Oswego Nights

© 2009 David Minor / Eagles Byte

NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1645-1649

1645

Jul 25

Jan Evertse Bout is granted land in Brooklyn.

Aug 30

The Dutch and the Indians sign the peace treaty at New Amsterdam. Only 100 whites are left in the city.

Oct 10

New York's governor Willem Kieft issues letters of patent to English immigrants Thomas Applegate, Lawrence Dutch, Thomas Farrington, Robert Field, Robert Firmin, John Hicks, John Lawrence, William Lawrence, John Marsten, Thomas Saul, Henry Sawtell, Thomas Stiles, William Thorne, John Townsend, William Widgeon and Michael Willard, for the Long Island settlement of Flushing. The patent grants the settlers the same rights to religious freedom as their countrymen back home.

City

Quakers under patentee John Hicks found Vlissingen (Flushing) on Long Island. ** Hoping to form a buffer between New Amsterdam and the Long Island tribes, Dutch officials encourage a group of New England religious dissenters led by Lady Deborah Moody to establish a colony at Gravesend, near Coney Island, in the future Brooklyn. ** Adrien Jansen van Olfendam opens a school, charges two beaver skins. ** Dirck Volkertsen, called The Norman, is given a patent for the Greenpoint area of Brooklyn and builds the first house, on Bushwick Creek. ** Dominie Johannes Megapolensis writes home to the Netherlands, contrasting the welcome diverse scenery of the New World with the flatness of Holland. ** Kieft's (Wappinger's) War ends after five years of strife between the Dutch and the local Indians. At least 1600 Munsee Indians have been killed during the war. ** Kieft is fired by the Dutch West India Company’s Board of Directors by year’s end and replaced by Peter Stuyvesant.

State

Close to 10,000 pelts are transported to New Amsterdam by way of Fort Orange (Albany).

1646

Jul 28

Kieft is ordered to give up his post.

Nov 26

The Dutch West India Company declares the Village of Breuckelen a municipality, the first in present-day New York State.

Dec 17

Former New Amsterdam schoolmaster Adam Roelantsen, often in trouble with the law and now reduced to taking in laundry, attacks Wyntje Theunis, wife of Herk Syboltsen, and is sentenced to be publicly flogged and banished. The sentence will be suspended because of his four motherless children.

City

Lawyer and sheriff Adriaen van der Donck moves down from Rensselaerwyck, bringing 50 families to his estate in the Bronx. The settlement will be wiped out by Indians. ** Farmer Jan Jansen Damen shoots bears in his orchard on lower Broadway, between Pine and Cedar streets, where the Equitable Building will one day rise.

1647

May 11

Peter Stuyvesant arrives in Nieuw Amsterdam as Director General, to replace Willem Kieft. Also aboard is William Beekman. Eighteen of the passengers aboard the ship died on the voyage.

Jul 4

Stuyvesant calls for the building of a commercial wharf.

Sep 24

Stuyvesant forms a Board of Nine Men to help him govern New York.

Sep 27

Having sailed for Holland with ore samples from the colony aboard the Princess, Governor Willem Kieft drowns when the ship is wrecked in the Britain’s Bristol Channel. Also lost are Dominie Bogardus and other officials.

December

Stuyvesant, his colony nearly bankrupt, jails Adrian van der Donck, leader of the Board of Nine Men, who are seeking stronger power.

City

Stuyvesant requires all Manhattan lots to be built on. ** Provisions are made to protect the populace against ship-borne diseases. ** The approximate date Jacob Lendersten Van Der Grift and his brother Paulus arrive from Amsterdam.

1648

July

During a brawl at at Creiger’s tavern Joannes Rodenburgh (Rodenburch) kills Gerrit Jansen Clamp. Rodenburgh pleads guilty and is arrested.

Jul 23

Creiger’s tavern is shut down.

Aug 19

Rodenburgh (Rodenburch) is released on bail when no one appears to accuse him after three (court) days notice.

City

New Amsterdam's first pier is built, in the East River at Schreyer's Hook. ** A law calling for pigs to be penned is ignored. ** Adriaen van der Donck, Auguste Heerrnan, Arnoldus van Hardenburgh, Govert Loockermans, Oloff Stevensen van Cortlandt, Hendrick Hendricksen Kip, Michael Jansen, Elbert Elbertsen (Stoothof), and Jacob Wolfertsen van Cowenhoven are named to this year's Board of Nine Men. ** Early in the year settlers under Adriaen van der Donck begin preparing a Remonstrance, or protest against the management of the Dutch West India Company, to send to the Staats-General in the Netherlands. A map prepared for the report has since been lost. ** Jan Stevenson opens a second school. ** Flushing’s English-born Presbyterian cleric Francis Doughty leaves for “the English Virginias” (Maryland), where his brother-in-law William Stone is governor.

1649

Jan 27

The West India Company directors write to Peter Stuyvesant, questioning the need for him to build large warehouse.

March

Stuyvesant has Van der Donck jailed for libel and removed from New Amsterdam's Board of Nine Men, seizing drafts of the Remonstrance.

July

New York merchants join to demand government permission to sell, buy and trade timber, grain and other merchandise with the same freedom as government traders.    

Jul 28

The Remonstrance of New Netherland is signed. It will be published in Holland later in the year.

Jul 29

The Nine Men inform the Dutch States-General they are sending three delegates to the Netherlands bearing A Petition of the Delegates, a Petition of the Commonality of New Netherland, and The Remonstrance of New Netherland, with charges against Stuyvesant’s rule.

Nov 7

Talks are held in Connecticut concerning the possible union of the colony with that of Maidstone (Southampton) on Long Island. Nothing will come of the idea until 1658.

City

The city applies for designation as a municipality. ** When citizens criticize the Dutch West India Company for enslaving the children of free Christian mothers the company backs off, requiring that they be made to perform only occasional labor. ** Manhattan has 17 taphouses.

© 2012 David Minor / Eagles Byte

Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas

© 1997 David Minor / Eagles Byte

It’s as far west as the salties can go. For those of you unfamiliar with Great Lakes lingo, a salty is a saltwater ship, and you won’t find one west of Duluth-Superior. To those of us who live at the eastern end of the Great Lakes, the western end may be relatively unknown. Every so often we’ll explore the shores of these five glacial souvenirs, and get acquainted.

Most lakes have fairly rounded contours. Lake Superior comes to a sharp point at its western end, where Wisconsin snuggles cozily into the lower curve of eastern Minnesota. That geography has shaped the history of two towns; made them first rivals, and then partners.

Superior, Wisconsin, was the first. England’s Hudson’s Bay Company had an outpost there as early as 1820, although an even earlier trading post at nearby Fond du Lac, Minnesota, 67 years earlier, would one day become a depot of the rival American Fur Company. Superior, formally settled in 1853, under the tutelage of a bevy of eastern capitalists and politicians, a consortium including Washington banker William Wilson Corcoran, Senator Stephen A. Douglas and Congressman John C. Breckinridge, stepped out ahead. Momentum increased when a military road to St. Paul, Minnesota, was constructed in 1856. Meanwhile, a rival had sprung up across the bay. Duluth, near Fond du Lac, was also settled in 1853 but, with no friends in high places, had only a population of eighty, seven years later. That changed when Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke became interested in Duluth as a lake port for the shipment of grain from nearby midwestern wheatfields to eastern markets. He was one of the sponsors of a bill in Congress to make harbor improvements at Duluth.

And improvements were necessary. Minnesota Point, an eight-mile long spit of sand, fifty feet in height, not only protected Duluth’s harbor, but made Superior closer to open water and therefore to shipping. When, in 1870, the bill failed in Congress, Cooke founded the Minnesota Canal and Harbor Improvement Company and began construction of a channel to sever Minnesota Point, opening the Port of Duluth directly to Lake Superior. The town of Superior, learning of the threat from their rival, sent representatives to Leavenworth, Kansas, the nearest Federal presence, to obtain an injunction against the project. The emissaries were successful and set off for home, galloping across the landscape, injunction in hand. But they underestimated the citizens of Duluth. Word of the legal prohibition raced ahead of them. Every able-bodied man in Duluth grabbed a shovel or a pick, rushed out onto the point, and completed the construction of the channel, hours before the injunction was scheduled to take effect.

NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1640-1644

1640

May 10

A militia is formed in New Amsterdam.

July

The directors of the West India Company grant the remainder of Staten Island to Cornelius Melyn. He will attempt to start a patroonship and plant a colony.

City

A Dutch church is erected inside the stockade. ** Staten Island’s David Pietersz De Vries leases out the island when his plantation there fails to attract settlers. ** A few pigs disappear on Staten Island. Kieft sends 100 armed men to the island where they kill several Raritan Indians, including a sachem. The Raritan burn a farm and kill four Dutch workmen - the Pig War (also known as Kieft's or the Wappinger War). ** A colony of Massachusetts Quakers settles at Gravesend, Brooklyn, under the protection of the Dutch government.

1641

Aug 29

Family heads in New Amsterdam select a representative government, the Board of Twelve Men.

City

Scandinavian sea captain Jonas Bronck buys 500 acres north of Manhattan to farm tobacco. ** Overseer Jacob Stoffelson has city slaves removing dead hogs from the streets. ** In a double wedding Anthony van Angola and Catalina van Angola, and Lucie d’Angola and Laurens vam Angola, all slaves, are married in the Dutch Reformed Church. ** Eight slaves are accused of murdering a ninth, Jan Premero. One slave, Manuel (the Giant), belonging to Gerrit de Reus, is chosen by lot to hang. The rope breaks and spectators successfully plead for his life. The others - Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Paulo d’Angola, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese - are pardoned. ** The Dutch West India Company builds the Stadt Herbergh (City Tavern) at Coentes and Pearl. ** Governor Kieft opens the city's first annual cattle fair, outside the fort on the Marktveldt. ** David Pietersz De Vries’ Staten Island settlement at the Watering Place (later Tompkinsville) is wiped out by Indians.

1642

Jan 20

New Amsterdam director Kieft convenes The Twelve Men to plan a campaign against the Algonquin.

Feb 8

Kieft dismisses The Twelve Men when they begin considering a permanent place in the government.

Feb 25

Kieft consents to the massacre of a band of innocent Algonquin Indians, forced into his area by hostile tribes in the Albany area.

March

Kieft’s campaign against the Algonquin proves ineffective.

November

Adriaen van der Donck, is sent to Manhattan by his employer, patroon Kiliaen Van Rennselaer, to bring back a runaway female indentured servant. Discovering she’s about to give birth, he allows her to remain until the infant’s old enough to travel. Van Rensselaer is displeased.

City

The approximate date the Dutch West India Company builds Philip Geraerdy’s Tavern at Stone and Whitehall. ** Twelve languages are spoken in the settlement. ** The daughter of minister Everardus Bogardus is married. Director Kieft takes advantage of the tippling guests by successfully soliciting subscriptions for a new stone church inside the fort. Construction begins. ** The Dutch engage in hostilities with New Jersey's Hackensack Indians over whiskey. ** Plymouth colonists led by Reverend Francis Doughty settle on Long Island along Newtown Creek, near the Indian village of Mespaetches, the future site of Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood. The ensuing Maspeth will be the first European community in Queens. Governor Kieft offers no objections. Quakers led by Reverend John Throgmorton settle at Throg's Neck. ** Cornelius Dircksen inaugurates the first ferry service (by rowboat) to connect Brooklyn, near today’s Old Fulton Street, with Manhattan. ** A small section of a lower Manhattan street is named Broadway.

Bronx

British settler John Throckmorton settles on the Long Island Sound peninsula that will become known (after his name) as Throgs Neck.

1643

Feb 8

Tobacco planter and Netherlands emigrant Jan Cornelissen is killed in the Indian wars, on the north bank of the Batten Kill on Staten Island, at about the age of 70.

Feb 25

New Amsterdam’s Director General Kieft makes war on Indian refugees from the Mohawks at Corlaer’s Hook and Pavonia, precipitating a war that lasts over the next two years. 120 Indians seeking refuge are slaughtered by the settlers, many of them as they slept.

April

Staten Island farmer David De Vries convinces 18 Metoac sachems to signed a treaty of truce with Kieft. Envoys are sent to the Hackensack and Tappan urging them also to sign.

September

Siwanoy Indians under sachem Wampage murder Anne Hutchinson and her family in Eastchester.

Sep 13

Kieft seeks counsel from a new body, The Eight.

Oct 7

Dutch merchant, land speculator and Dutch West India Company founder-director Kiliaen van Rensselaer - never having seen his New World lands - and having died recently in Amsterdam in his late forties (exact dates unknown) is buried on this date.

City

Population: 400. 18 languages are spoken. ** French Jesuit priest Father Isaac Jogues visits the city. ** Bronx landowner Jonas Jonasson Bronck, 43, and most of his settlers are killed during an Indian raid. ** Wecquaesgeek Indians resist demands for tribute by the Mahicans. Several are killed and many women and children captured. The Wecquaesgeek flee south to Manhattan, expecting protection from the Dutch, who are supplying guns for the Mahicans. When they cross the river to New Jersey, Kieft becomes convinced an attack is imminent and attacks their villages, massacring 110 (the Pavonia Massacre). The Wappinger War (Governor Kieft's War) begins, lasts until 1645. Mespaetches Indians burn the settlement on Brooklyn's Newtown Creek. ** Fort Amsterdam is built at the southern tip of the island. ** Kieft creates a burgher guard, the first recorded police force for the colony. ** Lady Deborah Moody establishes the Brooklyn settlement at Gravesend, on land donated by William Kieft, becoming the first woman to found a colony. It’s the oldest town on Long Island. ** Kieft, tired of entertaining visitors in his own home, opens a tavern – the Staat’s Herberg (State’s Lodging) - on Pearl Street for the West India Company, leases it for 300 guilders to Philip Giraerdy (Gerritsen). Only company liquors are to be sold. It’s the settlement’s first tavern. ** Martin Krigier (Creiger) opens a second tavern, on Bowling Green (today's 9-11 Broadway.

1644

Feb 25

A number of black slaves, including Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Paulo d’Angola, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese, are awarded half-freedom. They are free on a bond, payable in labor, while their children remained slaves.

March

Kieft declares a day of thanksgiving after his forces kill 500 Indians.

Jun 18

The Eight, New Amsterdam Kieft’s council, meets. Kieft tells the members the colony is out of money because of the recent Indian war and will have to tax beaver pelts and beer. The meeting breaks up in disarray.

August

Dutch wheelwright/schout (sheriff) Claes Swits is beheaded by a Wickquasgeck Indian he’s invited into his home on the Rensselaerwyck lands. Fifteen years before the Indian, then twelve-years-old, was the sole survivor of a massacre of fellow tribesmen by Europeans.

Oct 28

The Eight send a third petition to the Dutch government, without Kieft’s knowledge, seeking the director's dismissal.

November

A jury of twelve men is assembled in New Amsterdam to consider avenging the murder of Swits. When the jury cannot agree on a course of action they are dismissed. Director Kieft will launch a war on the Wesquecqueck on his own next year.

Immigrants

Claes Martin van Roosevelt arrives in New Amsterdam.

© 2011 David Mnor / Eagles Byte

APPOINTMENT AT TARAWERA

©2004 David Minor / Eagles Byte dminor@eznet.net

As young Makereti Thom learned of her Maori past she would have been told of how her ancestor, the great navigator Ngatoroirangi, trapped the sorcerer Tama-o-Hoi deep in the interior of the sacred mountain Tarawera. When the tourists began trickling in during the 1860s they climbed to the base of Tarawera to view the lake there and experience the thermal pools of the Pink Terrace and the seven-acre White Terrace on the hillsides above the water. (Later on the nearby region would attract "Lord of the Rings" film director Peter Jackson, who used it as stand-in for the land of Mordor). The tourists brought their pounds sterling and a local cadre of native guides sprang up, many of them women. But the cash brought its own problems, particularly alcoholism. Tuhoto Ariki, a local tohunga, or priest, became fearful for his fellow Maori. One night, at the end of May, 1886, a phantom canoe was spotted out on Lake Rotomahana. The Maori began taking the tohunga more seriously.

Sometime between June 9th and June 10th, tourist Edwin Bainbridge of Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, would write, "This is the most awful moment of my life. I cannot tell when I may be called upon to meet my God. I am thankful that I find His strength sufficient for me. We are under heavy falls of Volcanoe." A short while earlier the trapped sorcerer Tama-o-Hoi made his bid for freedom. The triple-peaked Tarawera erupted and began shooting flames and smoke thousands of feet up into the cold, clear night sky. Then the lava barged through an underground fissure beneath Lake Rotomahana, hit the hydrothermal pools below, causing the lake bed to blow out. William Bird, another visitor described how, "Dominating all, hung the great cloud-curtain, gloomy and dark above, saffron and orange on its under-surface. From the cloud, great balls of flaming rock dropped from time to time, descending with a splash into the waters of the lake."

By the time accompanying strong winds had calmed and Tarawera had settled down, the villages of Te Ariki and Moura had vanished beneath the lava. Both terraces had vanished. Nearly 120 people died; local schoolmaster Charles Haszard lost five members of his family. And Edwin Bainbridge was called upon to meet his God, as the veranda roof of the Rotomahana Hotel collapsed over his head.

Among the well-known guides that survived the eruptions was Sophia Hinerangi, one of Margaret's aunts. She and several other guides were resettled further north, to the thermal valley at (F)Whaka-rewa-rewa, a living village museum today just outside Rotorua. It was there that Margaret Thom, fresh out of the Hukarere Native Girls' School decided she could best gain her independence by earning a living as a guide. Under the tutelage of Sophia Hinerangi, she took to the routine quickly and her knowledge of her twin heritages, as well as her beauty and her skills as a storyteller soon made Margaret Thom a much sought-after guide. A younger sister, Bella, followed in her footsteps.

One day, while leading a group of tourists, someone asked Margaret if she had a Maori name in addition to her Anglo name. Mentally searching for a plausible sounding name she suddenly thought of nearby geyser, and told the tourist, "My name is Papakura. Maggie Papakura." The name stuck, and soon other family members had adopted the new surname.

New York City timeline - 1630s

1630

Aug 10

Michael Pauw, one of the four Patroons of New Netherlands, is granted Staten Island by the Dutch West India Company.

Sep 19

Symon Dircksz Pos, representative of Upper Hudson River landowner Kiliaen van Rensselaer, writes his boss from New Amsterdam that director-general Peter Minuit and colonial secretary Johan van Remunde, egged on by Dominie Johannes Michaëlius, are so busy squabbling that affairs of the settlement there are being sadly neglcted. He also explains that many crops are being planted and he has hopes that profits will soon be shown.

City

Mapmaker Johannes de Laet publishes Beschryvinghe van West-Indien, using the names Manhattes, N. Amsterdam, and Noordt River for the first time. ** A house is built within the fort enclosure for the director-general. ** The ship New Netherland is built by the West India Company. Nicknamed the “great ship” it weighs 800 tons. ** The Eendracht arrives bringing 15 settlers. ** Peter Minuit buys Staten Island from the Tappan Indians for wampum and trade goods.

1631

August

Peter Minuit is recalled to Holland by the Dutch West India Company for refusing to ban the private fur trade and for privileges he awarded patroons. The Reverend Jonas Michaelius is recalled to present the case against him. Lay minister Bastiaen Krol is named acting director in their absence.

City

The Eendracht returns, bringing 11 settlers.

1632

Mar 19

Peter Minuit returns to Holland aboard the Eendracht (Unity). Also aboard are Dominie Johannes Michaëlius and Secretary Jan van Remunde.

Apr 7

Dutch diplomat Mijnheer Van Arnhem reports to the Heeren XIX (ruling council) at home that the English at Plymouth recently captured the Eendracht when it put into the harbor to take shelter from a storm. The New Englanders accused the Dutch of illegal settlement in New Netherland and demanded duties be paid on furs being shipped back to Holland.

May 23

Charles I informs the Dutch ambassador Albert Joachimi that the Dutch in America can remain as long as they submit to British royal authority.

July

Wouter van Twiller, appointed director-general of New Amsterdam, through the influence of his uncle Killiaen van Rensselaer, sails from Holland.

City

The first public beer brewery is set up early in the year by Minuit. ** A penal system is established. ** 125,000 guilders worth of furs are shipped to Holland, triple the amount sent in 1626. Over the past nine years 63,000 skins worth 454,000 guilders have been shipped. ** Diplomatic relations between the Dutch and the English bring into dispute the validity of Minuit's purchase of Manhattan.

1633

March

Wouter van Twiller, a nephew of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, arrives in New Amsterdam in the Zoutberg (Salt Mountain) accompanied by close to 100 soldiers, the first regular troops in the colony, to replace Bastiaen Jansz Krol as director-general. Barmaid Griet Reyniers sails on the same ship.

City

Adam Roelantsen arrives in New Amsterdam, founds the first school in the colony. ** Five stone workshops are built near today’s Whitehall Street. ** Van Twiller settles at Bossen Bouwerie, becoming the first European settler in the future Greenwich Village. ** A tile-roofed brewery is erected. ** The Dutch buy the island later known as Roosevelt Island, from the natives. ** The settlement's first house of worship is erected by Van Twiller, inside the walls of the fort, the first building used solely as a church.

1634

Dec 11

Dutch barber-surgeon Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, sent by an officer at Fort Orange (Albany) to explore the area wheere the Mohawk flows into the Hudson, leaves the fort accompanied by Jeronimus dela Croix and sailor Willem Thomassen.

City

Roeloff and Annetje Jans begin building a farmhouse. They will accumulate land over the next two years that will form the nucleus of Trinity Church’s holdings. ** When Michael Pauw fails to plant a successful settlement on Staten Island after four years, it reverts to the Dutch West Indies Company. ** Teen-aged Dutch West India Company cook’s mate Govert Loockermans arrives.

Netherlands

Brooklyn settler Gerrit Remmersen is born in Pilsum.

1635

City

Jacob Stoffelsen is hired to oversee the Dutch West India Company’s slaves. ** The colony has traded 60,000 beaver pelts, with a worth of 400,000 guilders. The equivalent of $1,699 has been spent on Fort Amsterdam; and close to $165,000 on all of New Netherland. The newly-completed fort had been finished without the stonework planned in 1628.

1636

Oct 5

The first Long Island patents are granted, in today's Brooklyn.

City

The Dutch begin settling further out on Nieuw Amersfoort (Long Island. Governor Wouter Van Twiller begins purchasing Long Island land from the Lenape, at what will become the Red Hook and Gowanus neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Van Twiller and three other colonists buy land in the Flatbush area from the Canarsie Indians. Over the next two years Van Twiller will acquire 15,000 acres. The governor puts the Flatbush land in his own name rather than that of the Dutch West India Company. Later Pieter Stuyvesant will confiscate the land and sell it to settler Pieter Claesen, who will build a house on the property around 1652. The Indians will remain in the area for many years. ** The West India Company grants D. P. De Vries part of Staten Island. ** Partners Andries Hudde and Wolphert Gerritsen break ground for a farm at Achtervelt, the future site of Flatbush. ** French Huguenot Isaac De Forest starts a tobacco plantation in Harlem.

Netherlands

New Amsterdam minister Hendricus Selyns is born in Amsterdam.

1637

Sep 2

Amsterdam merchant Willem Kieft (Willem the Testy) replaces Wouter van Twiller as Director of New Amsterdam.

City

Dutch governor Wouter Van Twiller buys Minnahannock Island in the East River from the Canarsie Indians and begin raising hogs there, naming it Hog Island. It later becomes Roosevelt Island. ** The Dutch settle on Long Island at Flushing. Local Matinecocks help them make it through the first winter. ** Englishman Thomas Foster receives a royal grant for 600 acres on Alley Creek, off Long Island's Little Neck Bay, displacing local Matinecock Indians. The area will later be named Douglaston (in the future Queens). ** Great Barcut, or Great Barn Island (later Ward's Island) is bought by Van Twiller. ** Patroon Michael Pauw sells Pavonia (parts of Staten Island and New Jersey) to the West India Company. ** Joris de Rapelye settles on Long Island at Wallabout Bay, future site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

1638

Apr 15

New Amsterdam passes its first law, mandating that all visiting seamen must return to their ships by nightfall.

Apr 22

New Amsterdam governor Willem Kieft and the Privileged Trading Company grant a lease for a tract of and near Fort Amsterdam to former governor Wouter Von Twiller, to be used for cultivating tobacco. It will become Peter Stuyvesant’s bouwerie (farm) in 1651.

May 15

Jan Gybertsen stabs New Amsterdam gunner Gerrit Jansen in a brawl, killing him; New York City’s first murder.

June

The New Amsterdam council hires Nicholaes Coorn as company sergeant for Fort Amsterdam. He will eventually be broken to private and two other soldiers will 'ride the wooden horse' (corporal punishment), for various crimes and infractions.

Jul 20

Andries Hudde is given a goundbrief (grant) for land located at today’s Harlem.

August

Peter Minuit dies at sea during a Caribbean hurricane. ­

Sep 24

Adriaen van der Donck enters the University of Leiden, to study law.

Nov 1

Queens County is created from the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, on Long Island.

City

The Dutch establish a cattle market, on the site of today's Bowling Green. It lasts for nine years. ** The Flatbush farm owned by Andries Hudde and Wolphert Gerritsen now contains a house, barn and hayrick. Andries Hudde sells Gerrit Wolphertsen 100 acres of land in Brooklyn. ** The population has remained close to 400 for the last dozen years or so. ** Local Mespaetches (Lenape) Indians sell Brooklyn land to the colonists that will become Bushwick, Greenpoint and Williamsburg. ** An ordinance is passed forbidding adulterous relations with heathens and blacks. Another ordinance forbids selling wine. ** The court of sessions of the North Riding of Yorkshire is established at Jamaica. ** Newly-arrived Willem Kieft replaces Wouter Von Twiller as director general. Kieft begins buying Lenape Indian land in today's Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Jersey City. He establishes a system of ground-briefs, deeds for people taking up residence in the colony. ** Ferry service between Manhattan and Brooklyn is established. ** England divides the crown colony into twelve counties, including Queens – with today’s Nassau County in its limits. The towns of Flushing, Jamaica and Newtown are within the Queens borders. ** A Dutch school, later the Collegiate School, opens. ** The Dutch West India Company loses its monopoly of the North America-Atlantic trade as furs gradually are transported through non-Dutch ports, to avoid the payment of duties.

Netherlands

The States General becomes disillusioned with the rate of immigration into New Amsterdam.

1639

Feb 10

Staten Island’s new owner, David Pieterszoon De Vries, starts a plantation there at the Watering Place, near today's Tompkinsville.

City

The approximate date the Manatus Map "Manhattan Lying on the North River" (probably drawn by either Andries Hudde or Johannes Vingboons) is published, detailing the greater New York area, and showing Lenape longhouses in Brooklyn. ** Jonas Bronck buys nearly 500 acres of land in the future Westchester County, centered around Morrisania. ** The Dutch West India Company purchases the area known today as the Bronx from the Indians, to ease future overcrowding. ** Under land grants from the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce of the West India Company, a succession of Dutch farmers begin working Hog Island (today's Roosevelt Island). Slave quarters are reportedly established to the north of Manhattan, across from the island.** Governor Willem Kieft begins taxing Indians. He orders all Englishmen to swear an oath of loyalty to the States-General. ** Soldier Gregorus Pietersen is executed by firing squad for inciting to mutiny. ** Anthony "The Turk" Jansen and his wife Grietjen Reyniers are expelled from the colony for indecent behavior, move to New Utrecht (later part of Brooklyn) on Long Island. ** Sarah Joris Rapalje, the first European born in the city, marries Hans Hansen Bergen, overseer of a tobacco plantation located in the future Greenwich Village. ** Govert Loockermans goes to work for the Verbrugge family as a shipping agent. ** Jochem Kuyter, a German seaman from the Danish navy arrives in Manhattan, begins raising tobacco at the north end. Indian raids will drive him and his neighbor Jonas Bronck from across the river to move to the southern end of Manhattan. The two men decide to bring action against governor Kieft. ** Legislation is passed to establish fairs for regulating the sale of livestock and fix prices of necessities sold at company stores. Regular market days are established.

© 2011 David Minor / Eagles Byte