USA > New York > New York County > Harlem > Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles > Part 12
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Gillis (often written Yellis) or Giles De Mandeville was accompanied by his wife Elsie Hendricks and four children. having two born afterward, one being David. Yellis bought a farm at Flatbush, which he finally gave to his eldest son Hendrick. and got the grant of another, of 30 acres, at Greenwich, on Manhattan Island, laid out to him December 5, 1670, and patented December 30, 1680. Here he died between 1696 and 1701. All of his children married. He had but the two sons, both of whom left descendants. David remained on the farm at Greenwich. Hendrick removed from Long Island to Pequannock, N. J. These have given several pastors to the Reformed Church, including Rev. Giles Henry Mandeville, D. D.
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Pierre Cresson was another worthy refugee, and whose fam- ily seat, as is believed, was at Menil la Cresson, or Cresson Manor, a little northeast of Abbeville, in Picardy, though he was no doubt allied to the Cressons of Burgundy, of whom were several Re- formed ministers. Such change of residence was common dur- ing the long Burgundian rule in Picardy. Pierre, whose char- acter for piety is well attested, fled with some of his kin to the noted refuge, Sluis, in Flanders, but soon moved farther north, and in 1640 is found (with Nicolas and Venant Cresson, both married) among the refugees at Leyden. The large number of these emigrating to New Netherland had doubtless an effect upon Pierre, though, with a vigor and activity, which indeed he retained till old age (but at this date scarce more than thirty), he supported himself in Holland for about seventeen years, living parts of that time at Ryswyk and Delft. Employed as gardener to the Prince of Orange, he was ever after known as Pierre Le Gardin- ier. But Cresson was at last taken with the favorable offers of the City of Amsterdam to those who would go to their new colony on the Delaware; and it seeming a good opportunity for him and his growing family, he gathered up his little means, and with wife Rachel Cloos and children, embarked, in 1657, at Amsterdam, for New Amstel. The next year Governor Stuyvesant, visiting the Delaware, engaged Cresson "for his service" at the Manhat- tans, "with the proposition that what he owed the city (Amster- dam) should be settled." Soon after Cresson made a trip to Holland, returning in company with several other French agri- culturists in the ship Beaver, which sailed April 25th, 1659, reach- ing its destination after a quick passage of six weeks. Each passing year thus added to the roll of worthy fugitives, who, led by an unseen but mighty hand out of oppression into the atmos- phere of freedom, were perforce of their common nationality and sympathies to find a common home beyond the Atlantic .*
But this roll is not yet complete. England, as already hinted, first became an asylum for some of our settlers. Many perese- cuted refugees from France and Flanders took that direction, embarking usually in regularly plying vessels, but often, if hard pressed, venturing to cross the Channel in any sort of craft, even at the peril of their lives, while making for the most accessible port on the opposite shore. They landed principally at Dover,
· Marten Van Weert, a hatter from Utrecht, who had visited this country five years before, came out in the ship with Cresson, in 1659. He married, December 4, 1660, Susanna, daughter of Abraham Verplanck. The Van Weerts, his children, were prominent in the church at Sleepy Hollow, Westchester County. Isaac Van Wart, one of the captors of Major Andre, the spy, was a descendant. (See Bolton's West- chester, i. 197, 235).
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Sandwich, and Rye, within the counties of Kent and Sussex. Meeting a uniform welcome and sympathy, they formed colonies and churches at these places, and set up various manufactures, mainly those of cloth and linen, in which they were encouraged by the general and local authorities. The seaports named, and 'others becoming crowded with these exiles, many by invitation went inland to Canterbury, Norwich, etc., and still more up the Thames to London, at all which places they founded similar com- munities and industries. These colonies were greatly multiplied after the time of which we are writing. The story of the refugees in England is very touching; while their patient toil, the skill and ingenuity they exhibited in the production of various useful articles, evoked the admiration of the English; their devotion to their religion, their care to maintain its ordinances whereever they went, was highly creditable. Kept well informed of affairs in their native lands, the sympathy they manifested for their still suffering brethren set them in a most amiable light. Bound to their fellow-refugees in Holland by common interests as well as by many family ties, there was a free intercourse, and removals from one country to the other often took place due to these affin- ities or the simple desire to better their state; but sometimes prompted by dangers which threatened them as a people, or those countries at large. Ever keenly alive to passing events in anywise bearing on their cause or that of Protestantism in general, one which greatly affected the refugees was the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, ending the Thirty Years' War, and opening to them a new asylum up the Rhine, unto which many resorted, as we shall see.
The family Des Marets was of the old Picard gentry, and was also prominent in the church at Oisemont, of which David Des Marets, the Sieur Du Ferets, was an elder. His son, Samuel, born at Oisemont, in 1599, and taught at the great schools of Paris, Saumur and Geneva, became in 1619 pastor of the church of Laon. But forced to leave in 1623 by an attempt upon his life which nearly proved fatal, he accepted a new charge at Falaise, in Normandy, but after a year went to Sedan, and thence, in 1642, to Groningen, in Holland, as professor of theology. Our David Des Marest, who wrote his name thus, was born in Picardy, and, as is strongly indicated, was of the same lineage,-for dignity of character and fidelity to his religion, worthy so excellent a kinship; the clerical tendency among his descendants is also very significant. He went to Holland and joined the French colony in the island of Walcheren, at which place his eldest son, Jean
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Demarest, was born in 1645. Here David probably married his wife Marie Sohier, as a family of this name from Hainault had taken refuge at Middelburg in the first Walloon emigrations.
In 1651 Demarest is found at Mannheim, on the Rhine, within the German Palatinate; to which were going many French and Walloon refugees from England, and also from the Dutch seaboard, partly in view of an expected war between the English and Hollanders, but especially drawn thither by the assurance of freedom and protection under the government of the Pro- testant Elector Charles Lewis, who, invested by the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) with the Lower Palatinate, from which his father, Frederick V., had been driven in 1621 by the Catholic powers after the battle of Prague, held out strong inducements to the refugees, especially Calvinists, to settle at Mannheim, and which found a ready response through the lively interest always cherished by the refugees, in common with the English Puritans, in the strange vicissitudes of his late father, and his excellent and yet surviving mother, named in a former note as the "Queen of Bohemia." By 1652 Demarest and others among the numbers gathered there, joined in forming a French church; the elector himself building them an edifice, which he called the Temple of Concord, because the Lutherans were also allowed to worship there.
Philippe Casier and family, originally of Calais, also found this inviting refuge, as did Simeon Cornier, "from France"; Meynard Journee (the Journeay ancestor), from Mardyk, Flan- ders ; Joost Van Oblinus (now O'Blenis), his son Joost and fam- ily, from Walloon Flanders, and Pierre Parmentier, also from "Walslant," that is, the Walloon country,-all these afterward at Harlem. Here Peter Van Oblinus, son of Joost, Jr., and his wife, Marie Sammis, was born in 1662. He was afterward distinguished at Harlem. Among the Walloons from Artois found here, were Matthieu Blanchan, Louis Du Bois, and Antoine Crispel; Blanchan having sojourned in England, as perhaps had the other two, who became his sons-in-law. Others joining this Mannheim colony, and to be hereafter noticed, were the families of Le Comte, from Picardy, and De Vaux, from Walslant, whose descendants are called De Voe. De Vaux and Parmentier were clearly names derived from Picardy.
Philippe Casier was husbandman and something of a trav- eler, having lived several years in the island of Martinique, to which he had gone with other colonists under the auspices of the French West India Company. But weary of rough pioneer
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life among wild Caribs, and more weary of the civil anarchy then reigning in the islands, he returned with his family to Europe, and tarried awhile at Sluis before removing up the Rhine. While at Mannheim, a son, Peter, was born (1659) to his eldest daughter, Marie, the wife of David Uzille, the latter also men- tioned as from Calais, but no doubt of the Brittany family. . But neither was Casier contented at Mannheim, still indulging, as it would seem, visions of a better fortune for him in America. His wife's brother, Isaac Taine, called also La Pere, "the Father," had gone out some years previous, and had been made a burgher of New Amsterdam; and thither the Cacier family, Uzilles in- cluded, resolved to go .* Returning to Holland, they sailed directly for the Manhattans in the ship Gilded Otter, which left the Texel April 27, 1660, carrying also Blanchan and others from Mannheim, besides a band of soldiers, among whom were Jacob Leisler, famous in our colonial history, and Joost Kockuyt, heretofore mentioned, afterward part owner of the land since forming the "Dyckman Homestead." Later, Simeon Cornier, with his wife, Nicole Petit, left Mannheim and returned to Hol- land, whence they sailed in the ship Faith, March 24th, 1662, from the Texel for the Manhattans, arriving June 13th.
Isaac Vermeille, one of the Harlem settlers, and head of the well-known family of Vermilye, was the son of Jean Vermeille and Marie Roubley, who are found among the Walloon refugees at London toward the close of the sixteenth century .* They were members of the Walloon church, and had several children born in that city, among these Isaac, in 1601. The last child was Rebecca, born 1609, and three years later we lose sight of the father. Some of the family soon removed to Leyden, where Isaac's elder sister, Rachel, who had been admitted to the church in London July 15th, 1613, was married April 25th, 1615, to Jacques Bordelo, a Walloon from Valenciennes. Jean Vermeille, to whom a child was born in 1633, at London, and who married a second wife at Leyden in 1647, was probably brother to Isaac.
* Isaac Tayne, as he wrote his name, obtained a grant of land, June 24. 1666, at New Castle, Del., where he was living ten years later .- Penn. Archives, i. 35, His wife was Sarah Reson. This name, ending with the French nasal sound ng, is some- times written Ting.
* We nowhere find it stated that our Vermilyes were Walloons, but think it a safe assumption, for several reasons. The congregation at London of which they were members was then composed quite exclusively of that people. Then their Christian names favor it. And one of the Walloon towns bears the name Vermelle; being in Artois, southeast of Bethune, near a lake at the source of the Papegay, which latter runs northward, entering the Lys near Armentieres. Traced to its origin, the sur- name was doubtless the same as the Italian Vermigli. "Its birthplace," says Rev. A. G. Vermilye, "was probably Peruggia." Peter Vermigli (or Martyr), the reformer, was born at Florence. Like many others, the name had evidently worked upward to Northern France, but how early we know not. Vermeille is the French for vermilion.
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Marie Vermeille (mother or sister?), with her husband, Jean Dimanche, stood as godparents for Isaac's daughter, Marie (af- terward Mrs. Montanye), at her baptism at Leyden, August 2d, 1629. Then Isaac first attracts our notice here, with his Dutch vrouw, Jacomina Jacobs, but later has two other children bap- tized, the last in 1637. Then not finding his name at Leyden for full twenty-five years, it seems to imply his absence; and he probably went to Mannheim, as the name Isaac Wurmel, found on its civil records, is thought by a good authority there to refer to him. However, again at Leyden in the company of other French, who "by advice of some gentlemen, and reading the New Netherland conditions, were allured and persuaded to emigrate with their families," we meet with Vermeille, about to leave with them for that much-mooted country, whither during his time so many Leyden refugees, back to the De Forests and Montagne, had already gone. With wife, his two sons and as many daugh- ters, Vermeille embarked October 12th, 1662, in the ship Purmer- land Church, Captain Barentsen, which on the 14th weighed anchor and "passed the last village on the Texel," bound with supplies to New Amstel .*
Soon after this the Palatinate was threatened with hostile invasion by the Duke of Lorraine and other neighboring Catholic princes. The refugees having everything to fear from such enemies to their kind and religion, many more of these hastily quit Mannheim. The Demarest, Oblinus and Parmentier families, with Journee, returned to Holland, apparently with purpose formed of going to New Netherland, for making short stay at Amsterdam, they all embarked for that country in the Brindled Cow, April 16, 1663, having in company Jean Mesurolle, a Picard, but then from Mannheim, Jerome Boquet (Bokee) and Pierre Noue, both originally from Walslant; besides our several Dutch colonists before noticed, the Bogerts and Kortrights, from Schoon- rewoerd and vicinity. Men, women and children, there were ninety odd passengers, the French composing a third. Each adult was charged for passage and board thirty-nine florins; children of ten years and under, except infants, half price. It cost Jan Bastiaensen (Kortright) for himself and family 204 fl.
· Charges for their passage stand thus in the accounts of the West India Co .: "ISAACO VERNIELE debet
Voor vracht en costgelt dat hy Aº. 1662, 12 Octobr. pr: 't Schip de Purmerlander .f. 39 Kerck, Schippr. Benjamin Barentsen, is herwaerts gecomen ..
Voor syn vrou .....
39
En 4 kinderen, alle boven de 20e Jaeren. 156
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f. 234"
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IO st., and David Demarest, 175 fl. 10 st .* These refugees from Mannheim nearly all took certificates of membership from the French church there. Some others, who followed them ten years later, will be noticed hereafter.
Holland had now lost the special attractions it presented to the first refugees. These finding sympathy and employment, were generally content to remain as permanent residents. But the disturbances of later years had unsettled many, while trade had steadily and greatly declined, with no hope of any revival. Moreover, other unfortunate fugitives were flocking in "from Germany, Westphalia, and those countries which within two years had been ruined by hard times, but mainly by persecutions, to which the faithful all through France (as also the Waldenses) had been subjected." Under these circumstances many were easily drawn into the current of emigration to New Netherland, which was extolled as "beyond the finest country in the world, where everything can be produced that is grown in France or the Baltic," and whose virgin soil and settlements, free from the tyranny of kings and the contagion of European society, offered a most inviting abode and ample scope for enterprise. The most flattering reports of that country were rife, as given by those visit- ing Holland in search of farm-laborers, and by merchants whose business took them over to Amsterdam. Among those by whom the section of Manhattan Island since known as Harlem was first brought to the favorable notice of the colonists, was Andries Hudde, late counsellor in New Netherland, who spent the winter of 1638-9 in Holland, and part of whose errand was to send out hands to work his tobacco plantation, afterward known as Mon- tanye's Flat. It was plainly his representations regarding that locality that took Captain Kuyter and others thither, and induced Van Keulen, of Amsterdam, to secure the two-hundred-acre tract thence called Van Keulen's Hook; the purchase of which was effected directly upon Hudde's return. And Sibout Slaessen, an energetic burgher of New Amsterdam, going to Fatherland in the autumn of 1649, spent nearly two years between Hoorn, his native place, and Amsterdam and Leyden, while prosecuting charges against Stuyvesant. Bad as, in his view, was the ad- ministration, none had a higher opinion of the country, Manhattan especially, where Claessen had a fine property opposite Hellgate, which he called Hoorn's Hook. And Jean La Montagne, who
. The Dutch florin or guilder is usually valued at forty cents, the stiver at two cents; but taking into account that, in the times we are treating of, money in Holland, as compared with labor, commodities, or whatever else it purchased, had about four times its present value, certainly these emigrants paid well for their passage.
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revisited Holland in 1654. With his many years' experience in the new country, glowing, we dare assert, were the pictures he drew of it,-when tenderly pressing his suit with the fair Peter- nella, who was to share his home and fortunes. And Nicholas De Meyer, the clear-headed and thrifty trader at New Amster- dam, making a trip to Holland in 1662, to remain over winter, no doubt astonished his auditors as he told of lands on Manhattan at one dollar and sixty cents an acre, and his recent purchase of two farms in the young settlement, New Harlem. What interest must have attached to these accounts by visitants from the New World, as every listener caught up the story of its almost fabulous advantages and resources ! To the young and ambitious, the far-off America had all the dazzling attractions of a fairyland, when so often even the tender sex were led as by an irresistible charm, in the face of many perils, to venture its wild solitudes. But again, with more caution, one of a family first goes to the New World, as if to report from personal knowledge upon the expe- diency of the change before others should follow; so with the Verveelens, the brothers Waldron, Buys, etc. The colonists were wont to revisit Fatherland to obtain wives; whence its records show many nuptials consummated on the eve of embarkation. And timid maidens, in not a few cases, drawn by ties of kinship, or some more tender impulse, stopped not to count the hazards of the voyage: instance young Barentie Dircks, of Meppel (her sister Geertie then some years in New Netherland as wife of Jan Metselaer),* going over with other colonists from Drenthe in 1660; lo! scarce a year passing, when she and a sister, Egbertie, found their daring rewarded and the highest aspiration of their womanly hearts realized, in Nelis Matthyssen and Hage Bruyn- sen, honest Swedes, the one called to the magistry at Harlem, the other to become its first miller. All most natural, truly; yet we mistake if these glimpses of simple life among our colonist an- cestors are wholly devoid of interest.t
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. Jan Adams Metselaer was born at Worms, in 1626; was in service as corporal on the Delaware, and returned to New Amsterdam in 1654. He died in New York in 1696 or 1697. His sons who reached maturity were Jacobus, born 1668; Abraham, born 1671; Hendrick, born 1676. Descendants of Abraham early settled on the Rari- tan, and whence the respectable family of which is Rev. Abraham Messler, D. D. . t The French Refugees were sometimes designated, not by a proper surname, but by the name of some place, evidently that of their nativity or former abode, ap- pended to their Christian name. The effect, no other clew to their identity appearing, is confusion like that liable to occur in Dutch nomenclature. Cases in point are Etienne Rochelle (his proper name Geneau), Pierre Grand Pre, Jean Belin, Etienne Button, etc., all names of French towns; and Jean Paris, also written De Parisis, but no other than Jan Lequiere, from Paris, afterward of Bushwick. Some retained these as family names; Button or Baton was perpetuated on Staten Island and in New Jersey. Belin, written a Belin, became Ablin. (See also note on Jean Baignoux.) That this designation by place (as well without as with the prefix De or Du) was a usage preva- lent in France (not to trace it further), anyone who examines the subject will see; and it starts the question whether it is always safe to take such prefix as proof of nobility,
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Such moral courage as they exhibited, especially the refugees, commands admiration; such trials as they endured when called to resist or flee oppression, appeal to our sympathies! Clinging to their faith or principles though at the cost of their peace and safety, and all the endearments of home, country and kindred; choosing rather to venture the treacherous ocean and the dangers of an untried wilderness where still was sovereign the savage and the beast of prey,-and all to secure the sacred boon of liberty denied them in their native lands; do they not deserve the first place in history, and in the grateful remembrance of those who are reaping the benefits of their labors and sacrifices ?
when it may serve only to show the birthplace, or residence, or perhaps the place of the family origin; as le or la often indicated names derived from a trade, calling, office, etc. (See Index, Chaudronnier.) The children of some of our refugees, ambitious to assume prefixes, sometimes made bad work of it; thus the name Le Maistre (the Master), taking on the De (and whence Delamater), came to signify of the Master!,- a use of the prefix wholly inappropriate. On the contrary. the sons of Dr. La Montagne very properly prefixed the De, and the fact adds strength to our hypothesis as to the source of that name. Very few old names among us at present, whether of French, Dutch, or other descent, preserve their original form; a result to be deprecated, though a return to the carly orthography may now be neither practicable nor desirable.
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CHAPTER VI.
1609-1636.
MANHATTAN.
T N the year 1609 a Dutch ship was feeling it way along the then wild and unfrequented coast of North America. Her in- trepid commander, as in former fruitless voyages made for the same object under English patronage, was still eagerly seeking a western route to China, the golden Cathay of the ancients. Dispatched in this instance by the East India Company, of Hol- land, the Half Moon left Amsterdam the 4th of April, and after gaining the American waters had explored each principal bay and inlet from north to south, and now again to northward, five weary months, but with no results. To one of less resolution than Henry Hudson the case might well have seemed hopeless, but still the undaunted mariner continued the search.
The 3d of September dawns upon the vessel enshrouded in a dense sea-fog, which at the hour of ten, lifting its vapory man- tle, leaves upon her spars and rigging myriads of watery jewels which sparkle in the sunbeams, bright harbinger of a coming success, while the ship, quitting her moorings, spreads her "main- sail and spritsail," and under a clear sky and with a balmy breeze from the south-southeast resumes her northerly course. Five hours pass, when Hudson makes the headlands of Neversink, "very pleasant, and high, and bold to fall, withal"; and "at three of the clock in the afternoon" approaches "a very good harbor," into which flow "three great rivers." These at once arrest his attention; their sources wrapped in mystery naturally invite the boldest speculation. Has he not been told "there was a sea lead- ing into the Western Ocean by the north of Virginia?" Curiosity and hope receive a new impulse; surely he has found at last the long-desired passage!
Hudson at first stands for the northernmost river, but repelled by a very shoal bar before its mouth, changes his course and bears away across the bay, where another passage seems to open, casts his anchor, and prudently sends in the yawl to sound. On a
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favorable report he again weighs, runs farther in with the ship, and finally drops his kedge on the soft, oozy bottom at a depth of five fathoms. Hudson takes the latitude,-forty degrees and thirty minutes,-and enters it in his log. As the vessel rides at ease upon the bosom of these expansive waters, no fellow-craft greets the eye of the brave mariner ; not so much as a tiny sail breaks the monotony of the scene. The undulating land is beau- tiful in varied shades of green, but, as far as the eye can scan, bare of human habitation,-even to a rustic cabin,-all yet appears lone, wild, charming in its very air of desolation. The fish seem surprisingly tame as they swarm about the vessel, and the white sea-gull disports itself familiarly, soars upon its broad pinions, or stoops to kiss the wave.
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