p43  II

The First Expedition

Knowledge of the first Dutch settlements in America is still far from complete, largely because the letters, reports, and other papers belonging to the old East and the later West India Companies, of a date prior to 1700, were bundled up and sold as waste at public auction in Amsterdam in 1821. What eventually happened to these records is uncertain; some of them were reportedly damaged by dampness and vermin prior to the time of sale; others may have purposely been destroyed soon after; still others were "lost." The historian lives in hope that such "lost" records will eventually be found to broaden his knowledge of the past. In 1910, such a windfall occurred! Six documents, written in old Dutch script and pertaining to the New World, came to light in Amsterdam and were purchased and preserved by a collector who sensed their historical value.

The Van Rappard Documents, as these manuscripts came to be called, passed through several hands, finally coming into the possession of Henry E. Huntington, who had them translated into English and published in 1924⁠1 They shed new light on the Dutch efforts to found a southern colony in New Netherland, although their full significance in this particular connection has  p44 been over­looked. These documents, as well as other seventeenth‑century Dutch records which can now be reinterpreted in a new light, are the basis for the discussion in this and the following chapter.

In considering Dutch exploration and settlement in America, let us first dispose of a report made in 1644 in Holland to the effect that the Dutch Greenland Company as early as 1598 built forts on both the Hudson and Delaware Rivers as winter shelters for use in the fur trade.⁠2 Proof is entirely lacking to support this claim, made at a time when, to counter the English, it was advantageous for the Dutch government to push back the date of occupancy by their countrymen to the earliest possible time. No record has been found of Dutch exploration of either the Hudson or Delaware prior to Hudson's 1609 voyage. Following Hudson's return from this voyage, Dutch traders sailed to America and made further explorations, leading to the formation in 1614 of the New Netherland Company by opportunistic Amsterdam and Hoorn merchants. This company was given the right to make four voyages during a three year period, to any lands and places in America discovered by them between the 40th and 45th degree of latitude — a region which, for the first time, was then called New Netherland. After the charter expired in 1618, voyages continued to be made to New Netherland while negotiations were in progress to form a West India Company, modeled after the East India Company, a project that had long been advocated by a prominent merchant, Willem Usselinx.⁠3

 p45  Among the Dutch sea captains who visited American waters during the early period were Hendrick Christiaensen (also spelled Corstiaenssen), Adriaen Block, and Cornelis Jacobsen May. Their discoveries were the basis of the charter issued to the New Netherland Company. All three navigators kept journals or logs of their voyages (Johan de Laet refers to these accounts in his New World history), which are now missing. However, there can be no doubt that Cornelis Hendricksen explored the Delaware River in his yacht Onrust ("Restless"), for, on August 19, 1616. he submitted a brief report to the Holland merchants, claiming to have discovered "certain lands, a bay, and three rivers situated between 38 and 40 degrees." Accompanying his report was positive proof — a "Figurative Map" delineating the Delaware River system as he thought it to be. The original copy of this map is still preserved in the Royal Archives at the Hague.⁠4 When Hendricksen delivered this map, the Dutch authorities considered it so valuable that they would not immediately allow the new data to be used to correct existing maps. Undoubtedly they wanted to keep the geography of the Delaware River system a secret, particularly from English merchants, perhaps not knowing that the English already had access to a map, made by Henry Hudson, which had not reached Holland. Hudson's map could not have shown any of the detail of the Delaware River, because he saw only the mouth of the bay — Hendricksen's map purported to show the complete river system.

Cornelis Jacobsen May (sometimes spelled Mey) was in America at the same time Hendricksen was there, and he was reported again in American waters in 1620, making further explorations and trading with the Indians.⁠5 It is generally believed  p46 that May visited the Delaware River after Hendricksen "discovered" it, but how far upstream he sailed is still not known. His visit, or visits, were sufficiently noteworthy to warrant his name being attached to the bay, which for a time appeared on many Dutch maps as Nieuw Port May. Although his name did not last as a designation for the bay, May's name is still remembered in Cape May.

These early voyages did not have colonization as their objective; they were purely for exploration or trade, but there can be no question that Dutch navigators had been going in and out of Delaware Bay and River long before any other nation attempted to explore or settle it. While the Dutch were engaged in discovery and trade in the Delaware, as well as the Hudson, the English (claiming the North American coast as a result of Cabot's discoveries) were busy colonizing Virginia and later New England. The London Company was granted the land between Cape Fear and the Potomac River; the Plymouth Company was granted land between Long Island Sound and the Bay of Fundy. Between these two settlements lay the area which the Dutch called New Netherland — approximately •one hundred miles in width — wherein both the Delaware and Hudson systems were situated. The English crown had purposely held back this territory from both the Virginia Company and Plymouth Company as a sort of no‑man's land separating them. The English were reasonably well informed about the course of the Hudson River at an early date, but the Delaware River system was only vaguely known to them prior to about 1634. However, the Englishman, Captain Samuell Argall, had anchored in Delaware Bay on August 27, 1610. He had sailed from Jamestown for Bermuda two months before in his pinnace, the Discovery, but storms had driven him north to  p47 New England. His entry into the mouth of what he termed "a very great Bay," on his homeward voyage, was a circumstance of the winds, and he lay at anchor for about twelve hours before the wind shifted, permitting him to continue toward Virginia. In an account of the voyage, Argall wrote that he "felle among a great many of shoals about twelve leagues to the Southward of Cape La Warre." His description of the location of this cape leaves little doubt that it was present Cape Henlopen, and it is generally accepted that Argall had bestowed its first English name in honor of Lord de la Warre, then the governor of Virginia. Not, however, until June, 1613, in a letter written to Nicholas Hawes, did Argall specifically refer to "the De la Warre Bay," which is usually interpreted to mean that the bay took its English name from the cape.⁠6

Argall evidently did not know that if he had sailed further into the bay he would have found an uncharted river system; another Englishman was destined to make that "discovery," namely, Thomas Yong. Accompanied by his nephew and lieutenant, Robert Evelyn, Yong sailed into the bay in 1634 and continued up the river, exploring as he went. Like Henry Hudson, Yong was seeking a water passage to the Orient. He wrote that he had "purposed at my departure from England to make triall for the Passage" in "that great Bay." Imagine Yong's delight to learn from an Indian chief that the Delaware River issued from a great lake, and that about four days' journey beyond the head of the river he would find a "great mediterranean sea!" Yong thought of himself as the discoverer of the Delaware region and "took possession of the countrey for his Majesty and there sett up his  p48 Majesty's armes upon a tree."⁠7 He named the Delaware "Charles River," in honor of the King. Whether or not Yong left any people to start an English colony on the Delaware is a debatable point which will be discussed further in Chapter 6.

Yong did not know that the Dutch had placed colonists on the Delaware River ten years before, as we shall soon see, and that everything he had "discovered" was already well known to the Dutch!

Cornelis Jacobsen May returned to Holland in the fall of 1620 with tales of "new and fruitful lands" he had discovered, and he was soon engaged by the West India Company to take a party of colonists to New Netherland. Chartered on June 3, 1621, the Company was given a monopoly for twenty-four years to trade in certain specified foreign waters, including the full sweep of the North and South American coasts. The Company was also delegated power to make alliances with native rulers, appoint governors and other officers, administer justice, and lay down colonies. Another and prime purpose was that of weakening the power of Spain — the Company was authorized to capture Spanish ships on the high seas and attack Spanish colonies!

Dr. Nicholas van Wassenaer, whose semiannual publication, the Historisch Verhael, was a sort of seventeenth‑century Dutch current events magazine, wrote as follows under date of April, 1624:

These Walloons (French-speaking Belgians) took an oath of allegiance on board the ship, March 30, 1624, leaving no doubt that they arrived in America after that date.⁠9

In the late spring, May brought the Nieu Nederlandt with the thirty families into the mouth of the Hudson. Upon entering the river he found a Dutch yacht, the Maeckereel, lying above. She had embarked from Holland the previous year in company with another vessel, the Pigeon, which carried an earliest contingent of Walloons under the leader­ship of Jesse de Forest, to found a colony in South America, destined for failure. The Maeckereel had left the Pigeon on September 14, 1623, near the island of Madeira and sailed to the Hudson to barter with the Indians. Members of the crews of the Nieu Nederlandt and Maeckereel joined forces and drove away a French vessel, lying at anchor in the Hudson, "who would erect the Arms of the King of France there." Wassenaer wrote of this incident that the master of the French vessel "would do the same thing on the South River, but he was also prevented by the settlers there."⁠10 This statement is misleading because, as van Laer pointed out, the word "settlers" was incorrectly translated from the Dutch and should have read "traders," which puts a different meaning in the passage. At this date, it is unlikely that there were settlers living on the Delaware — although they would soon take up residence there. Information about them is given in two depositions by Catelina Trico, a member of the first (the word is hers) expedition sent to New Netherland  p50 by the West India Company. In the first deposition made in 1685 she stated:

In 1688 she made a second deposition, part of which reads as follows:

 p51  Mme. Trico's arithmetic is not consistent; in her first deposition she refers to sixteen persons having gone to the Delaware, four women and twelve men; then in the second she says that two families and eight men, a total of twelve, were sent. The number is less important than the fact that persons were sent by the West India Company to colonize the Delaware at a very early date. Some historians have tended to question these depositions on the grounds that they were made by a woman in her senility who had forgotten the facts — or what have generally been believed to be the facts, i.e., that May (not Thienpoint) was the first "governor" of New Netherland; that the Nieu Nederlandt (not the Unity) brought the first colonies; that they came in 1624 (not in 1623).

Van Laer, however, recognizing that the data relating to New Netherland are still incomplete, did not lightly put aside Mme. Trico's testimony. He realized that it could be explained only in one of two ways — either there was an earlier expedition to America, or her testimony was garbled. But failing to find any documentary support pointing unmistakably to an earlier expedition, he rationalized the question by saying that the Nieu Nederlandt, under May's command, "was the first ship that brought a properly equipped and officially organized company of settlers to New Netherland," and that Catelino Trico must have come over on it.⁠13 In the next paragraph, he cited an entry from the Copie-Boek of the Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church of Amsterdam referring to the sailing to New Netherland of Bastiaen Jansen Krol as Sieckentrooster, or comforter of the sick, on January 25, 1624!⁠14 Since the Nieu Nederlandt departed in March of 1624 it must have been preceded by another vessel if  p52 Krol left on January 25. Furthermore, if he went as comforter of the sick, a position that was sort of a combination of lay preacher and male nurse, who sometimes acted as school teacher, there must have been colonists on the same vessel with him.

Unknown to van Laer, another precious document lay buried in a sheaf of notarial papers in Amsterdam which would have lessened his perplexity. Unfortunately, van Laer did not have access to this document, later found by Professor Albert Eekhof of the University of Leyden. He translated it into English and published it in 1926. It relates that a vessel called the Falling Nut‑Tree, owned by the West India Company, had come to America before the Nieu Nederlandt with its party of Walloons; that it was commanded by Jan Jansz. Brouwer; that two other vessels, the Red Dove and another whose name is not given — but which might have been the Unity — were lying in the Hudson River near present Albany when the Nieu Nederlandt arrived in May, 1624. Although the name of Adriaen Jorissen Thienpoint is not mentioned in the document, it is well within the realm of possibility that he was in command of the latter vessel, as Catelina Trico stated. But even if this unnamed vessel were not the Unity, there is every reason to believe that the Unity did come to America before the Nieu Nederlandt. Here is further evidence:

On November 3, 1623, Thienpoint, a skipper then in the employ of Pieter Boudaen Courten, a prominent member of the Zeeland Chamber and also a private trader to New Netherland, appeared at a session of the Assembly of XIX. The records of the meeting state:

It is significant that Thienpoint had previously been in New Netherland in Courten's interests, having left vessels there to engage in the Indian trade. Furthermore, it should be noted that the Assembly of XIX agreed that the vessels and people should be brought back; that colonists should be transported to make the beginning of a settlement; that this should be done, not privately by a merchant like Courten, but under the direction of the Amsterdam Chamber. Since it is a matter of record that Thienpoint was in the employ of the West India Company in 1624‑1625, is it not probable that he was given the assignment he requested — but in the services of another employer who now took precedence over the first?

That a vessel was outfitted by the Amsterdam Chamber; that it left Holland for New Netherland on or about January 25, 1624; that there were passengers aboard, including Bastiaen Jansen Krol as comforter of the sick, all seems very likely in light of the document found by Eekhof, reprinted below in full:

Less than a year after the first colonists had arrived in New Netherland, the Company tried to get an accounting of the disposition of goods that certain of the vessels had carried, as indicated in this instruction:

Viewed in the light of the above deposition this seems to mean that Brouwer, who may have carried colonists, definitely brought goods for the Indian trade on the Falling Nut‑Tree; that May also brought goods, as well as passengers, on the Nieu Nederlandt; and that another vessel, or vessels, also brought goods on behalf of the merchant Courten.

The directors persisted in demanding an accounting and asked Isaack de Rasière, first secretary of the province, to make a report to them, which he did in the following language:

The role played by Adriaen Jorissen Thienpoint in this puzzle-game of fitting Dutch ships and people into their proper places is still undefined. Perhaps a missing document may some day be found which holds the key to this puzzle. What we actually know about Thienpoint can be summed up in a few sentences. The records show that in November of 1623 he was a ship's captain in Courten's employ, having been in New Netherland on trading missions. Soon thereafter, according to Mme. Trico, he was in the employ of the West India Company, commanding the vessel Unity, bringing colonists to settle at Fort Orange, the Connecticut, and on the Delaware. Thienpoint remained at Fort Orange all winter, after landing the colonists, and his son took the Unity back to Holland. During this sojourn at Fort Orange, he made a covenant of friendship with the Indians and engaged in trading with them for their furs — this, too, is taken from Mme. Trico's second deposition.

In 1625 Thienpoint was skipper of the vessel Sea‑Mew, as the next chapter will relate; this indicates that his tenure of office at Fort Orange was relatively short.

The above excerpt from de Rasière's report makes it evident that Thienpoint had occupied a position of authority, since he  p57 had issued orders to his fellow skipper, Brouwer, and others, having to do with the Indian fur trade. It may now be assumed, in light of van der Hulst's testimony regarding Brouwer, that this took place prior to the arrival of the Nieu Nederlandt under May's command. Therefore, it is possible that Thienpoint was master of a vessel which preceded the Nieu Nederlandt and which brought the first colonists to America on behalf of the West India Company, as Mme. Trico deposed. In 1625 it was written (see next chapter) that Thienpoint was "vice-director" of the settlement made at Fort Orange — a position which would have justified Mme. Trico's reference to him as the "governor" in her first deposition, even though he may have been in command only provisionally.⁠20 In her second deposition — which is presumed to be the more accurate and complete of the two — she refers to him as "commander" instead of as "governor."

With Thienpoint in charge at Fort Orange, May presumably took the colonists to the Delaware, and it is not unlikely that van der Hulst, whose deposition has been quoted, may have accompanied him. Someone had to guide the Walloons through unfamiliar and dangerous waters, and May had been in the Delaware before. This assumption is further supported in a statement made some years later by the Lenape chief Mattahorn in a conference with the Dutch that "one Cornelis [May] with one eye, or a film on his eye, was the first who coming here, made his dwelling on the river."⁠21 On account of his previous experience and familiarity with the Delaware River region, May could have been sent by the Company for the express purpose of establishing a colony on the Delaware. May did not remain on the Delaware  p58 very long, and after completing his assignment he sailed back to Holland. The Nieu Nederlandt returned home in October of 1624, and among its passengers were probably Krol and van der Hulst, about whom we will hear more in the next chapter.

The key question is: where exactly was this first Dutch settlement on the Delaware River? The answer is not given in any one source in unmistakable terms, but the place can be identified as each reference is considered in light of others. One thing seems certain: the post on the Delaware called Fort Nassau was not built to accommodate these Walloons. They arrived on the Delaware before Fort Nassau was built.⁠22

An official account of conditions on the Delaware submitted by the Company to the States General in 1656 contains this passage:

Even more convincing evidence that 1626 is the correct date for the building of Fort Nassau occurs in the Van Rappard Documents; a letter written from New Netherland on September 23, 1626, by de Rasière to the Amsterdam Chamber indicates that Fort Nassau was not then in existence. This is what he wrote:

De Rasière would scarcely have written such a letter if Fort Nassau had already been standing, nor would the directors have suggested in "their letter" that a fort be erected. De Rasière's letter invalidates the opinion of the historian Scharf that Dutch soldiers and sailors, accompanying the Walloons, were stationed at Fort Nassau, "hurriedly built for their protection."⁠25 The letter also shows that the other historians of New Netherland, most of whom give a date earlier than 1626 for the building of the fort, are in error.

Having ruled out Fort Nassau as the site of the Walloon settlement, let us examine documentary evidence which may indicate where these first settlers lived on the Delaware. To begin with, a somewhat indefinite statement by Wassenaer must be considered. He wrote that the colonists who accompanied May not only built Fort Orange but "They also placed a Fort which they named Wilhelmus on Prince's Island, heretofore called Murderer's Island, it is open in front, and has a curtain in the rear and is  p60 garrisoned by sixteen men for the defense of the river below.⁠26

The early maps of the Hudson and Delaware do not show an island named either Prince's Island or Murderer's Island, but Wilhelmus and a variant occur on at least two Dutch maps as an early name for the Delaware River: Willems on a map entitled De Zuid-Baai in Nieuw-Nederland, reproduced here as Figure 1,⁠27 and Wilhelmus, the Latinized form, on the Buchellius Chart.⁠28 Since fortified houses, or a trading post, built on a river named Wilhelmus might logically be named Fort Wilhelmus, the possibility exists that this island could have been one in the Delaware where the Walloons settled.

Less speculative evidence occurs in the deposition of a reliable witness, a sailor, Peter Lourenson, who came to New Netherland in 1628. Two years later, by order of the West India Company, he and seven others were sent in a sloop from Manhattan to the Delaware River. The following are his words:

An earlier deposition made by Lourenson has recently been found and published, which gives additional details about the Dutch colonists on the Delaware. In this earlier statement he names the settlements as follows:

Sifting from the two depositions the information pertinent to the settlements, it is possible to place the three sites of the earliest Dutch occupation on the Delaware. Each place is noted below and opposite is a description as paraphrased from Lourenson's depositions:

Each of these settlements warrants separate discussion, and they will all be treated fully in the chapters to follow. The oldest was that on the unnamed island in the Delaware; let us now learn what we can about the location of the island and the circumstances attendant to the Dutch effort to colonize it.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Referred to herein as van Laer. In preparing this chapter the author (C. A. W.) visited the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino, Calif., and examined the original Mss. He also examined other Dutch documents owned by the library and obtained a list of titles of those pertaining to New Netherland, through the courtesy of Miss Norma B. Cuthbert, librarian, a copy of which he deposited in the Historical Society of Delaware.

2 NYCD, 1:149. Hendricksen's "Figurative Map" of 1616, cf. below, shows "Nassou," the fort on the Hudson, but no indication of any fort on the Delaware. Furthermore, the Northern, or Greenland Company, formed in 1613, was not chartered until 1614 (George Edmundson, History of Holland, Cambridge, 1922, p166).

3 This background information is given in detail in many sources, one of the most authoritative being Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period in American History, New York, 1937, particularly vol. 3 entitled, "A Dutch Province and a Ducal Property."

4 NYCD, 1:12, 13. The map is reproduced opposite p11. See also Chapter 5 below.

5 NYCD, 1:12, 24. The suffix "sen" meaning "son of" occurs in various ways in Dutch surnames, sometimes "s," often "se," or "sz."

6 Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, James Mac Lehose and Sons edition, Glasgow (pub. Macmillan Company, New York, 1906), 19:73‑84.

7 Yong's journal appears in Narratives. Myers, pp37‑49. Soon after his voyage "Charles River" appeared on a map made by John Daniel (Iconography, 2: Pl. 34). Mention should be made of an English attempt to explore the Delaware prior to Yong's voyage. In September of 1632 seven or eight men were sent from Virginia in a sloop, "to see whether there was a river there, who had not returned," according to de Vries. In 1633, Mantes Indians living on the eastern side of the Delaware were seen wearing garments taken from these Englishmen, whom they had evidently killed (Narratives, Myers, pp20‑21).

8 Narratives, Jameson, p74; also NYCD, 1:149.

9 Van Laer, p. xi.

10 Narratives, Jameson, p75. Jesse de Forest's voyage and adventures are related in a journal reproduced in full in Mrs. Robert W. de Forest's, A Walloon Family in America, Boston, 1914, 2 vols. Vol. I • Vol. II

11 Doc. Hist. N. Y., 3:49‑50.

12 Ibid. Catelina Trico's husband was Joris Jansen Rapelje, their daughter Sarah is sometimes referred to as the first white child born in New Netherland, which Stokes said was "dubious and improbable." (Iconography, 4:40). The couple lived at Wallabout, Long Island (Colls. N. Y. Hist. Soc., 46:19).

13 Van Laer, p. xvi; see Iconography, 5:xii.

14 Ibid., p. xvii. The term Krankenbezoeker was also used for this position.

15 Iconography, 4.53; van Laer, p. xiii. Thienpoint, who lived in Seelant in the province of Zeeland, was skipper of a trading vessel that was in the Hudson in 1618 (Iconography, 6:5).

16 On March 21, 1626, two ship's carpenters, Gerrit Phillipss and Jan Pieterss, testified that they had sailed to New Netherland on the Witte Duyff ("White Dove"), "and that about 2½ years ago [late in 1623] when they left the Virginies, they delivered into the safe keeping of Jonathan de Necker, skipper of Willem Snel [director of Zeeland Chamber] a yacht of about 16 lasts called d 'Omvallende Nooteboom [the Falling Nut‑Tree] then about 1½ years old, with masts and spars, well built of dry timber and having eight portholes, as the same had sailed to the south and to the north along the entire coast, except the sails and rigging. The deponents also declare that at the time mentioned they also delivered to Jonathan de Necker a yacht of about 8 lasts with all its appurtenances, except the anchor, cables, and munitions of war; also a sloop, a Sardam boat and the Biscay shallop; all of which yachts and boats have been taken over by the West India Company" (Iconography, 6:13).

17 The Dutch version and an English translation are both given by Prof. Dr. A Eekhof, Jonas Michaëlius Founder of the Church in New Netherland, A. W. Sijthoff's Publishing Co., Leyden, 1926, pp96‑98. The English translation was printed in part in Iconography, 6:16, under date of "1627, July 30."

18 Barentsz, or Barentsen, was a trader, fluent in the Indian languages, who brought back valuable cargoes of furs to Holland (Narratives, Jameson, p87); after Crieckenbeeck's death, Minuit appointed him temporary commander at Fort Nassau (ibid., p85).

19 Van Laer, pp60‑63, 219‑220.

20 Ibid., p64. Ellis Lawrence Raesly, Portrait of New Netherland, Columbia University Press, New York, 1945, goes so far as to refer to Thienpoint as the first Dutch governor of New Netherland, an extremely liberal interpretation of the data. Wassenaer (Narratives, Jameson, p84) says flatly that "Cornelis May of Hoorn was the first Director there."

21 NYCD, 1:597.

22 Various unreliable dates have been given for the building of Fort Nassau: 1623 (NYCD, 1:290); 1624 (NYCD, 1:149); "since the year 1623" (NYCD, 1:564).

23 NYCD, 1:587‑588. See Chapter 6 below for discussion of both forts.

24 Van Laer, pp208‑211. This 1626 reference is one of the earliest to the Minquas war against the Delaware River Indians. Several years later, Yong (1634) and de Vries (1632) have been referred to this strife (Narratives, Jameson). De Vries was unable to obtain corn from the Delaware Indians because Minquas war parties had destroyed their crops (ibid., p26).

25 Scharf, 1:29.

26 Narratives, Jameson, p76. Prince Hendricx River was also a Dutch name for the Delaware (NYCD, 12:48; Dunlap, 1956, p49). Brodhead, note K, Appendix, p758, discusses Murderer's Island, but fails to identify it.

27 A facsimile is in David Pietersen de Vries, Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Acteyskeringe, ed. H. T. Colenbrander, 's-Gravenhage, 1911, fa­cing p154; see Dunlap. 1956, p59.

28 Narratives, Jameson, frontispiece.

29 This deposition, dated March 24, 1685, first appeared in Doc. Hist. N. Y., 3:50. The above is a newer version found in the William Penn papers, published in Penna. Magazine, 80, No. 2 (April, 1956), 233‑234. The deponent was the same "Pieter Lourissen" who with Wessel Gerritsen was appointed a pilot in 1655 for Stuyvesant's fleet attacking the Swedes, he and his companion "having both sailed to and from there for a long time" (NYDC, 12:95). On October 26, 1656, he offered to convey the soldier's baggage from Manhattan to present‑day New Castle "if he could send there his own goods in the same vessel" (ibid., p130). A patent for a plantation near Fort Casimir was issued to him on February 28, 1657, and a lot the following September (ibid., pp180, 182). In 1660, there occurs reference to him and Dirck Smith seeking intelligence about pirates (ibid., p323). On May 1, 1658, he sold his sloop de Hoop for "550 merchantable pine boards" (Albany Recs. 4:42). Evidently he moved from the Delaware back to Manhattan, for on December 26, 1661, he was referred to in the records as an "inhabitant of this city" (The Minutes of the Orphan‑Masters of New Amsterdam, 1655‑1663, ed. B. Fernow, New York, 1902, p219).

30 Penna. Magazine, 80, No. 2 (April, 1956), 233.

◂ previous						next ▸
Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
UP TO:		Dutch Explorers in the Delaware Valley	Readings in Dutch History	European History	Home
			American History	History of the Americas
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.

Accessibility