselaer letters tell. Despite the Com- pany's promise to transport cattle for the patroons it would not find the necessary shiproom. Therefore when two farmers, after making their first payments as tenants of two of the Company's bouweries on Manhattan, were summoned home by the directors and prevented from returning, Van Rensselaer engaged with them to discharge the rest of their
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indebtedness and ordered his agent at New Amsterdam to send their animals up to Rensselaerswyck. This Governor Crol would not permit, thinking it unwise to deprive the Company's farms of cattle.
Meanwhile the ship Eendraght carrying Peter Minuit home was driven by stress of weather into the harbor of Plymouth in England and there for a time detained.
The English had been active in America during the decade since the establishment of the Dutch province. In 1624, the charter of the London Virginia Company being annulled, the crown resumed the privileges it had granted and assumed the management of the colony. Thus Virginia became the first of those royal provinces which in after years included New York. Some of the smaller West Indian islands had now been acquired, and in 1625 the colonization of Barbadoes was begun. Small settlements sprang up on and near Massachu- setts Bay. In 1628 John Endicott arrived with sixty men to strengthen the one called Salem. In 1629 a royal charter created a corporation called the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay which was to possess and to govern terri- tories extending from three miles north of the Merrimac southward to the Charles River and from the Atlantic to the western ocean, but was forbidden to take lands 'actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian prince or state.' Under this charter the government of the colony was trans- ferred to its own soil. In 1630 Boston was founded. At the same time the Plymouth settlers obtained from the Council for New England a new patent which defined their boundaries, and Gorges and Mason received new titles to portions of the coast at the north, Mason's grant being called New Hampshire. Still farther north the territories of the French came briefly into England's hands.
In 1627 Cardinal Richelieu, determining to build up New France into a more valuable possession, annulled previous grants and handed it over with all rights in government and traffic to a trading company, the Company of New France,
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of which he was himself the head. Nevertheless, Sir William Alexander persisted in his efforts to colonize Acadia; in 1629, the two nations being then at war, he obtained letters-of- marque with permission to 'displant the French' in America ; and aided by royal influence he sent out a privateering expe- dition which took possession of Acadia, forced the surren- der of Quebec where there were then less than a hundred persons, and brought Champlain home a prisoner. By the time the fleet reached home, however, a treaty had been signed between England and France which stipulated for the restoration of any conquests made after it was con- cluded. And Charles I thought best to recognize the title of his brother-in-law to Acadia as well as the St. Lawrence region, getting in return a pledge that the French would not disturb the New England settlements and, what he valued more, a promise of the unpaid half of the dowry of his queen.
This Treaty of St. Germain, signed in 1632, was the first international compact relating to definite areas of New World soil. The settlers on Manhattan can have taken little interest in it. But if Charles had held on to the easily effected con- quests of 1629 New York would have been spared a hundred and thirty years of constant anxiety and danger, several decades of actual or imminent conflict, and the active share it was forced to take in that great Seven Years' War which finally thrust the French power from Canada.
In October, 1630, shortly after John Winthrop and his associates settled at Boston, his brother-in-law, Emanuel Downing, wrote him from England that if the things were true which were reported of Hudson's River by Isaac Allerton, then visiting England on behalf of the Plymouth Colony, cer- tainly
. there is no place comparable to it for a plantation, and 'twill quit cost for you to remove thither though all be lost in the place where you are, . . . for he saith that Hudson's River goes into Canada and those two make New England an island.
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This meant that Hudson's River was an admirable place for trading in furs. Other Englishmen also had their eyes turned toward the same tempting region. In 1632 Gorges wrote to Mason that he hoped to induce the king to sanction the displanting of the New Netherlanders, and Mason com- plained to the secretary of state that these Hollanders had fallen 'as interlopers ... into the middle' between Virginia and New England, were fortifying themselves there 'under a pretended authority from the West India Company of Hol- land,' and had published a map of the coast 'under the title of New Netherlands,' naming 'the country and river of Manahata' for their Prince of Orange and
. . . giving other Dutch names to other places which had been formerly discovered and traded unto divers times by several English- men, as may be proved.
This was the letter in which, as has been told, Mason ex- plained how Samuel Argall had been deterred from settling on 'the Manahata River' in 1621. It also speaks of the profit- able beaver trade of the Dutch, of their great ship New Nether- land, and, incorrectly, of the warning spoken by Governor Bradford to Governor Minuit, saying that Minuit's people 'with proud and contumacious answers' had declared that they held a commission to fight against any disturbers of their settlements.
In the same year Edward Winslow of Plymouth, then acting as agent for that colony and for Massachusetts, presented to the king's privy council a petition describing the contentions of the New Englanders with the Dutch and with the French who were interfering with them on the coast of Maine, and asking among other privileges for a 'free commission for dis- planting' these dangerous rivals. Thus were justified the fears that Isaac De Rasières had expressed in regard to the people of New Plymouth.
It was at this time, early in April, 1632, that the Eendraght was forced into the harbor of old Plymouth. Upon suit of the Council for New England it was seized for trading unlaw-
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fully in countries under the king of England's jurisdiction. The States General sent to their ambassadors a copy of the charter they had given the United New Netherland Company in 1614, and an explanatory statement prepared by the West India Company which affirmed that the English themselves had drawn for New England and Virginia such boundaries
. . . that our boundaries, according to their own showing, should be from the thirty-ninth to the forty-first degree, within which bounds we are not aware that they ever undertook any plantation.
Basing upon these papers a remonstrance to Charles I, the ambassadors explained that the Dutch had bought the island called Manathans from the savages, and in coming and going from their fatherland had 'freely enjoyed ... without any objections' the hospitality of English ports. In reply the English government denied that the Indians were 'pos- sessores bonæ fidei of those countries so as to be able to dispose of them either by sale or donation,' holding the land only in common and having no settled residences. It declared that no proof could be brought that all the natives of the said country had contracted with the Hollanders 'at the said pre- tended sale.' It rehearsed the claim of England to the North American coast as based upon discovery, occupation, and possession and upon charters such as the States General had never bestowed. It said that the New Netherlanders might remain where they were only if they would acknowledge their subjection to the king of England. And it affirmed that in 1621 the States General had denied all responsibility for the 'companies of Amsterdam merchants' who were trading in Hudson's Great River. This assertion the West India Com- pany contradicted. Nor does any evidence exist to support it. In 1621, it will be remembered, the States General had merely said that they knew of no Dutch plantations in America that infringed English rights.
None the less the States General had placed New Nether- land, and were now leaving it, in an ambiguous position.
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Tacitly they were claiming it as the property of the Republic. Actually and distinctly they were not doing so, and had never done so except by erecting it into a province with the right to a coat of arms. They had permitted the West India Com- pany to acquire it but had given no patent for it, had not defined its boundaries, had not guaranteed its safe possession. They thought, beyond a doubt, that in this way they could hold it with the minimum of risk. Still at war with Spain, the Republic could dare no step that might embroil it with England.
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