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Transcriber's Note:
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words have been retained as they appear in the original.
Obvious printer errors have been corrected.
Original Narratives
of Early American History
JOURNAL OF JASPER DANCKAERTS
1679-1680
Edited by
BARTLETT BURLEIGH JAMES, B.D., PH.D.
of the Maryland Historical Society
and
J. FRANKLIN JAMESON, PH.D., LL.D.
Director of the Department of Historical Research in the Carnegie
Institutions of Washington
With a Facsimile and Two Maps
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
Copyright, 1913, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
[Illustration: NEW YORK FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, 1679
From the original drawing by Jasper Danckaerts in the possession of
the Long Island Historical Society]
CONTENTS
JOURNAL OF JASPER DANCKAERTS
EDITED BY BARTLETT BURLEIGH JAMES AND J. FRANKLIN JAMESON
PAGE
NOTE A ix
INTRODUCTION xiii
NOTE B xxv
VOYAGE TO NEW NETHERLAND 3
Preparations for the Voyage 3
Delays in Starting 5
On the Way to Texel; a Narrow Escape 8
On Board the _Charles_ 10
They set Sail and run Aground 13
Description of Texel 15
Progress of the Voyage 18
At Falmouth; the Diarist at Church 25
A Visit to Pendennis Castle 28
The Market at Penryn 30
Again on Board; a Word about the Cat 32
Land is Seen; Sandy Hook 33
Indians come Aboard; Arrival at New York 35
Observations upon the Sea and the Voyage 37
Comments upon the Passengers and Crew 39
TRAVELS IN NEW NETHERLAND 43
In New York; Ministers of New Netherland 43
Fort Amsterdam is described 45
The First Male born of Europeans in New Netherland 47
A Visit to Long Island; through Brooklyn 50
At Gowanus; the Najack Indians 53
With Jacques Cortelyou at New Utrecht 57
Danckaerts makes a Sketch 58
A Visit with Jan Theunissen at Flatlands 60
Through Flatbush, Brooklyn, and Back in New York 62
Manhattan Island Explored; Broadway; the Bowery; New Harlem 64
The Labadists make some Calls; Danckaerts acts the Barber 67
On Staten Island 69
At Oude Dorp and Nieuwe Dorp 72
Some Plantations on the Island 74
A Visit from Jasper, the Indian 76
The Travellers meet Ephraim Herrman 80
In Communipaw and Bergen 82
Further Experiences 86
Preparations for the Journey Southward; the Duke's Laws 89
JOURNEY TO THE SOUTHWARD 93
The Stop at Woodbridge 93
At Piscataway; the Falls of the Delaware 94
Matinnaconk Island and Burlington 97
Tacony; Tinicum Island described 100
The Suit of Madame de la Grange against Madame Papegoia 101
A Visit from Some Quakers 104
The Episode of Anna Salters 105
The Journey Continued 107
At Fort Christina; the Stay in Newcastle 109
Indented Servants 111
St. Augustine's Manor 112
Entry into Maryland; Bohemia Manor; Augustine Herrman's Map 114
Plantations visited 116
The Journey to Virginia abandoned; Other Visits 120
The Travellers lose their Way 124
They stop with Mr. Frisby; Wild Geese 126
Transportation of Goods to and from Maryland 128
More Plantations visited 129
Again in Newcastle 131
The Grant of Maryland 132
The Tobacco Industry 133
Life in Maryland 135
The Attack on the Hoere Kill 136
Religion in Maryland 137
The Labadists hear Domine Tesschenmaker; Christina Kill 138
Property Arrangements of Augustine Herrman 141
Preparations for the Return to New Netherland 142
Description of Newcastle 143
Mr. Moll and his Wife 144
Some Account of the Herrmans; Peter Alrichs 145
At Upland 147
At Wicacoa and Burlington 148
On the Island of Peter Alrichs 149
The Delaware River described 150
The Settlement at Hoere Kill; New Sweden 152
East New Jersey and West New Jersey established 154
The Journey to Millstone Creek; Difficulties in crossing 156
A Visit with Some Indians 159
A Night with Cornelis van Langevelt near Nassau 160
Millstone Creek described 161
At Amboy; the Frenchman Le Chaudronnier 162
Governor Carteret and the Settlement of Piscataway
and Woodbridge 164
End of the Journey to the Southward 165
IN NEW YORK 166
Visits to Governor Andros and Mayor Rombouts 167
Danckaerts follows Sluyter to Najack 169
Translations made by Danckaerts 170
The Party for Aquackanonck 171
Milford; Sandford; Captain Berry's Plantation 173
Conversation with Hans, the Indian 174
Aquackanonck is reached 175
Another Night with the Indians 177
At Gowanus; the _Canticoy_ of the Indians 179
Affairs at Esopus; Small Pox among the Indians 181
Proclamation of Governor Andros; the Start for Nevesink 182
Trip to Nevesink abandoned 184
Another Call on the Governor 185
The Travellers dispose of their Stock 186
The Governor grants Permission to go to Albany 187
The Trials and Conversion of Theunis Idenszen 190
The Journey to Albany is begun 196
The Kaaterskill Falls; Arrival at Albany 198
The Falls at Cohoes 199
Sluyter becomes ill; Visit to Schenectady 201
The Story of Aletta, the Indian 201
The Story of Wouter, Aletta's Nephew 205
Interview with Aletta and Wouter 210
Wouter goes with the Labadists 211
Schenectady is described 213
A Visit with Madame van Rensselaer at Rensselaerswyck 214
A Visit to Fort Orange; Albany described 216
The Child of Luxury 217
At Claverack; Danckaerts sketches the Catskills 219
At Esopus 220
Back in New York; Preparations for Boston 222
A Visit to Theunis Idenszen 223
North River and the Country through which it flows 224
On the Way to Long Island; Visit from Domine van Zuuren 228
In Najack; More about Theunis 229
Another Meeting with the Governor 230
The Experiences of Marie Renard 231
Visit with Ephraim Herrman 233
Further Arrangements for the Boston Trip; Ascension Day 234
A Trip to Walebocht 235
The Boston Trip again postponed; Some Visitors 237
Leave is taken of Governor Andros 238
Military Tactics; Relations between Andros and Carteret 239
Trade with Barbados 244
Trade Observations 246
Conduct of Governor Andros 248
The Labadists take leave of their Friends 250
VOYAGE FROM NEW NETHERLAND 252
The Start for Boston 252
Martha's Vineyard; a Narrow Escape 253
Boston is reached 255
Description of East River 256
Elizabeth Islands; the Sow and Pigs; Cape Cod 258
A Call on Governor Bradstreet 259
No Word of Wouter; Passage engaged for London 260
John Eliot and the Indian Bible 263
A Visit to Cambridge; Harvard College 266
In Charlestown 268
Suspicions concerning the Travellers 269
A Second Visit to John Eliot at Roxbury 270
A Sham-fight in Boston 271
Beginning of the Voyage Home 272
The Diarist's Account of New England 273
His Description of Boston 275
Progress of the Voyage 276
A Reward for the First Sight of Land 278
The Orkney Islands are sighted 280
Fear of the Turks 281
On the Dogger Bank 284
Anchor at Yarmouth 286
The Landing at London; Whitehall; St. James's Park 288
The Duke of Monmouth is seen; London Tower 289
Witchcraft in Boston; at Church in London 290
A Glimpse of the Duke of York and Prince Karl 291
At Gravesend; the River of Chatham 292
At Harwich; Dispute with the Skipper 293
At Rotterdam, Delft, and the Hague 295
In Amsterdam; a Bible is bought for Ephraim Herrman 296
The End of the Journey 297
INDEX 299
MAPS AND FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION
NEW YORK FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, 1679. From the original drawing
by Jasper Danckaerts in the possession of the Long Island
Historical Society _Frontispiece_
PAGE
THE NORTHEAST PORTION OF AUGUSTINE HERRMAN'S MAP OF MARYLAND,
1673. From Mr. P.L. Phillips's facsimile 98
PART OF THE MAP OF NEW YORK AND NEW ENGLAND IN MONTANUS'S
"NIEUWE WEERELD," 1671. From a copy in the New York
Public Library 160
NOTE A
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.
INTRODUCTION
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 journal of the Labadists, while primarily of value as elucidating
an obscure episode in the religious history of the New World, has
worth as a human narrative bearing upon incidents and personages and
social conditions in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and
Boston. Thus the student of social, economic, institutional, or
geographical conditions in the early period of the settlements upon
the Atlantic seaboard will find in this journal much of suggestive and
pertinent contribution. Danckaerts viewed his surroundings through the
eyes of a fanatical self-satisfaction. For this reason his criticisms
or strictures upon persons and conditions are to be received with much
discount. But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous
note-taker; and the variety and fecundity of his material is not a
little due to the trivial and relatively unimportant details which are
embodied in the narrative.
The two agents came to North America in search of a suitable place to
establish a colony of their sect. Two distinct sets of forces drew
them toward Maryland. One of these was the religious toleration which,
from the beginning, was established in that province. There is no
warrant in the journal for a presumption that this was an inducing
cause for their location within the domain of Lord Baltimore. There is
much, however, in their antecedent history, and the pressure of
persecution to which the Labadists were subjected, to make it
exceedingly probable that this policy in the government of Maryland
formed a circumstance in the selection that was made. The journalists,
who travelled under pseudonyms for the express purpose of keeping
their mission secret, might have established their colony in New York
had it not been under the rule of Governor Andros, a Catholic, and
therefore a subject of particular antipathy to the Labadists.
But the practical weave of circumstance that tended to attract the
Labadists to Maryland centred in the fact that, as stated in their
narrative, they met in New York one Ephraim Herrman, a young trader
from Maryland and Delaware, then recently married. This was the son of
Augustine Herrman, "first founder and seater of Bohemia Manor."
Augustine Herrman was a Bohemian adventurer, born in Prague, who,
after a career of much vicissitude, made his way to New Netherland. He
became a force at New Amsterdam, and was an original member of the
council of nine men instituted by Governor Stuyvesant in 1647. His
connection with Maryland matters dates from his appointment by
Governor Stuyvesant as a special commissioner, along with Resolved
Waldron, to negotiate with Governor Fendall of Maryland concerning the
eastern boundary of Lord Baltimore's province.[6] This mission
effected, Herrman entered into negotiations with Lord Baltimore for
the drafting of a map of Maryland and Virginia, which would be
valuable to his lordship in bringing to a settlement the boundary
dispute pending between the two colonies, and in other ways.[7] In
this manner Herrman became invested with not less than 24,000 acres of
the most desirable lands of what is now Cecil County, Maryland, and
Newcastle County, Delaware, which he divided into several tracts under
the names Bohemia Manor, St. Augustine Manor, Little Bohemia, and the
Three Bohemia Sisters. It is of interest to note that among the acts
passed by the Maryland Assembly is one dated 1666, which provides for
the naturalization of "Augustine Herman of Prague, in the Kingdom of
Bohemia, Ephraim Georgius and Casparus, Sonns to the said Augustine,
Anna Margarita, Judith and Francina, his daughters," this being the
first act of naturalization passed by any of the colonies.[8]
[Footnote 6: Journal of the Dutch Embassy to Maryland, 1659, by
Augustine Herrman, in _Narratives of Early Maryland_, in this series,
pp. 309-333.]
[Footnote 7: A copy of this map is in the British Museum. No other is
known.]
[Footnote 8: _Maryland Archives_, II. 144.]
It was upon Bohemia Manor that the Labadists located their colony.
Danckaerts and Sluyter, under the guidance of Ephraim Herrman, made
their way to Delaware and Maryland. Upon meeting them the elder
Herrman was at first so favorably impressed that he consented to deed
to them a considerable tract, in pursuance of his ambition to colonize
and develop his estates. On June 19, 1680, the Labadists, having
accomplished their mission, set sail for Boston, to which fact are due
such interesting recitals as that of their visit to John Eliot, the
so-called apostle to the Indians, and their visit to and description
of Harvard College. On the 23d day of July the Labadists set sail for
Europe.
In 1683 the two Labadists returned again to Maryland, bringing with
them the nucleus of a colony. In the meanwhile Augustine Herrman had
repented of his bargain, and it was only by recourse to law that the
Labadists compelled him to live up to its terms. The deed he executed,
dated August 11, 1684, was to Peter Sluyter (alias Vorstman), Jasper
Dankers (alias Schilders), of Friesland, Petrus Bayard, of New York,
and John Moll and Arnold de la Grange.[9] The tract conveyed embraced
four necks of land eastwardly from the first creek that empties into
Bohemia River, and extended at the north or northeast to near the old
St. Augustine or Manor Church. It contained 3,750 acres. Those
engaging with Sluyter and Danckaerts in the transaction were all
professed converts to the Labadist faith. It may be noted in passing
that the Petrus Bayard named in the conveyance, and who for some time
was an active member of the Labadist community, was an ancestor of the
late Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James.
[Footnote 9: Baltimore County Land Records.]
When fairly settled upon Bohemia Manor, the Labadists undertook
communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the
European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland. They
cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn,
flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the
conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form. At its most
flourishing period the colony did not number as many as a hundred
persons, and in the year 1698 a division of the tract occurred.
Sluyter, who was the active head of the colony, reserved for himself
one of the necks of land and became wealthy. He died in 1722. Some
form of organization had been maintained among the Labadists even
after the division of the land, but five years after the death of
Sluyter the Labadists had ceased to exist as a community. The division
in 1698 which marked the disintegration of the community occurred at
about the same time as a similar division of the estates of the mother
church at Wieuwerd. There the disintegration came about through
consultative action; in Maryland, by the logic of events.
The founder of the system of religion which came to be known as
Labadism, Jean de Labadie, was born in France, at Bourg near Bordeaux,
on February 13, 1610. His father was a French noble and a soldier of
fortune, who rose to be governor of Guienne. His parents entered him
at the Jesuit College, where he completed his novitiate and took the
first vows, and in 1635 he was ordained as a priest. Early
manifestations of an erratic temperament, a mystical habit of mind,
and physical frailty, led to his severance from the Society of Jesus.
He entered upon a preaching mission, and, coming under the attention
of Pere Gondran, second general of the Congregation of the Oratory at
Paris, he received a call to that city, and, according to his own
statement, the entire body of the Sorbonne united in the call.
Labadie soon acquired a fame that went beyond the borders of France,
for oratorical ability and theological precision. His former
associates, the Jesuits, originated stories against his morality and
sought to bring him into trouble with the authorities. The attacks to
which he was subjected led him to adopt a broad though wholly
fanatical scheme of reforms for the Church.[10] During the lifetime of
Cardinal Richelieu, who befriended him, he was safe from attack, but
upon the succession of Cardinal Mazarin the Jesuits obtained an order
of the court for his arrest, the execution of which was prevented by
the death of the king. In the year 1645 he was cited to appear at
court along with his friend, the Bishop of Amiens, and was sentenced
to perpetual imprisonment, which sentence was modified on an appeal
made by the assembly of the clergy of France then in session. He was,
however, ordered to renounce his opinions and to refrain from
preaching for a period of years. In one of his treatises he states
that during a second forced retirement he obtained and read a copy of
Calvin's _Institutes_. This had a determining influence upon his after
career.[11] He summed up the result of his solitary reflections in the
words, "This is the last time that Rome shall persecute me in her
communion. Up to the present I have endeavored to help and to heal
her, remaining within her jurisdiction; but now it is full time for me
to denounce her and to testify against her."
[Footnote 10: _Declaration de la Foi_, pp. 84, 122, 123.]
[Footnote 11: _Traite de la Solitude Chretienne._]
At Montauban in 1650 Labadie abjured his former faith and was later
ordained a Protestant minister. According to Mollerus[12] the
acquisition of the widely famous preacher was heralded as the greatest
Protestant triumph since the days of Calvin. Banished from France in
1657, Labadie preached for two years at Orange (then independent) and
for seven years at Geneva, whence he was called to the pastorate of
the Walloon Reformed Church in Middelburg, Zeeland. At Middelburg he
became embroiled with the ecclesiastical and civil authorities,
because of controversial writings and because, filled with zeal to
reform the Reformed Church in the Netherlands and to awaken it from
its formalism, he carried his own congregation into positions and
practices manifestly tending toward schism. Driven out of Middelburg,
he established a church at Veere, which he styled the Evangelical. The
States of Zeeland kept the troublesome preacher on the move, and
Labadie journeyed to Amsterdam, where he had an opportunity to
establish a communal society, of which the chief ornament was Anna
Maria van Schurman of Utrecht, famed as the most learned woman of her
day.[13]
[Footnote 12: _Cimbria Litterata_, III. 37.]
[Footnote 13: Her _Eukleria seu Melioris Partis Electio_ (Altona,
1673) is perhaps the chief authority for the history of the Labadists
from this point on.]
The church at Amsterdam grew and prospered, and overtures were
received from many sectaries, including the Society of Friends, all of
which Labadie declined to consider. It may here be remarked that
similar overtures made by representatives of the Society of Friends to
the colony later established in Maryland were likewise unfruitful.
Certain disorders arising, the civil authorities placed such
restrictions upon the church at Amsterdam that another removal became
expedient. At this juncture, in 1670, an invitation was received from
the Princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Frederick V., Elector
Palatine and King of Bohemia, and granddaughter of King James I. of
England. Elizabeth[14] was Protestant abbess of Herford in Westphalia,
and placed quarters in that town at the disposal of the Labadists, but
on account of certain religious excesses and the suspicions aroused in
the minds of townspeople and neighbors, the Imperial Diet caused the
Labadists to remove. Some of them tarried for a while at Bremen but
the majority sought refuge immediately at Altona, then under the King
of Denmark, in 1672. At this place, in February, 1674, Labadie died.
His death evoked estimates of his work and worth from high
ecclesiastical sources, and much of this was of a laudatory nature.
The Dutch historians are disposed to regard Labadie's chief work the
leavening of the old lump by the many hundreds of his converts
inspired with his evangelical zeal, who remained in connection with
the Reformed Church.[15]
[Footnote 14: For this princess, see Guhrauer's article in the
_Historisches Taschenbuch_ for 1850, and Miss Elizabeth Godfrey's _A
Sister of Prince Rupert_.]
[Footnote 15: H. van Berkum, _De Labadie en de Labadisten_ (Sneek,
1851), II. 170 _et seq._ The history of the sect can be followed in
Van Berkum, in the first volume of Ritschl's _Geschichte des
Pietismus_ (Bonn, 1880), and in Ypeij and Dermout, _Geschiedenis der
Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk_ (Breda, 1827), vol. III.]
The next removal of the Labadists was to Wieuwerd in Friesland, the
northernmost of the Dutch provinces, where they were established under
the lead of Pierre Yvon on an estate called Thetinga or Waltha House,
which was tendered to them by three ladies devotedly attached to their
teachings, the three youngest daughters of the great diplomatist
Francis Aarsen, Lord of Sommelsdyk. Here the communal sect attained
its full measure of strength, declined, and died. For more than half a
century Wieuwerd was the seat of the new church and from it feeble
colonies were established at various centres. From Wieuwerd proceeded
the colonists who settled in Maryland, and from Wieuwerd proceeded the
voice of authority that controlled these colonists. The final
disruption of the Labadists at Wieuwerd was due largely to the
inevitable difficulties that have beset and destroyed almost every
experiment in the establishment of an industrial community upon a
footing of religion.
The system of faith and practice which came to fruition at Wieuwerd
and was transplanted to the New World, did not have the catholicity
necessary for adaptation to the conditions of an undeveloped country.
Labadism, theologically, belonged to the school of Calvin; in its
spirit it was in line with the vein of mysticism which is met
throughout the history of the Christian Church. In general respects
the theology of Labadism was that of the Reformed Church of the
Netherlands. Like so many other adventitious but zealous movements,
Labadism centred in its millennial hopes. These, however, were rather
an expression of the spirit of pietism which pervaded the doctrines
of the church than a fundamental positive proposition. Labadism,
theologically, recognized a scheme of covenants extending from Adam to
Christ. The symbols of the last covenant were baptism and the Lord's
Supper. The church was to be a community of the elect kept separate
from the world by its pure teachings.
The Labadists taught rigidly the doctrine of the separation of the
believer from the unbeliever, and to this is attributable the communal
mode of life they adopted. The rule of the sect made it necessary for
a husband and wife to separate if either were not of the elect church,
which came to be synonymous with the church of the Labadists. In
compliance with this rule, a number of the converts to the faith in
Maryland separated from wives or husbands. This was the case with
Petrus Bayard, who later returned to his wife, and with Ephraim
Herrman.
The Labadists came close to the Friends in their doctrine of the law
of the spirit as being the only law to which they were to yield final
subjection. They conceived this law to nullify the ceremonial system
of the Old Testament, and even to reduce to a place of incidental
importance specific moral injunctions. Sabbath observance was not
fundamental, and while the reading of the Bible was a medium of
communication by God's spirit, its importance was secondary to the
immediate movements of the spirit. The works of the Labadists disclose
a high form of faith and aspiration, but vitiated by many visionary
and impracticable features, in Maryland by the mercenary instincts of
their leader, Sluyter. Nor was the general state of religion in
Maryland at the time of their experiment such as to foster a
profoundly pietistical community. Some of the members of the Labadist
community acquired prominence in Maryland affairs, and their company
of thrifty and industrious persons, bent upon illustrating the virtues
of religion, must have done good, however far they may have fallen
short of their ideals; but of the personality of most of them we know
little or nothing.[16]
[Footnote 16: An interesting description of the life of the community
on Bohemia Manor is given in _An Account of the Life, Travels, and
Christian Experiences in the Work of the Ministry by Samuel Bownas_
(London, 1756).]
While the Journal of the Labadists has particular bearing upon
Maryland by reason of the location within its bounds of the colony of
the sectaries, the recital brings into the range of vivid and intimate
knowledge some of the leading characters in the contemporary life of
several of the sister colonies, and it has been recognized as a
valuable aid to students of the early period of New York.
There are no material remains of the Labadists in this country. They
did not affect either the institutions or the spirit of their times,
nor leave memorials behind them. That Augustine Herrman's sentiments
towards the strange visitants and settlers upon his estate became
radically altered, before his death in 1686, is indicated by a codicil
in his will in which he directs that certain of his neighbors
administer his estate in the place of his son Ephraim, giving as his
reason his son's alliance with the Labadists.
The Labadists abroad exerted an appreciable influence upon the life of
their times, and did much to infuse a spirit of evangelical
earnestness into the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, which, at the
rise of Labadism, was formal and pedantic in its modes of worship and
given to theological disputation. Labadie has importance in the
history of that church, and is accorded honor in its records. The
futility of the sect in the New World was due not wholly to its
communal form of organization, but is to be attributed as well to the
fact that the Labadists migrated in obedience to no high and lofty
impulse, but because in their nomadic passage from place to place,
under the pressure of religious and civil proscription, due in most
cases to acts of insubordination, there seemed no place remaining for
them except the shores of the New World. No history of communism can
be complete that does not include the experiment entered upon by Jean
de Labadie and his followers in the Old World, and by the Labadist
colonists in America. It is unfortunate that more complete information
with regard to the actual economic value of the Labadist community
cannot be had, but such information could not greatly differ from the
facts that are well known as to the economic and industrial character
of the Maryland population in general.
BARTLETT B. JAMES.
NOTE B
Since Dr. James's introduction was written, I have come upon some
facts of interest respecting the two Labadist travellers which were
not known to Mr. Murphy, who indeed had practically nothing to say
regarding their previous life.
Jasper Danckaerts was born at Flushing in Zeeland May 7, 1639, the son
of Pieter Danckaerts and Janneke Schilders--which explains his using
Schilders as a pseudonym during his American expedition. He became a
cooper in the service of the East India Company at Middelburg.[17] A
curious book in which Pierre Yvon, pastor of the Labadist church after
Labadie's death, describes the death-bed conduct and speeches of
members of the sect, gives us glimpses of the diarist's family
life.[18] They may enable us to look more kindly upon that censorious
writer. Under date of May, 1676, the pastor commemorates the death of
"our sister Susanna Spykershof, wife of our brother Dankers. She came
to us at Zonderen" (Sonderen, a temporary stopping-place near Herford)
"with her husband, leaving without difficulty her birth-place and
dwelling-place Middelburg and all her acquaintances.... The trials and
dangers they underwent were common to the two.... Both were at the
same time, at Altona, accepted as members of the body of Christ [the
Labadist church].... She loved her husband tenderly, but when God
called him elsewhere, to the service of His work and children, she
embraced His will therein with much love; which was especially
edifying in her, since before this, when she was living in the world,
she was wont to be in great anxiety whenever he was away from home on
their own concerns. At Bremen, when a portion of our community was
there, then at Altona, and here in Friesland, God visited her with
great sufferings," and she died at the age of thirty-three, soon after
the death of their youngest child.[19]
[Footnote 17: F. Nagtglas, _Levensberichten van Zeeuwen_ (Middelburg,
1890), I. 146.]
[Footnote 18: _Getrouw Verhael van den Staet en de laetste Woorden en
Dispositien sommiger Personen die God tot sich genomen heeft, uyt de
Gereformeerde en van de Werelt afgesonderde Gemeynte, voor desen
gegadert tot Herfort en Altena, en tegenwoordig tot Wiewert Vrieslant_
(second ed., in New York Public Library, Amsterdam, 1683), pp. 30-32.
The original French, _Fidelle Narre des Etats et des Dernieres
Paroles_ (Amsterdam, 1681), and an English version (_ibid._, 1685),
are in the British Museum.]
[Footnote 19: See p. 130, note 1, _infra_.]
When Cornelis van Sommelsdyk went out to Surinam as governor in 1683,
a body of Labadists sought an asylum there. A little later Danckaerts,
after his second voyage to New York, went out with reinforcements to
their settlement of La Providence in Dutch Guiana, which soon proved a
failure.[20] In 1684 he was naturalized by a Maryland act,[21] but
this does not prove that he was then in the province or long remained
there. Thereafter he seems to have lived mostly at Wieuwerd, but he
died at Middelburg between 1702 and 1704. He left behind him an
elaborate manuscript, which he was just about to publish at the time
of his death, entitled "Triumf des Hebreeuwsche Bibels" (triumph of
the Hebrew Bible over secular chronology) in which he styles himself
"Jasper Danckaerts, lover of wisdom, of sacred emblems, history, and
theology, at Middelburg in Zeeland." The antiquary from whose book
this fact is derived says also, "In 1874 I bought at a book-stall in
Middelburg a very neatly written translation of the Psalms, with
musical notes, prepared by Danckaerts mostly during his American
journey, dated at Wieuwerd, and perhaps revised by Anna Maria van
Schurman."[22] This manuscript is now in the library of the Zeeland
Academy of Sciences at Middelburg. I am greatly indebted to Mr. W.O.
Swaving, librarian of that society, who has kindly furnished me with a
copy of the preface to this manuscript, as also of Danckaerts's note
on his Indian Bible.[23]
[Footnote 20: Some writers put the Surinam venture before the voyage
of 1679, and it is noticeable that Danckaerts says he has been in the
West Indies; p. 61, _infra_. But the little "book of saints" which has
just been mentioned says, of a Juffrouw Huyghens, who died in January,
1680, a lady very zealous for the conversion of the Indians, that she
said that "if any of us went out thither, she would wish to be one of
the first." Evidently no such expedition or migration had yet taken
place in 1680; van Sommelsdyk's going out as governor gave the
opportunity, he being a brother of their patronesses.]
[Footnote 21: _Maryland Archives_, XIII. 126, also naturalizing
Sluyter, Bayard, and de la Grange.]
[Footnote 22: F. Nagtglas, _Levensberichten van Zeeuwen_, I. 146; J.
Kok, _Vaderlandsche Woordenboek_, XI. (1708) 41.]
[Footnote 23: See p. 264, note 2, _infra_.]
The manuscript is entitled "De CL Psalmen Davids op Nieus volgens de
Nederduitschen Text in Nederduits Sangh-Rym gebracht door J.D.,
Liefhebber der Poesie tot Wiwert in Vrieslant," _i.e._, "The 150
Psalms of David, translated afresh into Dutch verse in accordance with
the Dutch text, by J.D., lover of poetry, at Wieuwerd in Friesland."
Explaining the deficiencies of the metrical version by Petrus
Dathenus, the writer sets forth his wish to make a better translation
(from French into Dutch), and narrates how the opportunity at last
arrived "when I found myself called upon for the second time to make a
journey to New Netherland in the year 1682-1683. And although such
journeys by water and land seem to offer little good opportunity for
composition, beyond the keeping of a good journal, yet I began with a
good will, and by God's grace pursued and happily finished it....
After returning home and revising and correcting it, it was thought
advisable to submit it for further revision to the Juffrouw N.N.,[24]
which was done, and after two years I received it back with
corrections," copied it again, kept it still longer, but then in view
of the publication of Hendrick Ghysen's version (1690) found it
useless to publish. In the next winter, however, he put it into its
present form, for his own use and that of any who might be edified by
it. The preface is dated at Wieuwerd, January 8, 1691, and signed
Jasper Danckaerts.
[Footnote 24: Meaning Anna Maria van Schurman.]
With Sluiter we are perhaps somewhat less concerned, but he was a more
important figure in the Labadist church. We have seen (Note A) that he
came originally from Wesel, was born in 1645, and was studying
theology at Leyden in 1666. With his brother Hendrik, who was also
educated in theology and had preached at Wesel, he had joined the sect
at Herford. His sister Elizabeth had already joined them at Amsterdam.
The brother withdrew, the sister remained, and figures in Yvon's
hagiology, having died at Altona in 1674, _aet._ 23.[25] Hendrik and
Peter were "speaking brothers" in the church. Some editions of the
Declaration issued at Herford[26] bear on the title-page, along with
the names of Labadie, Yvon, and Dulignon as pastors, those of Hendrik
and Peter Sluyter as preachers. Paul Hackenberg found him one of the
chief disputants at the time of his visit.[27]
[Footnote 25: Schotel, _Anna Maria van Schurman_, app., p. 40;
Schurman, _Eukleria_, II. 38; _Getrouw Verhael_, pp. 16-24.]
[Footnote 26: See p. 265, note 1, _infra_.]
[Footnote 27: See pp. 168, note 1, and 291, note 2, _infra_.]
It seems almost certain that it was Sluyter of whom William Penn
speaks, in his account of his visit to Wieuwerd in 1677, when he had
conferences with the Labadists marked on his part by appreciation of
the affinity between them and the Friends. "With these two," he says,
meaning Anna Maria van Schurman and one of the three ladies van
Sommelsdyk, to whom the estate of Wieuwerd had belonged, "we had the
Company of the Two Pastors [Yvon and Dulignon] and a Doctor of
Physick.... After him the Doctor of Physick, that had been bred for a
Priest [Quaker dialect for any minister], but voluntarily refused that
Calling, exprest himself after this Manner: I can also bear my
Testimony in the Presence of God, that tho' I lived in as much
Reputation at the University, as any of my Colleagues or Companions,
and was well reputed for Sobriety and Honesty, yet I never felt such a
Living Sense of God, as when I heard the Servant of the Lord J. de
Labadie: Adding, The first Day I heard him, ... it was to me as the
Day of my Salvation;... Upon which I forsook the University, and
resolved to be one of this Family."[28] This corresponds with what we
know of "Dr. Vorstman."