Public-domain ebook
Language: en6,536 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Biographies·Travel Writing·History - American
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #23258.
The volume presents the 1679‑1680 journal of Jasper Danckaerts, a Dutch‑born Labadist envoy, together with the companion notes of his fellow traveler Peter Sluyter. The opening pages are a scholarly introduction that explains how the text derives from a manuscript in the Long Island Historical Society, translated by Henry C. Murphy in 1867 and subsequently revised by the editor and by S. G. Nissensen. It details the careful comparison of the translation with the original, the correction of name spellings, and the inclusion of several rare illustrations, a pen‑and‑ink sketch of New York from Brooklyn Heights, a fragment of Augustine Herrman’s 1673 Maryland map, and a 1671 map of “New Belgium.” The editor also outlines the manuscript’s structure, page numbering, and the missing portions, while noting the journal’s value for understanding early colonial New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Boston.
Written in a measured, eighteenth‑century narrative voice, the journal mixes factual observation with the personal, often fanatical, perspective of its author. Its style is dense and occasionally discursive, reflecting the period’s penchant for exhaustive description and occasional digression. Readers with an interest in early American colonial history, cartography, religious sects such as the Labadists, or the development of the Atlantic seaboard will find the work rewarding. Scholars of social, economic, or geographical conditions in the mid‑Atlantic colonies, as well than enthusiasts of rare early maps and sketches, will appreciate the detailed, if sometimes tedious, eyewitness account.
The opening · free to read
The present translation is substantially that of Mr. Henry C. Murphy, as presented in his edition of 1867 (see the Introduction, post). Mr. Murphy was an excellent Dutch scholar. Careful comparisons have been made, at various points, between his translation and the original manuscript, of which the Long Island Historical Society, its present possessor, kindly permitted an examination to be made. These comparisons, made partly by the general editor of the series and partly by Mr. S. G. Nissensen of New York (to whom cordial thanks are rendered), showed that Mr. Murphy's translation was in the main excellent. Some revision and correction of it has been effected by Mr. Nissensen and by the general editor. In particular the spelling of the proper names has been brought into accord with that of the original manuscript, except that certain familiar names, after being once given in the original spelling, have thereafter been put into their modern forms.
Danckaerts's descriptions of his Atlantic voyages to America and back, especially the former, are excessively long, and at times tedious. It has been found possible to omit some portions of these without impairing the interest or value of the narrative or excluding any useful information.
Of the three illustrations, the frontispiece is a photographic reproduction of one of Danckaerts's pen-and-ink sketches accompanying the diary. It has never before been photographically reproduced, though lithographed in Mr. Murphy's book. It represents New York from the southeast, as seen in 1680 from Brooklyn Heights, and is obviously of great interest, being topographically accurate, and drawn with no slight degree of skill. Thanks are due to the Long Island Historical Society for permission to reproduce it, and to the society's secretary, Miss Emma J. Toedteberg.
That portion of the journal which relates to the Delaware River and northeastern Maryland is illustrated by a photographic reproduction of the northeast corner of the celebrated map of Maryland which Augustine Herrman made for Lord Baltimore, and which was published in 1673 (see infra, p. 114 and p. 297, note 2). The portion reproduced extends from the falls of the Delaware as far down the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay as our travellers went. It is photographed from the photolithographic copy made from the unique original in the British Museum by Mr. P. Lee Phillips, and published by him in 1912, but is reduced to dimensions about two-thirds of those of the original.
To illustrate the North River journey of the diarist, and the other parts of his narrative centring around New York, a section is presented of the map of 1671 entitled "Novi Belgii, quod nunc Novi Jorck vocatur, Novaeque Angliae et Partis Virginiae Accuratissima et Novissima Delineatio" (Most Accurate and Newest Delineation of New Belgium, now called New York, of New England, and of Part of Virginia). This map appeared both in Montanus's Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld (Amsterdam, 1671) and in Ogilby's America (London, 1671). It is N.J. Visscher's map of 1655 or 1656 (for which see the volume in this series entitled Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, etc., introductory note, and map opposite p. 170), with slight alterations made in order to adapt it more closely to the date 1671.
For the names of the two Labadist agents, Mr. Murphy adopted the forms Dankers and Sluyter. These he apparently took from references to them by others, for the journal, except once in the case of Sluyter, gives only the assumed names, Schilders and Vorstman, by which alone they were at first known in America. Domine Selyns of New York, in his letter to Willem a Brakel,[1] gives their true names. For the proper spelling of the diarist's name, it should seem that we should rely on his own signature to his note prefixed to his copy of Eliot's Indian Old Testament.[2] There the spelling is Danckaerts, and such is the form used by the family, still or till lately extant in Zeeland. But the form Dankers occurs often in contemporary references.
[Footnote 1: Murphy, Anthology of New Netherland, p. 95.]
[Footnote 2: See infra, p. 264, note 2.]
The case of his companion presents no difficulty. The register of students at the University of Leyden, Album Studiosorum Academiae Lugduno-Batavae (Hague, 1875), gives, under date of 1666, "Petrus Sluyter Vesaliensis, 21, T," i.e., Peter Sluyter of Wesel, 21 years old, student of theology, which no doubt is our traveller, known to have studied theology and, from Labadist sources relating to Herford, to have come originally from Wesel. Our traveller's will, dated January 20, 1722, the original of which is preserved in the court house of Cecil County at Elkton, Maryland, is signed in autograph, "Petrus Sluyter alias Vorsman," and it seems that this must be regarded as authoritative. The Maryland family descended from the Labadist leader's brother used the same spelling. Schluter is found in some contemporary sources, Schluyter and Sluter in others,[3] while on the title-page of a book translated by our traveller from French into Dutch, and printed at Herford in 1672,[4] presumably under his eye, the spelling is Sluiter. But his signature should be conclusive.
[Footnote 3: a. Paul Hackenberg's letter, see p. 291, note 2, post; Willem a Brakel, Trouwhertige Waerschouwinge (Leeuwarden, 1683), p. 63; Album Acad. Lugd.-Bat., 1650, "Henricus Schluterus," the brother. b. Brakel in Murphy's Anthology, p. 95. c. Letter from Herford in Schotel, Anna Maria van Schurman (Hertogenbosch, 1853), app., p. 40.]
[Footnote 4: _Verklaringe van de Suiverheid des Geloofs en der Leere van Jean de Labadie._]
The annotations in this volume are by the general editor of the series.
J.F.J.
In the year 1864 Mr. Henry C. Murphy, then corresponding secretary of the Long Island Historical Society, had the good fortune to find in an old book-store in Amsterdam a manuscript whose bearings upon the history of the middle group of American colonies made it, when translated and made accessible as a publication in the Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society,[5] an historical document of much interest and value. The Journal of two members of the Labadist sect who came over to this country in order to find a location for the establishment of a community has served to throw a flood of light upon what otherwise might have been a lost chapter in the history of Maryland. For so meagre are the sources of ready availability for a knowledge of the Labadist colony which was effected in Maryland that without this account the story of the first communal sect in America might have failed of adequate recording.
[Footnote 5: Volume I. Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies in 1679-80, by Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter of Wiewerd in Friesland (Brooklyn, 1867).]
But while the Journal of Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, the two envoys--or of Jasper Danckaerts, who did the actual writing--is of especial interest in relation to an incident in the early settlement of Maryland, the gauge of its value may be applied as well in other directions. This extended narrative, often discursive and circumstantial, contains much that is suggestive upon the beginnings of the middle group of states, and, indeed, the narrative bears upon facts of importance in connection with Massachusetts as well.
The original manuscript of the Labadist narrators is now in the possession of the Long Island Historical Society. It was bought by the Society at the Murphy sale in 1884. It is written in a fine, good hand on paper of about 8-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches. The pages are numbered with three successive numberings: (A) 1-72, (B) 1-16, 25-192, 217-231, (C) 1-47, the first section corresponding to the voyage to America; the second, to the travels in the middle colonies; the third, to the experiences of the journalist and his companion in New England and on the voyage home. In the second division there is no gap between pages 16 and 25, but after page 192 there is a considerable hiatus. In narrative, this extends over a few days only, June 13-19, but the omitted portion probably also contained a description of the city of New York and the beginning of an account of the Indians. The remaining pages of this section, pages 216-231, proceed with this account, treating of the weapons of the Indians, their treaties with the whites, their intelligence, their burial customs, their virtues and vices, their knowledge of God and their worship, and finally of the beaver and his habits. As the journalist could have had no original contributions to make with regard to the American aborigines, his observations upon this subject have no especial value, and have been omitted.
The manuscript when found was accompanied with six sheets of pen-and-ink drawings. The text appears to be a carefully transcribed copy, plainly written in a different handwriting from that of the drawings. The latter, as the marks upon them show, are the original sketches made upon the spot. All are reproduced in Mr. Murphy's edition of the journal. The first shows the figure of an Indian woman and four fishes, two of them rare and two common. The second drawing shows the entrance to New York Bay at Sandy Hook as seen from the house of Jacques Cortelyou at Nayack (Fort Hamilton). The third is a detailed and exceedingly interesting view of New York as it was in 1679, taken from Brooklyn Heights; it is reproduced in the present volume. The fourth and fifth give views of New York from the east and from the north, while the sixth plate presents a map of the Delaware River from the Falls at the present site of Trenton down to Burlington.
The manuscript of the narrative reproduced in this volume is accompanied by a similar manuscript for a second voyage made in 1683, April 12-July 27, entered upon 16 pages of foolscap, and then copied upon 48 pages of quarto size, the former in a different and much more difficult hand than the journal of 1679-1680, the copy in a handwriting similar to that of the latter. Twelve pages of the 48 are verses, and the remainder do not carry the traveller beyond the completion of his voyage. As this second narrative includes nothing bearing directly upon the experiences of the chronicler after his arrival upon the shores of the New World, it has not seemed worth while to translate it and bring it into the present volume. It is much to be regretted that the continuation was never written, or has not been preserved, since it would record the actual settlement of the Labadist community in northeastern Maryland. With the fragment was found an interesting manuscript map of the Delaware River, which gives Philadelphia as in existence, and therefore belongs to the period of the second voyage.
Prior to the discovery of the Journal of Danckaerts it was indeed traditionally known that a sect of Labadists in the first half of the seventeenth century had located a colony on the estates of Augustine Herrman in Maryland. There were fragmentary references to these people in the early records of the state and in historical manuscripts, with isolated notices in contemporary writers. Yet this information would of itself have been too meagre for a critical valuation of the Labadists in the early history of Maryland. The publication of the manuscript secured by Mr. Murphy stimulated interest in the subject, and at various times monographic contributions appeared upon one or another phase of the Labadist settlement. Notable were those of General James Grant Wilson, whose paper on "An Old Maryland Manor" was published by the Maryland Historical Society in 1890, and his paper on "Augustine Herrman, Bohemian," by the New Jersey Historical Society in the same year, and of Reverend Charles Payson Mallary, whose monograph on the Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor, a publication of the Delaware Historical Society in 1888, disclosed the wide genealogical interest pertaining to the Labadist settlement. Thus there was built up a body of substantial information with regard to the environment and the relations of the Labadist colony in the New World. In 1899 was published, in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, The Labadist Colony in Maryland, by the writer of the present introduction. This monograph was largely based upon fresh sources obtained from Europe, including contemporary works by Labadie, his associates and his antagonists, as well as studies of the subject by Dutch and German scholars. The literature of Labadism in the New World, which, in a manner, has been an outgrowth from the journal of the Labadist envoys, is now ample for all serviceable purposes.
The book keeps going
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
New illustrated classics
Once or twice a month: the latest books to get full character casts, scene art, and free comic editions. No account needed.
![Cover of Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 1 of 2]](/covers/66096.jpg)
![Cover of Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 2 of 2]](/covers/65981.jpg)