Part 16 (1/2)

[5] At the time of the discovery the Iroquois, or League of the Five Nations, claimed to have subdued and mastered all the Indian tribes from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The Iroquois occupied in particular the middle and upper region of New York State. The earliest of the general histories of this remarkable confederacy was written by Cadwallader Colden, who died on Long Island in 1776.

[6] _New York Historical Society's Collections_, vol. iii. p. 324.

[7] _Antiquities of Long Island_, p. 29.

[8] Among Brooklyn's manufactures in recent years rope-making has taken a prominent place.

[9] _A History of the City of Brooklyn, including the Old Town and Village of Brooklyn, the Town of Bushwick, and the Village and City of Williamsburgh._ By Henry R. Stiles. 1867.

[10] Van Twiller.

[11] _Address before Long Island Historical Society_, 1880.

[12] ”The Ladye Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt with by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church of Salem (whereof she was a member); but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch against the advice of her friends.”--_Governor Winthrop's Journal._

[13] Also described as a Council of Eight.

[14] The function of the schepen resembled that of the squire or petty justice, particularly in communities so small as not to have a burgomaster.

[15] By the wording of contracts dated November 22, 1646 (New York Col.

MSS. ii. 152), it appears that Teunissen was called ”Schout of Breuckelen” before this date.

[16] As we have seen, Rapalje, who made one of the earliest purchases (1636), did not begin living on his Wallabout farm until probably 1655.

[17] ”No other figure of Dutch, nor indeed of Colonial days is so well remembered; none other has left so deep an impress on Manhattan history and tradition as this whimsical and obstinate, but brave and gallant old fellow, the kindly tyrant of the little colony. To this day he stands in a certain sense as the typical father of the city.”--Theodore Roosevelt, _New York_, p. 26.

[18] Bayard Tuckerman, _Peter Stuyvesant_, p. 62.

[19] Stiles, _History of Brooklyn_, vol. i. p. 229.

[20] ”Among the Dutch settlers the art of stone-cutting does not appear to have been used until within comparatively a few years, with but few exceptions, and their old burying-grounds are strewn with rough head-stones which bear no inscriptions; whereas the English people, immediately on their settlement, introduced the practice of perpetuating the memories of their friends by inscribed stones. Another reason for not finding any very old tombstones in the Dutch settlements is that they early adopted the practice of having family burying-places on their farms, without monuments, and not unfrequently private burials, both of which the Governor and Colonial Legislature, in 1664 and 1684, deemed of sufficient importance to merit legislative interference, and declared that all persons should be publicly buried in some parish burial-place.”--Furman, _Antiquities of Long Island_, p. 155.

[21] _New York_, p. 29.

[22] A Dutch war-s.h.i.+p sold twenty negroes into the colony of Virginia in August, 1619.

[23] The call of the Breuckelen Church to Dominie Selyns was by him accepted, and approved by the Cla.s.sis of Amsterdam, February 16, 1660(-61).--_Brooklyn Church Records._

[24] Mr. Campbell and other recent writers, actuated doubtless by some resentment toward the complacency of New England, have unquestionably exaggerated in certain respects the essential position of Holland in educational advancement, and offered a somewhat stronger plea for the leaders.h.i.+p of the Dutch in popular education on this continent than a strictly judicial examination of the case seems to justify; but there can be no reasonable doubt in the minds of impartial students that serious misconceptions have existed, and that these justify the champions.h.i.+p of the Dutch, of which Mr. Campbell's _The Puritan in Holland, England, and America_ is so brilliant an example. The early claims for English and for Puritan educational traditions not only ignored but excluded the Dutch, and it was inevitable that the effort to do justice to Holland's remarkable services for popular education should result in occasional overstatement.

[25] _Democracy in Europe_, vol. ii. pp. 67-72.

[26] _Public School Pioneering in New York and Ma.s.sachusetts._

[27] _New York Colonial Doc.u.ments_, vol. i. p. 112.

[28] The river farm, which included the ”Kiekout” bluff, is first found in the possession of Jean Meserole, who came from Picardy, France, in 1663, and from whom is descended Gen. Jeremiah V. Meserole, President of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, first colonel of the Forty-seventh Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y.

[29] So named from Dirck Volckertsen, surnamed ”the Norman,” to whom was granted in 1645 land on the East River between Bushwick Creek and Newtown Creek, now within the seventeenth ward of the city of Brooklyn, and still known as Greenpoint. Volckertsen lived in a stone house on the northerly side of Bushwick Creek near the East River. The house was standing until after the middle of the present century.

[30] Early section names within the towns.h.i.+p of Breuckelen were Gowa.n.u.s, Red Hook (lying west of the Ferry), the Ferry, Wallabout, Bedford, Cripplebush. All of these, save the last, have survived as designations of regions in the present city.