USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 15
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
The first settlements known to have been made on Long Island date from this time. On June 16, 1636, Van Twiller issued the first recorded patent for land on the island - to Jacobus Van Curler, or Van Corlaer, for the middlemost of three 'flats' lying 'between the bay of the North River and the East River,' a spot afterwards called New Amersfoort and also Flatlands. For the westernmost of the three flats he
148
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1632-
soon gave a patent to Andries Hudde who was a member of his council and Wolfert Gerritsen, also called Van Couwen- hoven, who had acted as Van Rensselaer's agent on Man- hattan; for the most easterly he issued a patent to himself ; and in 1637 he took for himself two of the islands in the East River and Nooten (Governor's) Island in the harbor. This last was more valuable for his purposes than may be thought, for Buttermilk Channel, navigable now by large vessels, was then a shallow strait across which cattle could be driven from Long Island.
For the West India Company the governor bought from the Indians certain islands to be used as trading posts near the mouth of the Thames River and in Narragansett Bay. One of those in the bay is still called Dutch Island. To another, Prudence Island, New York did not renounce its claim as the heir of New Netherland until the year 1673. Fisher's Island close to the Connecticut shore it still pos- sesses.
The history of a notable piece of land on Manhattan now begins. In 1636 Van Twiller granted thirty-one morgens (about sixty acres), between the Company's Bouwerie No. 1 and the swampy ground farther north where Canal Street was eventually laid out, to Roelof Janssen whom Van Rensselaer had sent with his wife and children to Rensselaerswyck in 1630. The family may have been Swedes, for it is recorded that they came from 'Masterland' and there was a small island called Maesterland off the southwestern coast of Swe- den while no place of similar name has been identified in the Low Countries. At Rensselaerswyck Janssen was put in charge of a farm. His name is still borne by a brook that falls into the Hudson from the east. The reason why he moved to Manhattan is not clear. He died soon afterwards; his wife became the second wife of Domine Bogardus; and the farm she inherited was then called the Domine's Bouw- erie. United in early English days to the Company's Bouwerie it formed part of the famous tract which, bestowed in the time of Queen Anne upon Trinity Church, in the
149
BETTER PROSPECTS
1642]
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the subject of repeated and hotly contested actions at law in which Annetje's name conspicuously figured. Therefore she is still well remembered, not as Jufvrouw Bogardus but as Annetje or Anneke Jans. A daughter of the midwife for whom Van Twiller built a house, she was an illiterate person who used a mark or rudely printed letters in signing her name.
Besides his farm on Long Island Jacobus Van Corlaer ob- tained one on the eastern shoulder of Manhattan where the name Corlaer's Hook survives, and another on the fertile flats, then called Muscoota and afterwards the Harlem Flats, which formed the northeastern corner of the island. This appears to have been the first plantation where the town of Harlem was founded in later years. Close by settled two sons of Jesse De Forest, Henry and Isaac, who made the voyage in the year 1637 on the ship Rensselaerswyck, Henry serving as supercargo and mate. In the spring they were joined by their sister and her husband, Jean La Montagne, or De la Montagne, a French physician who in 1621 had set his name to the round-robin presented by Jesse De Forest to the Eng- lish ambassador at the Hague. The lands of this family in- cluded part of the present Mt. Morris Park. Henry De For- est's house is described as 42 feet long, 18 feet broad, and surrounded by a strong palisade, of course for protection against the Indians. He died before the end of the year. From Isaac who soon moved into New Amsterdam, had four- teen children, and lived until 1674 all the American De Forests are descended.
All these settlers on Manhattan held their lands for a time simply by permission of the director-general. No land patents were needed as the whole island had been bought from the Indians for the Company, and no ground briefs were as yet bestowed.
In spite of these signs of activity New Amsterdam was retrograding rather than improving. Trade being closely
150
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1632-
fettered and agriculture not properly encouraged, the settler's best resource was illicit traffic with the Indians. Food grew very scarce, partly because there was dearth in Virginia and among the English newcomers in the Connecticut Valley. In 1637, when the crops and the supplies from Holland seem alike to have fallen short, many persons might have per- ished in New Amsterdam but for the food that the Indians brought in.
Meanwhile the Company was drawing no profits from the province; the furs it received did not cover its outlays. Its employees, it had reason to believe, were cutting down its receipts by smuggling, and certainly they were injuring its prospects by the disputes which year by year grew hotter. Domine Bogardus reproached the governor, even from the pulpit, for his loose ways of life and called him a 'child of the devil, a consummate villain.' Van Dincklagen, the new and learned schout-fiscal, far from proving a help to Van Twiller, brought such accusations against him that the governor re- torted with counter charges and sent him back to Holland. And the quarrel was triangular, for when Van Dincklagen reached Holland he complained to the church authorities that he had been excommunicated by the 'machinations' of Bogardus and to escape them had had to flee to the wilderness where, lacking all other food, he had subsisted for days together on 'the grass of the field.'
Naturally, the directors at Amsterdam were bewildered by the conflicting complaints. But they were clear in their minds about a grievance of their own: in spite of his uncle's sage counsels Van Twiller did not properly report upon the affairs of his province. It seems to have been chiefly for this reason that he was superseded. In Septem- ber, 1637, his successor, William Kieft, set sail with two ships for Manhattan.
Writing at this time to his nephew, Van Rensselaer said that he had not heard from him since the departure of the ship of which he was now daily expecting the return, evidently the Rensselaerswyck which had brought out the De Forests.
151
BETTER PROSPECTS
1642]
He was looking for Van Twiller's return by the first convey- ance so that he might clear himself of the 'unbearable sland- ers' with which Van Dincklagen and his wife were besmirching and defaming him 'through the whole land before persons great and small, clerical and lay,' so deceiving many that they believed Van Twiller would not dare to come back. Nor was he the only one accused. Van Dincklagen's wife was doing her best to involve the minister, so it was important that he also should return to justify himself. In fact:
No one is overlooked, great or small, especially those who have been of the council or held any office, so it seems that in that country they are altogether rascals and godless people. . . .
The directors, said Van Rensselaer, were now intending diligently to take in hand the affairs of the province, for by an increase of their capital they had got money which they 'really lacked before.' They were planning 'some freedoms' but delaying until they should get from the new director- general accounts of the condition and opportunities of the country. Van Rensselaer had had several talks with him and had recommended his own colony to his care; and Kieft had accepted the charge 'so far as his oath and commission can allow,' a reservation of which the patroon approved. 'Very discreet commissioners for the affairs of New Nether- land' had now taken office and, although they transacted their business secretly, Van Rensselaer hoped that matters would greatly improve.
In 1636 the West India Company had put its South Ameri- can and West Indian possessions in charge of the ablest and most exalted person it could find, Count John Maurice of Nassau, grandnephew of William the Silent. In 1637 it administered the oath as director-general of New Netherland to a commercial adventurer of bad repute. William Kieft, it was said, had failed as a merchant in France; and when sent to Turkey to redeem Christian captives he had kept some of the ransom money and let the Turks keep some of the
152
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1632-
Christians. No estimate of his character or commentary upon his acts as governor has come down to us except from the hand of his enemies, but one reason for this seems to be that he had, and deserved to have, few friends. The course of events shows that he was obstinate, domineering, and cruel; in the end by treating the Indians badly he proved himself the 'executioner' against whom the historian Wassenaer had lodged a prophecy. Not until this time was Wouter Van Twiller's greatest merit as governor appreciated: he always treated the savages well and faithfully kept the compacts he made with them. A plaintive cry sounded on Manhattan when Kieft had been for a few years in office, a cry for help in the desolation he had wrought - a cry from Indian lips for 'Wouter ! Wouter !'
Sailing in September, Kieft's vessels wintered at Bermuda and reached New Amsterdam late in March, 1638. To be secretary of the province the Company had promoted its bookkeeper, Cornelis Van Tienhoven. A year later it sent out Cornelis Van der Huyghens as schout-fiscal. Ulrich Lupold, who had served in this office since Van Dincklagen's departure, Kieft then made commissary of stores. Coun- cillors the new governor was permitted to choose for himself. He chose only one, the newly arrived Huguenot physician Dr. La Montagne. To him, it was said, Kieft gave one vote, to himself he granted two; and he rarely asked any one else to aid in the deliberations of this peculiar council but gov- erned by edicts which his people thought too severe as well as too autocratic. On the other hand, he did not drink, he was not weak or idle, and although he sometimes lied he spoke the truth when he wrote home just after his arrival that he had entered upon a very arduous task. Van Twiller's new buildings were falling into decay; only one windmill was working; almost all the Company's vessels were worthless; its salaried servants were smuggling; its neglected farms had gone back to the condition of common lands, and their cattle had 'passed into other hands.'
Van Twiller, his uncle soon wrote to Kieft, was 'so taken'
153
BETTER PROSPECTS
1642]
with New Netherland that it would be hard to keep him at home when he returned to clear himself of the charges against him. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps because he was afraid to return, he did not go at once despite another summons from Van Rensselaer. He leased from Kieft the Company's Bouwerie No. 1 and got a grant of a hundred morgens near the Bossen Bouwerie; from Jacobus Van Corlaer he leased or bought his 'flat' on Long Island; and through the summer, as the records show, he was diligently trading in cattle and tobacco. Letters of Van Rensselaer's say, however, that by the spring of 1639 he had returned and, showing all his 'books and papers' to the directors, had wholly satisfied them re- garding every point upon which they had accused him, while Van Dincklagen and his wife, who had slandered him so shamefully, had received 'such a reply' that in future they would hardly molest the Company or its officials. From various resolutions passed by the States General it appears that Van Dincklagen repeatedly complained to this body about the wrongs the Company had done him, especially by permitting Van Twiller to remove him illegally from office and by refusing to pay him the salary due for three years of service as fiscal in New Netherland. Finding his complaints just, several times the States General ordered the Company to satisfy him so that they might be relieved from his 'trouble- some but well-founded solicitations.' As late as the year 1642 his demands had not been satisfied, but eventually the Company again promoted him to office in New Netherland. As for Domine Bogardus, when he asked permission of the church authorities 'to depart for Fatherland to defend him- self against Lubbert Van Dincklage' they decided that he must remain at his post 'so that the Church of God may in- crease more and more every day.'
Although Van Twiller did not return to New Netherland he long held his property there, Governor Kieft acting for a time as his agent. After the death of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer he was actively engaged in the management of the patroon- ship. Nothing is known of the fate of the 'books and papers'
154
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1632-
he took to Holland, evidently the official records of his ad- ministration. The affidavit, already cited, in which Cornelis Melyn told about the purchase of Staten Island by Governor Minuit, says that he got the information in writing from Van Twiller at Amsterdam in 1640, and that Van Twiller copied it for him from the 'purchase deed or bill of sale'; and to the affidavit is attached a copy of an official memorandum of the sale bearing the same date and the same signatures as the patent, still preserved in this country, which Minuit issued to Michiel Paauw. All this makes it seem at least possible that Van Twiller carried away not only his own official papers but also those covering the administrations of his predecessors, Minuit and Crol, which have likewise disappeared.
Except for the few land patents of earlier days the existing records of New Netherland as we have them now, broken by numerous gaps, begin with Governor Kieft's administration in April, 1638. Council minutes, ordinances, and the register of the secretary of the province, which includes records of court proceedings, are preserved in the archives of the State and calendared in published volumes called Calendar of His- torical Manuscripts. The existing official correspondence of the administrators of the province does not begin until the year 1646.
The earliest extant ordinances consist of rules for improv- ing the morals of the community which Kieft at once caused to be copied out in plain script and affixed to the trees and posts of New Amsterdam. The very first forbade all free persons to trade in furs except as the Charter of Freedoms prescribed, and all employees of the Company from the highest to the lowest to do so in any manner. Some of the others were rules for the conduct of the court, which was to sit every Thursday; curfew regulations for sailors and for the Com- pany's servants; rules against leaving Manhattan without a permit, against selling arms to the savages, against idleness and slackness in working hours, 'rebellion, theft, false swear- ing, and calumny,' and 'carnal intercourse with heathens,
155
BETTER PROSPECTS
1642]
blacks, or other persons,' and rules for limiting that great promoter of evil, the traffic in strong drink.
According to customs of state supervision which had given Dutch goods a high repute in all quarters of the world the new governor soon issued an ordinance prescribing how to- bacco, now a staple product of the province, should be cured, and directing that all intended for export should be brought to the Company's warehouse to be 'examined, marked, and weighed' as well as assessed for the export duty. Such was the beginning in 1638 of a system - or, more accurately, a succession - of local inspection laws which continued until the constitution of 1846 was adopted for the State of New York.
It was impossible now for the government of England to ignore the fact that a Dutch colony was firmly seated between its own northern and southern plantations. In the spring of 1635, when it was trying to wipe out the charter of Massa- chusetts, it was informed that a Dutch ship bound for New Netherland was lying at Cowes in the hope that by the liberal offers of the West India Company English emigrants might be attracted. Neither in this nor in any other Dutch vessel, the privy council ordered, should British subjects be per- mitted to go to 'the Hollanders' plantation in Hudson's River'; and in 1637 the king strictly forbade the governor and council of Virginia to trade with their Dutch neighbors. It need not be believed, however, that this prohibition inter- fered at all with the traffic which De Vries had opened at the time of his first visit to Virginia and Governor Harvey had continued to encourage, or with that which had since sprung up with Lord Baltimore's colony of Maryland.
It was not by the Virginians that, as Kieft reported in the first despatches he sent home, the South River was again in- vaded. It was by a party of traders and colonists sent from Sweden by a Swedish-Dutch association in which the leading spirits were two persons long connected with the Dutch West India Company - Samuel Blommaert who from the first
156
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1632-
had been one of its most influential members, and Peter Minuit whom it had recently dismissed from its service. The declared purpose of this association was to plant colonies on such parts of the North American coast as the English, French, and Dutch had not yet occupied, but the first objec- tive point was the South River where Swanendael, in which Blommaert was interested, had so quickly perished and where the West India Company's Fort Nassau was now garrisoned by not more than twenty men.
This fact was not made known in Holland. Van Rens- selaer's Letter-Book shows that in December, 1637, Minuit's ship had been forced to take shelter from storms in the Texel and that the patroon sent on board of it six colonists and some goods for Rensselaerswyck, consigned to Van Twiller. Assuming that Minuit was bound first for Manhattan he wrote to Van Twiller that presumably he would 'show a commission there' but that he himself had no share in the enterprise. Later he wrote to Kieft that Minuit's destination was un- known to him; all he could make out was that he was in- tending for Virginia whence he was to send on to Manhattan the passengers and goods that Van Rensselaer had confided to him.
Of course Minuit did not touch at Manhattan and show his commission there. Sailing late in the year 1637 he entered the South River in March, 1638, at about the time when Governor Kieft arrived at New Amsterdam, and bought of the Indians lands on the western shore some fifteen miles below Fort Nassau. Questioned by the Dutch commander he said at first that he was on his way to the West Indies and had merely stopped for wood and water. But, undeterred by a formal protest from Governor Kieft warning him not to encroach on the rights of the West India Company, he soon began to build, near the present site of Wilmington, a trading house and a fort called Christina in honor of the young queen of Sweden. Here the little band of colonists planted the first successful settlement in what has become the State of Dela- ware. During the summer the ships went home with cargoes
157
BETTER PROSPECTS
1642]
of furs. The West India Company protested against the in- trusion, but the Swedish government stood back of the new company and the States General were no more willing to embroil themselves with Sweden than with England.
One of the colonists whom Van Rensselaer sent out with Minuit was Arendt Van Curler, or Van Corlaer, a youth of eighteen who was to serve as assistant to the schout of the patroonship. He was a cousin or nephew of Van Rensselaer, whether or no a relative of the Jacob Van Corlaer of New Amsterdam does not appear. In after years he won for him- self a peculiarly honorable name as a white man whom the Iroquois fully trusted and deeply respected, and who had more influence over them than any one else acquired except, a full century later, Sir William Johnson. To Van Corlaer's hand has been attributed a journal covering parts of the years 1634 and 1635 which gives the earliest known account of the Five Nations, describing the 'castles' and the customs of the Mohawks and including a vocabulary of their language; but the Van Rensselaer papers prove that Van Corlaer saw New Netherland for the first time in 1638.
By this time it had grown evident in Holland that something must be done to improve the condition of New Netherland. The English, it was feared, might seize its northern, the Swedes its southern, parts. The West India Company, still in trouble about its subsidies, was sending out no settlers; 'free colonists' were no longer offering themselves, for owing to the ravages of the plague in Holland every active hand could find employment there; and for the same reason the patroons could not hope for tenants.
Prompted by appeals from the stockholders of the Com- pany, early in 1638 the States General ordered an inquiry into the state of the province which, it was plain, the directors had neglected. Asked whether they might not well resign control of it and place it 'at the disposal of the States Gen- eral' they refused unless they should thereby 'derive profit,' saying that they still hoped for profit from the province itself.
158
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1632-
Yet they could not people it, said the report upon the inquiry, because they could not agree among themselves, and so 'a plan of throwing it open must be considered.'
Accordingly the Amsterdam Chamber presented a plan drawn up by De Laet. Embodying a scheme for the govern- ment but none for the colonization of the province and re- laxing in no degree the Company's monopolistic grasp, it was rejected by the States General. So was another plan, for the benefit of patroons, called a New Project - evidently an elaborate scheme which, although it bears no date in the draft that has been preserved, is sufficiently dated by a reference to the lands recently covered by the patroonships of Pavonia and Swanendael as reserved with Manhattan for the Company's own behoof. The greedy spirit shown in this New Project explains much better than Kiliaen Van Rens- selaer's letters why there was strong opposition in the councils of the Company to the system of patroonships. It says that patroons should be allowed to trade everywhere in all kinds of commodities including furs, paying duties to the Company but aided by it in many specified ways and relieved forever from the need to pay any kind of internal tax. They should be supplied by the Company with negro slaves and by the States General with bond-servants from among the paupers and vagrants of the fatherland. They should be given full power to rule their colonies without supervision by the authorities on Manhattan or in Holland and yet be entitled each to keep at Manhattan an agent who should be ex officio a member of the director-general's council. They should have even larger estates than had thus far been granted them and a longer time in which to plant intended colonies. More- over, said one astonishing clause of the New Project, no 'private and impecunious persons' should be permitted to secure land in New Netherland; all such should be compelled to put themselves 'under the jurisdiction of the respective Lords Patroons.'
The States General now directed that a committee composed of delegates from their own body and from the Amsterdam
159
BETTER PROSPECTS
1642]
Chamber should at once reconsider the whole question of the colonizing of the province. By this means a practicable plan was framed and adopted, undoubtedly a plan the draft of which has been preserved with the draft of De Laet's. It did not, as has sometimes been said, grant free trade with New Netherland although at about the same time the Com- pany freely opened trade with its Brazilian possessions. But it gave certain trading opportunities to private persons who had had none before, put the fur trade on the same basis as traffic in other commodities, assured the private possession of land, and quashed all schemes for excluding free colonists from the province. All inhabitants of the Republic or of a friendly country, it said, who were 'disposed to take up and cultivate' lands in New Netherland might 'convey thither . such cattle, merchandise, and property' as they should wish and 'receive the returns' they or their agents should 'obtain therefor in those parts'; but they were to do this only in the Company's ships, and in addition to freight dues were to pay in Holland ten per cent upon the value of all merchandise thence despatched and at New Amsterdam fifteen per cent upon all exported colonial products. To encourage agriculture the director-general was to bestow upon every immigrant as much land as he could properly cultivate, giving a 'proper deed' for it and after a specified time collecting ground-rents in kind for the Company. Fail- ure to cultivate would mean forfeiture of the land; and 'to obviate all confusion and losses' no one was to hold any lands or houses that had not 'come through the hands of the Company.' All intending settlers were to pledge themselves in writing to abide by these regulations. As seems to have been customary in times when the length of a voyage could not be even approximately foreseen, transportation was to be paid for at so much a day, the rates being fixed at one guilder 'for passage and board in the stateroom,' twelve stivers in the 'cabin,' and eight stivers 'between decks.'
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.