The much-discussed question as to who is entitled to the honor of being considered the founder of New York is opened anew by the following letter published in the New York Tribune, January, 1895.
The Founder of New York
Mayor Strong caused the following letter to be sent to Ernest Duponchel Gaultion, of No. 29 Franz Josefs Ouai, Vienna, Austria, who wrote and asked the name of the founder of this city, as the question was being discussed in a Vienna club : All authorities agree that Peter Minuit, concerning whose nationality there is a difference of opinion, arrived in New Netherland on the Sea Gull, Skipper Tienpont commanding, on May 4, 1623. He was a director of the newly formed and powerful Dutch West India Company. There is also no divergence of opinion that it was the redoubtable Peter who purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians, and founded in the same year, 1623, New Amsterdam. New Amsterdam afterward became New York. Concerning Jesse de Forest, or, as you put it, Jesse de la Forest, for which spelling there seems to be no authority, there is a disagreement among the historians. Most of our historians devote but little to Jesse. He was born in Avesne, Department du Nord, France, in 1465. After a wandering life he found himself in Leyden in 1515. He was a dyer by trade, but was strongly possessed of a spirit of adventure and unrest that ruled so many European people in those days. In August, 1521, Jesse wrote a letter to England asking permission for fifty or sixty families of Walloons to settle in Virginia. The King referred the letter to the directors of the Virginia Company, whose terms were not acceptable to the would-be emigrants, who therefore remained in Leyden. Meanwhile the Dutch West India Company got its charter, and a party of Walloons were sent to America by the Dutch proprietors in 1524. Eight men of these stayed on Manhattan Island, forming a settlement near the southern end, and were thus the first settlers here. This group has been referred to as the “Jesse de Forest colony,” but that Jesse ever came to New Amsterdam is doubtful. As far as I know, there is no project on foot for a monument to Jesse, whose connection with the founding of New York is too remote ever to receive such memorialization. If New York City ever erects a monument in memory of its founder, Peter Minuit will come in for that honor.
I have the honor to remain, sir, yours very truly, B. L. Burrows
Confidential Clerk to the Mayor.
In the Tribune of March 17, 1895, appeared the
following communication :
JESSE DE FOREST OR PETER MINUIT
FACTS FROM LEYDEN GOING TO SHOW THAT THE FORMER WAS THE FOUNDER OF NEW AMSTERDAM.
To the Editor of the “Tribune” :
Sir : In the latter part of last January there appeared in the newspapers of this city a letter to Herr Gaultion, Vienna, signed by the “Confidential Secretary to the Mayor,” and containing several extraordinary statements as to the founding of New York City, then New Amsterdam, by Peter Minuit, etc. Possessing some information on that subject myself, I still thought it best to write to Mr. Charles M. Dozy, Archivist of Leyden, Holland, and inquire into the historical facts. I have just received his answer, which I send herewith.
When the delegation of The Holland Society of New York visited Holland in 1888, a most elaborate display of old maps, books, engravings, and original manuscripts was prepared for us at Leyden, and I had in my hand the original minutes of the City Council of Leyden, dated August 27, 1622, granting permission to Jesse de Forest to enroll the Walloon colonists, and those dated January 4, 1624, giving permission to Gerard de Forest to take the position of “dyer,” formerly held by his brother Jesse, “gone lately to the West Indies.” (Also the original manuscript poll-tax list, giving names, localities, and assessments of William Brewster, John Robinson, and the other Pilgrim Fathers while they were living in Leyden in 1622.)
As I do not know the source of the information of the confidential secretary to the Mayor, I do not know how far he is excusable for the grave errors contained in his letter. It is to be regretted that such errors could be disseminated even quasiofficially.
George W. Van Siclen.
New York, March 13, 1895.
[Copy]
Leyden, 24th of February, 1895.
Dear Sir : You ask my opinion about a letter that Mr. Burrows, confidential clerk to the Mayor of your city, wrote some weeks ago to a gentleman at Vienna about the foundation of New York. You are right in thinking that the question does interest me, as I made researches about Jesse de Forest at Avesnes and Sedan. Mr. Burrows rejects the claim of foundership of your town for Jesse, and considers Peter Minuit as the only one who comes in for that honor. He asserts boldly that all authorities agree that this Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland on May 4, 1623, purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians, and founded in the same year—1623 —New Amsterdam (baptized, 1664, New York).
I can assure you that all authorities agree that Peter Minuit arrived only in 1626. This is important, as the whole question depends on dates. I must, however, excuse Mr. Burrows for this mistake. As not a single date in his whole letter is correct, at least in the printed copy you sent me, I suppose that it is not his, but the printer’s devil’s fault.
Minuit was the third Governor of the colony; he organized the administration, he made a treaty with the Indians that rendered the Dutch proprietors of the whole island, instead of possessors only by right of first discovery or occupation; he fortified the settlement that had already existed three years. His importance for the colony should not be disregarded, but before his directorship, since 1623, there was a settlement on Manhattan Island that had already received important accessions from Holland, with a supply of live-stock and farming tools.
Jesse de Forest, born at Avesnes between 1570 and 1580, living in 1601 and 1608 at Sedan, and 1605 at Leyden, had applied in July, 1621, in the name of fifty-six Walloon families, who wished to go to Virginia, to the Ambassador of England at The Hague for permission and assistance from the king of that country. The royal answer was not satisfactory. In August, 1622, Jesse sent a petition to the States-General of the United Provinces asking to be allowed to enroll Protestant families for emigration to the West Indies, as America was commonly called in that time. The Dutch West India Company, which was yet in process of organization, of course highly approved this project; it may be that the attempt of 1621 had fixed the attention of the directors on Jesse, and that they had encouraged him in his address to the Dutch Government. At any rate, the permission was granted, a ship was equipped, and in March, 1623, the New Netherland left the Dutch shores with thirty families aboard. In May the mouth of the River Hudson was reached. One division of the colonists went on and built Fort Orange, the origin of the present Albany. But the other part settled on Manhattan Island, and the name Walenbogt or Walloon Bay, the Wallabout of to-day, bears testimony to their being Walloons. It cannot be denied that from that fact, from the arrival of the New Netherland in May, 1623, dates the permanent occupation of the site of New York.
The assertion of Mr. Burrows that the Walloons of Jesse were sent to America by the Dutch proprietors in 1524 (he means 1624), a year after the purchase of the island in 1623, is in contradiction with the statement of the best historians of this part of American history, Brodhead, Baird, Riker, Grant Wilson, and others.
As for Jesse himself, Mr. Burrows is not alone in doubting that he ever came to Manhattan Island. Indeed, there is no testimony of his presence there; but almost all we know about the earliest history of New York was discovered not long ago. As Mr. Grant Wilson remarks in his work. The Memorial History of the City of New York, even the fact that Peter Minuit ruled here as director “was somewhat apocryphal until recent years.” We know only two of the colonists of 1623. But I think we may be sure of Jesse having taken the prominent place among them that his organization of the expedition assigned him to.
It was Jesse who had written the address to England, and who was the advocate of the would be colonists before the Ambassador; It was Jesse who had given the impulse to the expedition by his petition to the States, and had enrolled the emigrants. The doubt that he did not accompany them and the assertion that he went to Brazil and died there repose wholly on the misunderstanding by incomplete knowledge of an act of the Common Council taken from the Leyden archives. Gerard de Forest asked from the burgomasters the authorization to replace as a dyer his brother Jesse, “who had lately gone to the West Indies.” The permission was granted on January 4, 1624, and as a naval military expedition left Holland on the 21st and 22d of December, 1623, it seemed to some authors likely that the word ” lately” had relation to that expedition of a fortnight previous. They forgot that not the burgomasters, but Gerard had used that word, and they did not know that he had used it before the date of that expedition, for it was exactly on December 21st that the magistrates sent the petition for advice to the Aldermen of the Dyers’ Guild.
There had been no voyage to the West Indies at that moment ” lately,” other than that of the New Netherland, and Gerard’s expression could not relate to any other one. As there is no doubt that the first permanent settlement on Manhattan Island dates from May, 1623, the fact that Jesse de Forest prepared and organized that colonization and was almost certainly the leader of it gives him a right to be called the founder of New Amsterdam.Ch. M. Dozy.
To Mr. George W. Van Siclen,
New York.
COMMENTS BY THE -SECRETARY
It is greatly to be regretted that we have not fuller and more definite information concerning the earliest settlers of New Netherland. When Hon. Henry C. Murphy was at The Hague in 1858, he sent over a translation of a letter which had recentlybeen discovered and published in Holland, writtenby Rev. Jonas Michaelius, the first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in this country, dated at Manhattan, 11 August, 1628. A fac-simile of this letter, together with a printed copy in Dutch andan English translation by Mr. Murphy, is in the library of the Society. Mr. Michaelius embarked for New Amsterdam, January 24, 1628, arriving here April 7, 1628 and this letter, written four months thereafter, gives an interesting account of his impressions of New Amsterdam. Mr. Murphy says this is the “only letter extant, within our knowledge, written during the first years of the settlement of New York by any of the adventurers. While New England is rich in this kind of material for its history, New York is, with the exception of that now presented to us, entirely barren.”
Almost all the manuscripts and records of the Dutch West India Company were sold for waste paper seventy-five years ago. There has been preserved but the briefest mention of any of the voyages made by the ships of the “New Netherland Company,” chartered in 1614, and we have no passenger lists of the ships of the West India Company prior to 1654, so it will be readily seen how impossible it is to give the names of the earliest settlers of New Netherland with the fulness and accuracy of those of the pioneers of New England.
Of the colonists on the ship New Netherland referred to in the letter of Mr. Dozy (see also a letter from the same gentleman in the Year Book for 1888-89), he states that the names of two only are known. Presumably he had in mind, Joris Jansen Rapelje and his wife Catharina Trico, the parents of Sarah Rapelje, commonly considered to be the first white girl born in New Netlierland. But it is questioned whether they came in that vessel. For, in a deposition made by Catharina Trico, October 17, 1688 (Documentary History of New York, vol. iii., p. 49), she states that she came in 1623 in the ship Unity, “the first ship sent by the Dutch West India Company.” As, however, she was, at the date of her affidavit, eighty-three years of age, it is claimed that after the lapse of sixty-five years she may not have remembered the name of the vessel. But she further asserts that Arien Jorise was captain of the ship, whereas we know from the authority given below that Cornelius Jacobs was skipper of the New Nctherland. It is to be noted, moreover, that in Baird’s The Huguenot Emigration to America, vol. i., p. 351, are given the names of the fifty-six petitioners, headed by Jesse de Forest, mentioned in the letter of Mr. Dozy, and some of whom it is assumed De Forest led to New Netherland, and that the names of Rapelje and his wife do not appear among them.
Riker, in his History of Harlem, p. 93, states that December 21 and 22, 1623, twenty-two ships of war left Holland under Admiral Jacob Willekens to operate against the Spanish settlements in the West Indies and Brazil, and asserts that Jesse de Forest went with this expedition, and was never heard of more. Riker. who was a painstaking student of history and particularly interested in Jesse de Forest, concludes that he was either killed in battle with the Spaniards or died of disease, and that the fact of his decease soon became known to his family in Holland. His widow continued to reside in Leyden, where three years later her daughter Rachel married Jean La Montagne. Ten years thereafter La Montagne with his wife and her brothers removed to New Amsterdam.
Mr. Dozy, as does Baird, disputes this conclusion of Riker, asserting that he had “an incomplete knowledge” of the facts. Riker had stated, p. 94, that Gerard de Forest appeared before the burgomasters January 4, 1624, declared that his brother Jesse had “lately departed with the vessels for the West Indies,” and requested to be appointed in his stead to dye serges and camlets in colors. Mr. Dozy impugns this statement that Gerard de Forest appeared before the burgomasters January 4, 1624, claims that permission was granted Jan. 4, 1624, (though Baird gives it, vol. i., p. 174, January 24, 1624), and that the burgomasters had sent the petition to the Aldermen of the Dyers’ Guild, December 21, 1623, which was the very day the first of the expedition sailed. Admitting that Mr. Dozy is correct in his statement that Gerard de Forest had used the expression quoted as early as December 21, 1623, we have only to assume that Jesse had left Leyden a day or two before for the Texel whence the expedition sailed, and that his brother immediately made application for the vacant position, which is much more probable than to assume that he deferred his application for nearly a year, as would have been the case if Jesse had sailed in the New Netherland in March, 1623. Note, too, that the expression used, “lately departed with the vessels for the West Indies,” more accurately applies to a fleet just starting for the West Indies than to a single ship for New Netherland which had sailed ten months previously.
It is further to be noted that we do not find in any record of early inhabitants of New York the names of Jesse de Forest or the other petitioners mentioned.* The conclusion appears to be irresistible that neither Jesse de Forest nor his company came to New Amsterdam in the ship New Netherland nor by any other vessel.
That there were Walloons very early in New Amsterdam admits of no question, but that they constituted the very earliest settlers remains to be proven. Wassenaef’s Historic van Europa, published in Amsterdam, 1 621-1632, quoted in Documentary History of New York, vol. iii., p. 35, says : “In the spring of 1623, the West India Company sent a vessel called the New Netherland whereof Cornelius Jacobs, of Hoorn, was skipper, with thirty families, mostly Walloons, to plant a colony there. “In the letter of Mr. Michaelius referred to above he says : ” We have first established the form of a church. . . . We have had at the first administration of the Lord’s Supper full fifty communicants— Walloons and Dutch. . . . the Walloons and French have no service on Sundays, otherwise than in the Dutch language, of which they understand very little. . . . Some of the Walloons live far away and could not come on account of the heavy rain and storms, so that it was neither advisable, nor was it possible, to appoint any special service for so small a number with so much uncertainty.” The clear intimation is, that at that date, at least, the Dutch far outnumbered the Walloons, who were “small in number.” It may be remarked just here that Mr. Dozy, with the generality of writers who have assumed that the Wallabout was so designated because of its association with the Walloons, may possibly be mistaken. While “Waal” is Dutch for “Walloon” it had for centuries been used to designate that arm of the Rhine which flows through the Netherlands between the Rhine and the Maas—an inner water,—and the dictionaries give, as the primary signification of the word, “an inner harbor” It would seem most likely therefore that the term was applied to that little bay on the Brooklyn shore because it was “an inner harbor,” rather than because of the proximity of Walloons, whose presence is assumed to account for the name. It was for a long time believed that Sarah Rapelye was born at the Wallabout and the supposition that the Walloons were there as early as 1625 helped to foster the idea of this origin of the name, but it is now known that her parents did not remove to Long Island till “many years ” after her birth (see affidavit of Catharina Trico above mentioned).
* Baird, vol. i., p. 175, thinks he recognized some of these names, “in spite of the Batavian disguises in which they appear, beyond the gap of fifteen or twenty years in the records of New Amsterdam,” and specifies some of them, but other investigators of these records fail to identify any of the names.
The earliest list of colonists we find is that given in O’Callaghan’s History of New Netherland, vol. i., pp. 433-441, as settlers in Rensselaerwyck, from 1630 to 1646. The earliest records of the Dutch church in New York are lost, those now extant beginning only with September 25, 1639. We have also ” The Roll of Oaths of Allegiance, in Kings County, N. Y.,” in 1687, published in the Documentary History of New York, vol. i., pp. 659-661, which specifies the number of years the persons named had lived in the country’. From these sources only can we gather the names of the pioneer settlers of New York, with occasional exceptions. One of these exceptions we find in the Journal of the Labadists, who visited this country in 1679. On page 114, they state that they had just had an interview with Jan Vigne, then sixty-five years old, who, they say, was the first male white person born in New Netherland. This would indicate the year of his birth to be 1614 or 1615, and the coincidence of dates has led some to conclude that his parents were with Adriaen Block in the Tiger, when that vessel was burned in New York harbor in 161 3. It will be recalled that Block’s crew erected the first houses ever built in New Amsterdam (the supposed spot, 41 Broadway, being now marked by one of the Holland Society’s tablets), where they spent the winter of 1613-1614, while rebuilding the Restless, the first ship constructed in New Netherland.
Some historians, however, question this statement of the Labadists, and assuming that no settlement of New Amsterdam was made prior to 1623, conclude that they or Vigne himself were in error as to Vigne’s age, and that he was really born as late as 1624. But it is not clear that Vigne’s claim may not be well founded. His mother, Adrienne Cuvilje was one of the most famous of the Dutch women of early New York. On the death of her first husband, Guleyn Vignd who was an Indian trader, she married Jan Jansen Damen, one of the most prominent citizens of the town, whose farm extended from the Hudson to the East River and from Wall Street to Maiden Lane. Jan Vigne was one of the ” Great Burghers ” of New Amsterdam, and was Schepen in 1655, 1656, and 1 66 1. One of his sisters, Rachel, married Cornelius Van Tienhoven, the Secretary of the Province of New Netherland, and another, Mary, married Abraham Isaac Ver Planck, the ancestor of the Ver Plancks and other noted families of New York.
But even if it should be conceded that no settlement was made as early as 1614, it is by no means certain that the first settlers were those by the ship New Netherland, in 1623. The very next year after the discovery of the Hudson a Dutch trading vessel visited the river and was followed by others. On October 11, 1614, a charter was granted by the States-General to the ” New Netherland Company,” composed of a number of merchants of Amsterdam, owners of five ships, whose names are stated, which had already made voyages to these shores, giving them exclusive authority to trade with New Netherland for the term of three years. It is believed that a fort was erected on Manhattan Island in 1615, and another at about the same time near Albany, and it is not at all unlikely, during the eight years intervening before the arrival of the New Netherland, with ships constantly passing to and fro, that not a few permanent traders and settlers had established themselves both at Manhattan Island and up the Hudson River.
In fact there appears to be positive evidence to this effect. In Broadhead’s History, page 93, reference is made to Thomas Dermer, Captain of an English vessel employed for exploration of these shores. In the summer of 1619 he visited the Hudson River, and in a letter to his employer, under date of December 27, 161 9, he mentions that “in his passage he met with certain Hollanders who had a trade in Hudson’s River some years before this time, with whom he had a conference about the state of that coast and their proceedings with those people, whose answer gave him good content.” ” This conference was held, no doubt,” says Broadhead, ‘‘with the Dutch traders who were then settled at Manhattan Island”. This was in 1619, it will be observed. “But, before he left Manhattan Island, Dermer took care to warn the Dutch whom he found there in quiet possession, not to continue their occupation of what he claimed as English territory. “Meeting,” says Gorges, the employer of Dermer, “with some Hollanders that were settled in a place we call Hudson’s River in trade with the natives, Dermer forbade them the place as being by his Majesty appointed to us.”
It would therefore appear that the Dutch had settled on Manhattan Island before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and of course prior to Jesse de Forest’s petition “to goe into Verginia” in 1621 , or his subsequent petition to go to the “West Indies.”
In the Documentary History of the State of New York, vol. iii., pages 52-63, are given lists of passengers by forty-four ships which sailed from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam during the ten years from 1654 to 1664. The late Hon. Tunis G. Bergen, whose Early Settlers of Kings County is of such priceless value, has rendered an important service by arranging in alphabetical order not only the names of these passengers but also those of the early settlers in Rensselaerwyck and the names taken from “The Roll of Oaths of Allegiance in King’s County, New York,” already mentioned. These are published in volumes xiv. and XV. of The Record of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.
Valentine’s Manual of the Common Council of New York, for 1862, 1863, and 1864, giving the marriages and baptisms in the Dutch Church of New York; Winfield’s Land Titles of Hudson County, giving similar information from the Bergen Church; Pearson’s Genealogies of the Early Settlers of Albany, in vol. iv. of Munsell’s collections on the history of that city, and The Early Settlers of Schenectady, also by Prof. Pearson, furnish valuable alphabetically arranged lists of the founders of New Netherland. The fullest information we can get of the names of the early colonists is to be obtained, of course, from the records of the Dutch churches, which, happily with a few exceptions, have been so well preserved. Of these churches the records of the following, organized prior to 1700, have been published : New York, in The Record of the New York Genealogical and Biographiical Society. Kingston, by Rev. R. R. Hoes. Brooklyn, by E. W. Nash, of New York. Bergen, in Winfield’s Land Titles of Hudson County. Hackensack and Schraalenburgh, in the Collections of the Holland Society. Tappan, in Dr. Cole’s History of Rockland County; and Staten Island, in Bayles’ History of Richmond County, the latter, as well as those of the Bergen church, being arranged alphabetically.
This article appears in the Holland Society Yearbook, 1895 beginning on Page 119.