Edward Farrington: Flushing's Honorary Town Father

Edward Farrington, while not himself a Flushing Charter signer like his brother Thomas, was a prominent member of the community who amply deserves the title of honorary founder. Although his early life remains the most enigmatic of all the Farringtons, it was Edward’s later career in Flushing that established the family alongside the Bownes as one of the town’s important Quaker lines for generations to come.

Edward Farrington’s childhood hometown of Olney, Buckinghamshire. The bridge shown was the site of the 1645 Battle of Olney Bridge, a skirmish in the English Civil War.

Edward Farrington’s childhood hometown of Olney, Buckinghamshire. The bridge shown was the site of the 1645 Battle of Olney Bridge, a skirmish in the English Civil War.

Like Thomas Farrington, Edward was born to Edmund Farrington and Elizabeth Newhall, probably in the village of Sherington in Buckinghamshire, England, and later moved with his family to the nearby town of Olney. His birthdate has been estimated around 1615. Neither Thomas nor Edward accompanied the rest of the family to the Bay Colony in 1635 on the ship Hopewell; as young adults they may have been indentured or apprenticed at the time. Edward first appeared in the Colonial records in March 1644/5. The early records of Southampton, the first English settlement on Long Island, show that as of that date he and Thomas owed 5 pounds to the town. Unlike his brother, Edward was not an original incorporator there, and his residency must have been brief, as his name does not appear on any of the other early town lists. Nor does he figure in the court records of Lynn, Massachusetts, where his parents and several of his siblings lived. Of course, it is possible that he did live there, but never had any business before the court.

The timing and reasons for his eventual move to Flushing are just as obscure. Possibly he inherited some of his brother’s land after Thomas’s untimely death in 1645 or 1646. Alternatively, his brother-in-law Robert Terry, who settled in New Netherland in 1643 and married Sarah Farrington, may have recruited him to the colony. We do know that Edward arrived in Flushing by 1651, when he married John Bowne’s sister Dorothy and brought his new brother-in-law to visit the town. 

 

“As I remember, I came to vlishing [Flushing] the fifteenth day of the 4 month caled June Ould Style 1651 with my Brother Edward ffarington.”

- John Bowne’s Journal (1650-1694)

 

Bowne’s Journal does not describe how Edward and Dorothy met, but the Bownes had previously lived in Boston, not far from Edward’s family in Lynn.

Edward was soon nominated by the townsfolk for the office of Flushing magistrate, and Director Stuyvesant then selected him from among the nominees. Evidently he enjoyed a good reputation with his fellow citizens and the Dutch authorities alike. He was sworn in on April 22, 1655, with William Lawrence (profile to come) and Thomas Saul, both Flushing Charter signers. He was re-appointed on March 25, 1656, this time alongside Lawrence and William Noble. However, religious disputes soon brought the magistrates into conflict with the man who had appointed them. Around November 1656, Farrington and the other two magistrates headed a petition of the residents of Flushing for the release of their Schout, or Sheriff, William Hallett. Hallett (who coincidentally happened to be Hannah Bowne’s stepfather) had been arrested for allowing a Baptist preacher from Rhode Island to hold “conventicles,” or unauthorized worship services, in his house. The petition on Hallett’s behalf was conciliatory in tone, simply pleading ignorance of any wrongdoing on his part. He was released after begging pardon, incurring a hefty fine, and surrendering his office. However, the next protest from Flushing would prove more defiant.

Edward Farrington was still serving as magistrate on December 27, 1657, when he joined the 30 people who signed the Flushing Remonstrance at a town meeting. The Remonstrance was a formal protest against Director Stuyvesant’s recently posted bans on Quakers in the colony. Today this document, preserved in the New York State Archives, is recognized as one of the first principled expressions of support for religious pluralism in the New World. The signers proclaimed that to persecute Quakers violated not only their moral code, but also their Town Charter, which promised “liberty of conscience”:

 

“Therefore if any of these said persons* come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man. And this is according to the patent and charter of our Towne, given unto us in the name of the States General, which we are not willing to infringe, and violate, but shall houlde to our patent and shall remaine, your humble subjects, the inhabitants of Vlishing.”

- from the Flushing Remonstrance, 1657

* “one of [God’s] little ones, in whatsoever form, name or title he appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker…”

 
 
 

[READ THE FULL TEXT OF THE FLUSHING REMONSTRANCE]

Stuyvesant perceived these sentiments as subversion. He ordered the arrest of all four officers of the town who had signed: Farrington, his fellow magistrate William Noble, town clerk Edward Hart, and Tobias Feake, the new Schout who had hand-delivered the Remonstrance to the Director. (Feake happened to be Hannah Bowne’s first cousin- she seems to have been surrounded by heterodox menfolk.) Farrington’s role in drafting the Remonstrance is unclear, and may have been limited to signing it. Under interrogation, town clerk Edward Hart claimed that he had simply summarized the collective sentiment of all the Flushing residents who had spoken out on the issue, and could not attribute its wording to any particular individual. He admitted that he had previewed the text to Farrington, Noble, and Feake before reading it at the town meeting, but could not say if they approved it. Despite Hart’s stonewalling, the local officials were held personally accountable for the conduct of all 30 signers in their jurisdiction. The records of the Council of New Netherland document Farrington and Noble’s ensuing encounter with the legal system.

“The Old Stadt Huys of New Amsterdam.” Historic Postcard Collection (New York Pulic Library) The Town Hall, a former tavern turned courthouse, where prisoners were often kept awaiting trial.

 On January 1, 1658, the two magistrates were summoned before the Director and Council of New Netherland and arrested. The transcript of their interrogation before the commies [commissioners] does not survive, but according to their sentencing recommendation both men blamed the highest-ranking official, Schout Tobias Feake, for leading them astray. This mollified the authorities enough to grant their petition of January 8 to be given the liberty of Manhattan while awaiting sentencing.

On January 9, Farrington and Noble jointly submitted their official response to the charges, in which they “confessed themselves not guiltie…jest ignorant.” Their plea to “the Noble and Reverent Lords, the Director and Council” downplays the Remonstrance as merely an opinion offered to the Director for his approval. The writers profess ignorance of the anti-conventicle acts- except for Stuyvesant’s anti-Quaker ordinances, which they (quite improbably) purport to have faithfully enforced- and further claim unfamiliarity with “the Articles which the Fiscael [public prosecutor Nicholas de Sille] is pleased to call our Charter.” Then there follows a mild, yet unmistakable, rebuke: the magistrates note that they have however read their Patent, which they call their Charter, and believe it guarantees “liberty of Conscience: without molestation either of magistrate or minister.” They challenge Stuyvesant to correct them on this point if they have misunderstood, signing off as his “humble servants.” Notably, William Noble’s mark stands in for his signature, indicating he could not write. Apparently, there was no literacy requirement for magistrates in New Netherland. This fact suggests that Farrington probably took the lead in composing the letter, especially as he was the more senior magistrate of the two.

 

Edward Farrington and William Noble, Response to the Court. January, 9, 1658. (New York State Archives) View and download in hi-res

 

Even this mild response may have struck too defiant a note, because on January 10, the very next day, the two magistrates submitted a second, briefer petition in which they admitted error, begged pardon, and promised to give no further offense. Following their repentance and their fingering of Tobias Feake as the ringleader, Farrington and Noble were sentenced to court costs only, and released. The Council’s leniency also reflected their suspicions that Farrington had been influenced by Henry Townsend, another original Flushing patentee who had been arrested for harboring Quakers in neighboring Rustdorp (Jamaica) the previous September. Indignation over Townsend’s case almost certainly helped to inspire the Remonstrance. However, when questioned before the Council Townsend only admitted to visiting Farrington as an old acquaintance, and denied persuading him to sign the Remonstrance.

After their release, Farrington and Noble felt unsure whether they could return to the bench, despite the growing backlog of cases before the court. Their senior colleague, William Lawrence, wrote to Stuyvesant: “Edward Farrintton and William Nobell in regard of ther latte trubelle are nott willing to proseed aney ferrder withoutte your honeres forder order.” Stuyvesant’s “forder order” was to suspend the court in Flushing until March 26, when he issued an edict restructuring the town government. He named William Lawrence (who had not signed the Remonstrance) as a temporary replacement for the disgraced Schout, and eventually appointed a town Constable instead, a lesser office lacking prosecutorial powers. He also banned most town meetings, which were the preferred organ of decision-making for the English settlers, instead creating an advisory board of seven politically reliable citizens whom he would personally approve. Farrington and Noble were, however, allowed to resume their duties as magistrates, and indeed were repeatedly reappointed. Despite their reinstatement, their previous act of defiance had cost the town much of its cherished autonomy.

Letter, November 5th/15th, 1662. John Bowne in jail at New Amsterdam to Hannah Bowne in Flushing. Describes farm labor Edward Farrington, aka “Brother John,” should assist with in Bowne’s absence. (Bowne Family Papers of Flushing, Long Island. Bowne…

Letter, November 5th/15th, 1662. John Bowne in jail at New Amsterdam to Hannah Bowne in Flushing. Describes farm labor Edward Farrington, aka “Brother John,” should assist with in Bowne’s absence. (Bowne Family Papers of Flushing, Long Island. Bowne House Archives.)

Although none of the Remonstrance signers publicly identified as Quakers in 1657, Edward and Dorothy did later join the Religious Society of Friends, probably around the same time as John and Hannah Bowne. Farrington’s retirement or removal from the office of magistrate in 1662, when he was replaced by the apparently rehabilitated former Baptist sympathizer William Hallett, may provide a hint as to his date of conversion. Quakers did not believe in taking oaths, so after his “convincement” he could not have been sworn in for a new term. Of course, this was around the same time that John and Hannah Bowne began holding meetings in the Bowne House. John and Hannah were close to Edward, whom they referred to as “Brother John” or “Brother Farrington.” During his imprisonment in the Fall of 1662, Bowne advised Hannah to enlist Edward for the heavy labor he would normally have done on the farm, including helping with the haying and, “when he is not about other needful work...either providing firewood for winter or a-clearing in the new ground.” During his exile, John recruited an indentured servant named James Clement and sent him to Flushing to help out, but upon having second thoughts wrote home: “If he be heady, put him to Brother Farrington.”

Edward lived in Flushing for the remainder of his life. He appears on the 1666 Patent for Flushing issued by Governor Nicolls after the English takeover. In 1667, his father Edmund wrote a will leaving him and his brother-in-law Robert Terry each twenty shillings. (The bulk of the paternal estate went to the siblings who had remained in Lynn.) Edward raised four sons with Dorothy, named after himself and his three brothers: John, Edward, Thomas, and Mathew. (The fact that he named his firstborn John, rather than Edward Jr., may hint at his great regard for his brother-in-law, John Bowne.) Genealogies also record three daughters: Dorothy, Mary, and Margaret, although little is known of them. Edward seems to have prospered in Flushing and become a substantial landowner before his death around age 60. His will was probated on July 1, 1675, when his widow was granted letters of administration. Most of his estate went to John. Younger sons Edward and Thomas received 50 acres each plus a share of meadow, while Mathew received 20 acres and three meadows. His daughters either predeceased him or were omitted from the inheritance.

The following year John Bowne wrote to his wife, then traveling in England: “I must acquaint you to thy grief, as it has been to mine, that my sister did take a husband yesterday. It was the man who went and came with L[ewis] Morris to the New Countries with us.” (It is not clear from this description who the new husband was; Lewis Morris was a Quaker based in the English colony of Barbados who undertook religious visits to New England, while the “New Countries” may have referred to New Jersey or Pennsylvania.) According to family historian Jacob Titus Bowne, Dorothy was censured and expelled from the Flushing Quaker Meeting for “outmarriage,” or marrying a non-Quaker. However, this second marriage may have ended before her death, because on June 24, 1678, Letters of Administration were granted to her son John for “Dorothy Farrington, widow & relict of Edward Farrington.” The matter poses a bit of a mystery. Regardless, the Farringtons remained an influential family in both the Quaker Meeting and the town of Flushing well into the 19th century.

Our research is a work in progress. If you have additional information on the Flushing Charter signers, are a descendant, or just believe that you may be a descendant, we would like to hear from you! You can write to us at bownehouseoffice@gmail.com

Thomas Farrington: Flushing's “Founding Uncle”

Thomas Farrington’s untimely death ended his history in Flushing shortly after he signed the Charter. We do not know his date or cause of death, only that in August 1646 his widow remarried. His only child, Thomas Farrington, Jr., moved upstate. The Farrington family thus owes its legacy in Flushing to Thomas’s brother Edward, who followed him to the town. It was Edward who induced the Bownes to settle there following his marriage to Dorothy Bowne, who signed the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance, and who founded one of the area’s leading Quaker families. Thomas himself might be considered more a “Founding Uncle” of the town than a Founding Father. However, in his brief life he co-founded not just one but two Colonial towns, including the first English settlement on Long Island.

Beginnings in Buckinghamshire

 
Old Olney Bridge, Buckinghamshire, by William Samuel Wright, 1815–1915. (The Cowper and Newton Museum)

Old Olney Bridge, Buckinghamshire, by William Samuel Wright, 1815–1915. (The Cowper and Newton Museum)

Thomas Farrington’s origins at least are documented, unlike those of a number of his fellow Charter signers we have examined. He was born to Edmund Farrington and Elizabeth Newhall around 1614 in the English county of Buckinghamshire, probably in the village of Sherington where his parents wed. The family soon moved to nearby Olney, a market town remembered today as the site of a battle in the English Civil War. In later life Edmund Farrington took on an apprentice “fulmonger,” or dealer in hides; he also operated a grist mill. However, it’s unclear whether he brought up his sons to either occupation. In April 1635 Thomas’s parents and four youngest siblings- Sarah, Mathew, John, and Elizabeth- joined the Puritan Great Migration and emigrated to the Bay Colony aboard the Hopewell. The passenger list records that Edmund Farrington took the “Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy,” in which would-be emigrés affirmed the King as head of the Church of England, and thus their religious orthodoxy. By 1638 Edmund owned 200 acres in Lynn, Massachussetts. Thomas and his brother Edward, the eldest children, must have emigrated separately.

 

Striking Out on Long Island: The Settlement of Southampton

In March 1639/40 Thomas Farrington, his father Edmund, and his brother John appear on a list of twenty “undertakers” of the first English plantation on Long Island. Edmund was one of eight investors who financed a vessel and hired a captain to transport the settlers and their cargo. He signed the “Disposall of the Vessel” with his mark; however, both his sons were literate and signed their names. Apparently, this was an upwardly mobile family. Unlike the founders of Rhode Island, the Long Island pioneers were not driven out of Massachusetts by religious persecution; Governor Winthrop wrote that the Lynn residents simply “found themselves straitened for land.” The “undertakers” even promised that once they were sent a minister from Massachusetts, they would voluntarily surrender all administrative authority in the new plantation to the Church. They left armed with a patent for eight square miles anywhere on Long Island signed by James Farrett, agent for the Scottish Earl of Stirling, who had just been granted Long Island by King Charles I of England. The Crown was eager to block Dutch expansion, and Charles’ gift to his favored courtier simply disregarded the existing Dutch settlement on the Island.

In May 1940 an advance party of 10, including John Farrington, disembarked in Schout’s Bay near present-day Manhasset, where they found the coat of arms of the Dutch States-General (the governing body of the Netherlands) nailed to a tree. Undeterred, they began clearing the wilderness. Their arrival nearly caused an international incident, as appears in the New Netherland Council minutes of May 13, 1640. The Dutch had just purchased the land in question from Sachem Penhawitz of the Canarsie Indians, who promptly reported the “interlopers and vagabonds” to the Council of New Netherland. A Dutch scout sent to reconnoiter observed the English already building houses, also noting that the Dutch Arms had been torn down. Worse yet, “a Fool’s face” had been carved in their place, “this being a crime of Lèse-Majesté [insult to the State] and tending to the disparagement of the sovereignty of their High Mightinesses.” On May 14, Secretary Tienhoven arrived before dawn with an entourage of 25 soldiers and arrested six Englishmen. They left behind a woman and small child with two unnamed men, possibly including Thomas Farrington- indeed, the small party contained one other pair of brothers. The interrogation of “Jan Farington” is preserved in the New York State Archives. He and the others wisely blamed James Farrett, safely at his home in New Haven, and Lieutenant Howe, the skipper of the departed boat, for vandalizing the Arms, while professing total ignorance of the “Fool’s face.” On May 19 the prisoners were released, on condition that they leave Dutch territory immediately “on pain of being punished as perverse usurpers.”

 
 
Conscience Point National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) “Near this spot in 1640 landed the colonists from Lynn, Mass. who founded Southampton - the first English settlement on Long Island.”

Conscience Point National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) “Near this spot in 1640 landed the colonists from Lynn, Mass. who founded Southampton - the first English settlement on Long Island.”

On June 10th, 1640, Farrett issued the undertakers another patent, for "all those lands…between Peaconeck [Peconic] and the easternmost point of Long Island with the whole breadth of the said Island from sea to sea..." -as far from the Dutch as they could get. The settlers were obligated to buy the land from the local Indians, and to pay the Earl of Stirling four bushels of prime Indian corn each year. Later that month they disembarked at “Conscience Point” off Peconic Bay, today a wildlife refuge where a stone marker stands in their honor. Striking an informal agreement with the Shinnecock near the Indian village of Agawam on the south shore, they founded Southampton in the area today known as Old Town, east of present-day Main Street. On December 13, 1640, the Native owners Pomatuck, Mandush, Macomanto, Pathemanto, Wybbenett, Wainmenowog, Heden, Watemexoted, and Cheekepuehat formalized the transfer of their land to thirteen of the undertakers, including Edmund Farrington. In exchange they received sixteen coats, three-score (60) bushels of Indian corn, and a promise of protection against more warlike mainland tribes. One of the witnesses who signed the deed was Robert Terry, who moved to Flushing in 1642 and married Thomas’ sister Sarah Farrington. Before the winter of 1640/1, around 40 households had arrived, most living in makeshift “cellars” with sod roofs. Thomas’s brother Edward Farrington must have also joined the family there, for he is named in the town records of 1644.

 

However, the Farringtons did not linger there. Edmund returned to Lynn before May 1643, when a Southampton resident named John Cooper was granted “the lott of Goodman Farrington,” having fenced the plot on his behalf, and being still owed 15 shillings for his labor. (Fencing carried a near-existential importance to early Colonial farmers in the wilderness, and early court records abound with neglected fences.) John also rejoined their father in Lynn. No Farringtons appear on the 1644 roster for a whale-watching patrol compulsory for males over age 16. By 1645 Thomas and Edward owed five pounds to the town, which in an echo of The Scarlet Letter’s famous opening lines, the fledgling town earmarked for a jail. However, Southampton land records indicate that the family kept a footprint there in absentia for at least two decades, with references such as “the land between the ffaringtons and the Pond” (1653); they were further memorialized in old place names like “Farrington’s Pond” (Old Town Pond), “Farrington’s Point” (Noyack), and the contemporary “Farrington Close,” site of a condominium development.

“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter

 
 
The Old Towne Pond: “…ye pond commonly called Farrington’s Pond, ranging on the old side of towne.”George Bradford Brainerd. East Side of Pond, South Hampton, Long Island, ca. 1872–1887. (Image: Brooklyn Museum)

The Old Towne Pond: “…ye pond commonly called Farrington’s Pond, ranging on the old side of towne.”

George Bradford Brainerd. East Side of Pond, South Hampton, Long Island, ca. 1872–1887. (Image: Brooklyn Museum)

 

It’s unclear exactly when or why Thomas made his way to the Dutch instead of rejoining his family in Lynn, especially given New Netherland Director Kieft’s ongoing wars with the Indians, and John Farrington’s recent brush with the authorities there. Certainly hardships and constraints were written into the founding documents of Southampton: no resident was allowed more than four acres for a home lot and twelve for planting, and Farrett’s patent permitted just one designated resident to barter with the Indians, and then only for foodstuffs, as Lord Stirling maintained a monopoly on trade. In 1643 tensions flared with the previously friendly Indians, when Lieut. Howe (one-time vandalizer of the Dutch Arms) fatally knifed a Native man suspected of murdering an Englishman. On another note, if Thomas had received news from his hometown in late 1643, he might have heard about the Battle of Olney Bridge, where outnumbered Parliamentarians loyal to Oliver Cromwell turned back the Royalist forces, some at the cost of their lives. Perhaps the religious tolerance of the Dutch seemed appealing against this backdrop of sectarian strife. Whatever the story, both Edward and Sarah Farrington eventually followed Thomas to Flushing, while their parents and their three youngest siblings- John, Mathew, and Elizabeth- remained at Lynn under the governance of Governor Winthrop.

Thomas married Helena Applegate, the daughter of fellow Flushing patentee Thomas Applegate, on an unrecorded date. Their only son, Thomas Farrington, Jr., was baptized on April 30, 1645 in the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam (which spelled their name “Pharendon.”) Although the Church did offer the sacraments of marriage and baptisms to members and non-members alike, this choice suggests that the couple did not hold any strong objections to the Reformed faith. They may have belonged to one of the English denominations, such as Congregationalist or Presbyterian, whose strict Calvinist beliefs were considered “Reformed” by the Dutch. The Church records next reveal that on August 15th, 1646, Helena “widow of Thomas Farrington” married Lovis Hulot (Lewis Hewlett.) Although we do not know his date of death, Thomas would have been no more than thirty-two years old.

Helena is one of the few “Founding Mothers” on whom we have even bare biographical data. We know that within 18 months her second husband also died, leaving her with a second fatherless child. Helena then married Charles Morgan, a former soldier of the Dutch West India Company, and had four more children with him. She died in 1652 at the age of 31, orphaning Thomas Farrington, Jr.. In 1654 Thomas Applegate, “as grandfather of the surviving child of Thomas Farrington,” sued his grandson’s conservator William Harck, demanding he account for “the goods and cattle, which he as curator of said child has in his possession." (Harck appeared in our profile of Thomas Saul, as the provisional Sheriff of Flushing who was “thrown upon the ground” while attempting an arrest, and later dismissed for performing an illegal marriage and allowing it to be consummated in his bed.) The outcome of the suit was not recorded, but in 1669 Thomas Jr. sold land he owned in Gravesend, where his grandfather Applegate had lived. He signed the deed with a mark; the family had gone from illiteracy to literacy and back within three generations. Thomas married but was widowed young, and moved to Westchester with his only daughter. There is no record of him ever remarrying or having more children. The male line of Thomas Farrington had died out.

Meanwhile, his brother Edward Farrington thrived in Flushing, where he raised four sons, one of whom carried on the name of Thomas. Edward and his descendants were important enough to the town, and to the Bowne family, that we will devote a follow-up post to him and selected other members of the family. 

Our research is a work in progress. If you have additional information on the Flushing Charter signers, or believe that you may be a descendant, we would like to hear from you! You can write to us at office@bownehouse.org

Lawrence Dutch: Black Sheep of the Flushing Charter

Due to his name, Lawrence Dutch has traditionally been regarded as the only Dutch founder of the English town of Flushing. However, in his “Profiles of Selected Kieft Patentees of Flushing, 1645,” B. Purcell Robinson states that “Dutch” is a transcription error of the kind later associated with Ellis Island, and identifies him with a Dane named Laurens Duyts, familiarly known as “Laurens Grootshoe” (essentially “Bigfoot.”) No surviving records connect Duyts directly to Flushing; however, the registry of New Netherland yields no better matches, and Duyts did engage in farming in Newtown, where other Flushing patentees soon moved.

Laurens Duyts was born around 1612 on the North Sea island of Nordstrand in Holstein, now the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. In 1634, most of the island was destroyed in a storm surge. Denmark was not a colonial power, so its economic refugees had to join the settlement efforts of other powers. By 1638 Duyts had migrated to Amsterdam, where he married a Dutch woman of 18, Itye Jansen of Oldenburgh. The church register describes him as a laborer residing at the Brouwersgracht, a canal lined with breweries. In 1639 the Duytses sailed for New Netherland aboard De Brant van Trogen, or The Fire of Troy, under fellow Dane Capt. Peter Kuyter, who would settle East Harlem, and his partner Jonas Bronck, for whom the Bronx is named. Duyts and his friend Pieter Andriesen came as indentured servants to Bronck. Following their arrival in New Ansterdam, a contract dated July 21, 1639 commited them to cultivate a tract of wilderness “on the mainland opposite to the flats of Manhates,” with permission to grow their own maize and tobacco, on condition that every two years they break new land and surrender the previous plot for Bronck’s use. From the proceeds the two would repay their passage money, “in tobacco or otherwise.” The illiterate Duyts signed with a mark.

 

“The invisible hand of the Almighty Father surely guided me to this beautiful country, a land covered with virgin forest and unlimited opportunities. It is a veritable paradise and needs but the industrious hand of man to make it the finest and most beautiful region in all the world.” - Jonas Bronck 

 
 
Detail from 1639 map “Manhattan Lying on the North River.” North River = Hudson River; Bronck’s homestead is number 43 in the key. (Library of Congress.)

Detail from 1639 map “Manhattan Lying on the North River.” North River = Hudson River; Bronck’s homestead is number 43 in the key. (Library of Congress.)

 

Duyts and Andriesen accompanied Bronck across the Harlem River to a tract of over 500 acres purchased from the Wecquaesgeek Indians. The 1639 map above shows Bronck’s homestead at the southern tip of the mainland in present-day Mott Haven, across from Randall’s Island. Bronck named his land “Emmaus,” after the Biblical town where Christ appeared after the Resurrection. (Thanks to the “industrious hand of man,” the site is currently occupied by Harlem River Yards and its solid waste processing plant.)

“Signing the Peace Treaty with the Indians.”

“Signing the Peace Treaty with the Indians.”

Bronck’s imported labor force soon erected a stone house with tile roof “in the style of a Dutch fort,” a barn, tobacco houses, and barracks. The Duyts family grew with the farm; daughter Margariet was baptised on December 23, 1639 in the Dutch Reformed Church at Manhattan, and son Jan followed on March 23, 1641, with Captain Kuyter as godfather. In April 1642 Duyts may have witnessed history on this far-flung “outplantation,” when the Dutch signed a peace treaty with Wecquaesgeek sachems Ranaqua and Tackamuck at Bronck’s farmhouse following an abortive raid on the Indian village at Yonkers. Sadly, Bronx’s peacemaking unraveled after Kieft’s War broke out in 1643, and Bronck himself died before May 6th of that year. With Indian-settler relations tense and the farm changing hands, Duyts needed a fresh start.

Why would this Dane head to English Flushing, and not his countryman Captain Kuyter’s settlement just across the river in Harlem? The answer may lie in the New York State Archives. On June 25, 1643, Englishman Thomas Spicer, formerly of Rhode Island, signed a lease for the former Bronck farm. Several of Spicer’s old neighbors, including Charter signer Thomas Beddard and Remonstrance signer George Clere, would shortly become Flushing residents, and perhaps he suggested to the displaced sharecropper that he follow their lead. Following the baptism of their son Hans in 1644, the family disappears from the Dutch records for several years. If Duyts did start a new life as “Lawrence Dutch,” he left no lasting trace in Flushing, and starting in 1653 he resurfaces regularly in the court records of New Amsterdam, alongside parties bearing almost exclusively Dutch or Scandinavian names.

Duyts appeared some dozen times before the Court of Burghomasters and Schepens and the New Netherland Council. Not all of this activity was litigious; in 1640 he witnessed a promissory note for his brother-in-law, Garret Jansen, and in 1643 a cobbler’s deposition records that another man robbed Duyts of some leather. In 1653 he was sued by his former partner Pieter Andriesen, who had become a man of means even as Duyts remained a farmer- acquiring a tavern license, a chimneysweeping business, and even African slaves. The court minutes give no details of the dispute, as Duyts sent a representative without a proper power of attorney, and was deemed in default.

In 1654 Captain Francis Fyn accused Duyts of attempting to sell land “over against Hog Island” that Fyn held title to. “Hog Island” is now Roosevelt Island, placing the contested property near the Long Island City waterfront. Fyn’s patent was sealed but not signed, so the court referred the case to Director Stuyvesant. In 1657 Fyn again sued Duyts and a co-defendant for selling crops before paying their rent, in violation of their lease. A final determination on these cases was never entered, but they establish Duyts’ continued activity in Newtown, Flushing’s neighbor to the west.

There were further suits, the details of which are often sketchy or confused, but which nonetheless paint a vivid portrait of the hardscrabble life of the colony, with its barter economy and oral contracts between illiterate people. There are suits over non-payment for 20 wagonloads of hay delivered to Claes van Ruyter “in the Valley”; over who owed the carter for lost wages; over crops purportedly embezzled by “Jan the Soldier” Hendricks, who was demanding 200 florins for tobacco he’d allegedly seized; over Duyts’ landlord’s outstanding debt for some meat, for which Duyts was served with a arrest warrant. In May 1658 grande dame Annetke Bogardus, widow of the Dutch Reform Minister, demanded two hogs from “Lauwerence Grootshoe” in lieu of unpaid rent for the Bouwerie (farm) that Duyts sublet from the delinquent meat buyer in the previous case. Overall, Duyts appears three times as a victim or plaintiff, three times as a witness, and seven times as a defendant or co-defendant. The cases deal with minor debts, property disputes, and business deals gone sour; at worst the profile of a petty grifter. Events then take a dramatic turn.

Our authority B. Purcell Robinson notes that after 1658 Duyts mysteriously disappears from the record for ten years. However, Mr. Robinson toiled in the days before the Internet, when the Minutes of the Council of New Netherland were not yet digitized. The following documents finally explain the lost decade.

On November 18, 1658, an order was issued to interrogate Geesje Jansen, a woman accused of having illicit intercourse with Duyts. Geesje may have been the sister of Duyts’ wife Isje Jansen.

On November 25, 1658 the following eye-popping decree was recorded: “Sentence. Laurens Duyts, of Holstein, for selling his wife, Ytie Jansen, and forcing her to live in adultery with another man, and for living himself also in adultery, to have a rope tied around his neck, and then to be severely flogged, to have his right ear cut off, and to be banished for 50 years.”

Geesje Jansen was displayed half-naked on the pillory with two iron bars in her hands, and banished for 30 years. The other man -identified as John Purcell, alias Botcher, of Huntingdonshire, England- was also pilloried, fined 100 guilders plus court costs, and banished for 20 years. Itye Jansen, seemingly the victim, was punished as an adulteress herself, with whipping and banishment for an unknown period. It seems that the two unmarried adulterers were spared corporal punishment.

This foray into sexual trafficking, spousal abuse, and adultery would indeed seem to auger the end of Duyts’s career in New Netherland, and within a week, at least two people requested liens on Duyt’s property. Duyts moved to Bergen, New Jersey, where eight years later he married Geesje Jansen. Their daughter Catherine was baptized in 1667.

On 12 January 1667-8 Duyts makes his final appearance in the Court records of New Amsterdam, now ruled by the English. A baker and a laborer were disputing the rights to a canoeload of grain sold by Laurens Duyts, now deceased. Duyts had ordered it delivered to the baker, but he died owing back wages to the employee who had helped row the grain across the East River. Noting the geography, it seems that after the English takeover in 1664, Duyts may have felt at liberty to resume farming on Long Island, even with John Parcell alias “Botcher” and his ex-wife Itye still resident in Newtown.

The aftermath suggests that the whole sordid affair may have been less sordid, and more consensual, than Duyts’ sentence suggests. In December 1658 Ytie Jansen and John Parcell petitioned the court as “two sorrowful sinners” for a pardon and leave to marry. They were ordered to separate and given three months to leave the province. However, it seems that instead they quietly remained in Newtown and had two children together. The Duytses’ adult sons did business with Parcell, evidently not shunning him as their mother’s kidnapper. A court record from 1684 describes Ytie as Purcell’s widow, so they must have eventually married. Was Duyts truly the “black sheep” of the Flushing Charter signers, a monster who sold his wife into sexual slavery, which she then reconciled herself to? Or were all four people simply taking advantage of the relative freedom of frontier life to seek happiness in an unconventional living arrangement? From the distance of 2020, it is hard to judge.

 

Our research is a work in progress. Bowne House welcomes new information on the Charter Signers and early Flushing history. If you believe you are descended from Lawrence Dutch/Laurens Duyts, or have information about him, please contact us at office@bownehouse.org

 

Thomas Saul: From Itinerant Tradesman to Town Magistrate

New Haven in Thomas Saul’s time.

New Haven in Thomas Saul’s time.

Thomas Saul first appears in 1639 in the town of New Haven; we know little of his origins, except that they soon caught up with him. The would-be colony was founded in 1638 by devout Puritan investors who dreamed of a Bible-based theocracy. However, not all New Havenites were religious fundamentalists. A carpenter by trade, Saul himself was part of an influx of itinerant artisans. In 1637, the advance party scouting the site had squatted in hillside dugouts; a year later, over 100 families needed housing. Amid this construction boom, Saul and another carpenter named William Gibbons were hired as sub-sub-contractors to work on the meeting house, an ambitious structure measuring 50 feet on all sides, with a tower, turret, and casement windows. Part of their job was to “make the roof of the tower tight, to keep out wet.”

The earliest mention of Saul occurs in the Court session of December 4, 1639, in which he and a Goodman Spinage were ordered to resolve their (unspecified) differences before the next session. Two months later, the Court ordered Saul to pay 5 shillings a week to a Mr. Evans, as security for Spinage’s claim against him. Finally, in the record of September 2, 1640, Saul acknowledged a debt of £20 to Humphrey Spinage, “to be leavied of his goods and chattells for publique use of this towne” should he fail to pay upon demand. Here Goodman Spinage is described as the agent for someone in London, offering a clue to Saul’s previous residence and possible motive for emigration.

A Plan of the Town of New Haven, 1748. A new meeting house stands in the village green.

A Plan of the Town of New Haven, 1748. A new meeting house stands in the village green.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a 1641 list of the residents of New Haven does not include Thomas Saul, although it’s unclear if itinerant tradesmen were counted. However, in 1644 he reemerges in the Court records, this time in absentia. Whether from negligence or lack of skill, the roof of the meeting house—which he and Gibbons were supposed to make watertight—was already badly leaking. Andrew Williams, the master carpenter, was squabbling with the two sub-contractors who had hired Gibbons and Saul over who bore the blame for their poor supervision. Given the urgency of the problem, the town ordered all parties to jointly repair the tower. However, within a few years the rest of the Meeting House began to decay, including roof, ground sills, timbers, windows and doors, and the entire building was condemned in 1670, erasing the only known monument to Thomas Saul.

New Netherland offered Saul a fresh start, away from creditors and angry clients. Unlike some Charter signers, he settled down in Flushing and become a freeholder there. An 18th century probate record refers to “a patent share of meadow in Fresh Meadows, Flushing...formerly owned by Thomas Saule.” However, his early years in Flushing also saw him back in court.

On February 1, 1648 William Harck, the “Schout-Fiscal” or Sheriff of Flushing, appeared with his associates before Director-General Stuyvesant and the Council of New Netherland. They requested that the authorities “favor them with a pious, learned, and Reformed minister, and then order that each inhabitant should contribute to such godly work...and that an end be put to the present differences in a manner that shall promote peace, quietness, and unanimity in said town.” The record continues: “Thomas Saul, John Lawrence, and William Turner, the opposite party, thereto delegated by the remainder of their side, request the same as the Schout and his associates abovementioned have asked.” It does not elaborate upon the “present differences” between these two factions who claimed to want the same thing, but we can infer clashing ideas of what qualified as a “pious, learned, and Reformed minister.” This incident probably stems from a summons issued two weeks earlier for five of Saul’s fellow Flushing Charter signers:

 

“Whereas one John Townshend, Edward [Hart?], Thomas Stiles, John Lawrence and John Hicks of Flushing in New Netherland are with others the principal opponents to the general vote and decision of their neighbors in contributing toward the support of a Christian and godly Reformed minister and to the nomination of a Schout...it is resolved for the best interest, advantage and peace of this province to have the said persons summoned to appear on the 23rd of January before the honorable Director and Council, and in case of refusal or declining to appear said persons may be arrested by the Fiscal...” - January 17, 1648

 

These wanted men, all original incorporators of the town like Saul, refused to support the minister, Elias Doughty, whom Stuyvesant had assigned to Flushing after he had alienated his previous parishioners in nearby Newtown (now Astoria, Queens.) It’s unclear if their objections to Doughty were doctrinal or personal, or if deep down they objected to funding any “official” minister. They further protested the Dutch system of choosing the Schout, the town’s law-enforcement officer and its only elected official. The townsfolk had to submit a list of nominees from which the Dutch would choose; however the faction represented here wanted the residents themselves to decide upon one candidate before seeking Dutch approval, giving the town more autonomy.

Council Record, April 8, 1648: Sentences of Thomas Stiles and Thomas Saul for assaulting the acting Sheriff of Flushing and obstructing the arrest of Stiles. (New York State Archives)

Council Record, April 8, 1648: Sentences of Thomas Stiles and Thomas Saul for assaulting the acting Sheriff of Flushing and obstructing the arrest of Stiles. (New York State Archives)

The parties did not respond to the summons, though the following week they evidently designated Lawrence, Saul, and Turner to face off against provisional Schout William Harck on their behalf and to lodge their competing request for a new minister. Stuyvesant and the Council agreed to search for a suitable reverend, so as “to promote peace, union, and tranquility both in ecclesiastical and civil affairs.” This noble aim failed, for on April 8, 1648, Thomas Saul and his fellow patentee Thomas Stiles were sentenced for assaulting Harck, who had been sent to arrest Stiles for some unspecified offense. Stiles confessed that he “threw the sheriff on the ground,” but promised “henceforth to behave as an honest inhabitant should,” and was “graciously pardoned”- provided he “beg forgiveness of God, the Council, the Honorable Director, and the Schout of Flushing,” and pay a fine of 50 guilders. Thomas Saul confessed to barring the door so that no one could come to Harck’s aid, thus preventing Stiles’ arrest. He likewise prayed mercy and promised to never do so again, and submitted to a fine of 25 guilders.

In a bizarre coda, around this time William Harck was dismissed for solemnizing a illegal marriage that he was not ordained to perform and to which the underage bride’s parents had not consented, then providing a bed in his own house for its immediate consummation. The Indian fighter Captain John Underhill replaced Harck as Schout, and promptly locked the detested Rev. Francis Doughty out of his church. The latter, despairing of ever being paid, absconded to Virginia and was not replaced. When the Long Island towns got their own magistrates, our erstwhile defendant Thomas Saul was twice elected to that office, in 1651 and 1655. We know nothing about the cases that came before him, as the town records of Flushing were destroyed by fire in 1788.  After 1655 Saul vanishes from the municipal archives of New Netherland and all neighboring colonies, which the indefatigable researcher B. Purcell Robertson personally scoured in the pre-Internet age for his Profiles of Selected Kieft Patentees of Flushing. As with Thomas Beddard, our other “International Man of Mystery,” we lack evidence of any surviving wife or children.

 If Thomas Beddard represents one New World archetype -the pilgrim in search of religious freedom- Thomas Saul represents an equal and opposite type: the economic migrant. (Of course, these contrasting narratives are not mutually exclusive: Saul became caught up in the religious disputes of the town, whether he participated fully in a spiritual movement, or just provided some “muscle” to back up his zealous friends.) Regardless, his is a classic frontier story: leaving behind a trail of debt and dubious workmanship, in New Netherland Saul found a community that allowed him to go from troublemaker to magistrate, and ultimately reinvent himself as a respected citizen.

Here at Bowne House, our research is a work in progress. If you believe you are a descendant of Thomas Saul, or have additional information about him or his family, please contact us at office@bownehouse.org.

Thomas Beddard: An International Man of Mystery

 

Some of the eighteen Flushing Charter signers remain enigmas even in the Internet age, their biographies as sketchy as the interior of New Netherland in old maps. Thomas Beddard is one of these “International Men of Mystery.” He left no dates of birth and death, no details as to his origins, occupation, wife or children. Even his name shape-shifts; thanks to the vagaries of 17th century spelling, Beddard also appears as “Beeder,” “Beader,” and “Beddar.”

However, Beddar’s sparse appearances in the early New England records place him among those Flushing patentees who arrived via the scattered settlements that soon afterwards became Rhode Island. Coming directly from one haven for religious dissidents, iconoclasts like Thomas were naturally drawn to another place that offered them “liberty of conscience.”

Thomas Beddard emigrated from Newport, Rhode Island - and vanished.

Thomas Beddard emigrated from Newport, Rhode Island - and vanished.

Beddard first appears on the Island of Aquidneck in the Narragansett Bay, where he showed up on the 24th of the 11th month, 1638 among a dozen men as anonymous as he was. Why they traveled through a near-wilderness in the dead of a New England winter (this being January 1639 in the modern calendar) is not explained. The town records of Portsmouth relate that a “Thomas Beeder” and three others were formally admitted as inhabitants by order of the Judge and Elders about two weeks later, at a meeting held 7th day, 12th month, 1638/9. One of the men admitted alongside him had the unusual name Osamund Doutch- suggesting some relation to “Lawrence Dutch” -an equally enigmatic character who also appears in the Flushing Charter.

The Execution of Mary Dyer - Artist, Howard Pyle. Beddard briefly settled in Pocasset (Portsmouth) with the Dyers and other religious dissidents.

The Execution of Mary Dyer - Artist, Howard Pyle. Beddard briefly settled in Pocasset (Portsmouth) with the Dyers and other religious dissidents.

Portsmouth, then known by the Indian name Pocasset, was founded by Judge William Coddington and other supporters of Anne Hutchinson, who had been exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony following a theological dispute with the Boston Church known as the Free Grace Controversy. Hutchinson’s husband, brother-in-law, and eldest son all signed the Portsmouth Compact, which established a non-sectarian “Biblical” government independent of the King and Church of England. So did John Clarke, a Baptist minister and prominent advocate of “soul-freedom,” who later enshrined religious liberty in the Rhode Island Constitution. Other members included future Quaker converts William and Mary Dyer; Mary became one of the Boston Martyrs, four Quakers who were executed on the Boston Common for preaching “heresy.” Beeder himself does not figure in the records of the Bay Colony, and it’s unclear what drew him to Pocasset. However, the roster of prominent religious non-conformists testifies to the company he kept.

“We whose names are underwritten do acknowledge ourselves the legal subjects of His Majesty King Charles, and in his name do hereby bind ourselves into a civil body politic, unto his laws according to matters of justice.”

- PORTSMOUTH “COMPACT OF LOYALTY” 1639

On April 30, 1639, our protagonist resurfaces as “Thomas Beddar” in a Compact of Loyalty signed by 29 Pocasset inhabitants. Without mentioning the Church of England, this document acknowledges the Crown and brings the signers under English Common Law in civil matters. Possibly the signatories saw this as a step towards applying for an official patent for their land, which Plymouth, the Bay Colony, and Connecticut all were eyeing, and for which the settlers only possessed an Indian Deed from the Narragansetts.

With the exception of William Hutchinson, there is no overlap between the signers of this Loyalty Compact and those of the original Portsmouth Compact. This proclamation seems to represent a rift between separatists and those who still saw themselves as loyal English subjects. Many of the latter, Beeder among them, would soon break away to form Newport, at the opposite end of the island. The Loyalty Compact may have been the brainchild of Samuel Gorton, a recent arrival who had been expelled from Boston for heterodox beliefs. These included an odd fusion of Royalism and anarchism- the only worldly authorities he recognized were the King and himself. Beeder/Beddar is among the 16 illiterate subscribers who signed with his mark -in his case, a horseshoe shape. George Clere, a future signer of the Flushing Remonstrance, also appears on this list, likewise signing with a mark. Perhaps the less educated or privileged residents felt less secure flouting the established order than the original covenanters, only one of whom was illiterate.

Newport, R.I. a hundred years after Thomas Beddard helped to settle it.

Newport, R.I. a hundred years after Thomas Beddard helped to settle it.

A month after the signing of the Loyalty Compact, a second settlement named Newport was established, following a split between the Hutchinsons and their former champion, Judge Coddington. Beeder followed Coddington to the new plantation; in November 1640 his name appears in the Newport Town Records on a list of 59 inhabitants of Aquidneck “having submitted themselves to the Government that is or shall be established, according to the word of God therein.” These inhabitants include the aforementioned George Clere and Osamond Doutch, as well as Toby Knight and Nathaniel Hazzard, whom the historian Purcell Robinson identifies as the uncle of Remonstrance signer Nathaniel Hefferd, making up a cohort of people with known or suspected ties to Flushing. Like the other Rhode Island communities, Newport was non-sectarian and upheld religious freedom. It became home to many Baptists, who were shunned elsewhere for their moral opposition to the sacrament of infant baptism. In 1658 the town would welcome a community of Portuguese Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition; these refugees erected the second-oldest synagogue in America.

Despite such unprecedented freedom, Beddard/Beeder did not linger long in Newport. In 1642, he sold two four-acre plots of land to his neighbor, suggesting that around this time he left for New Netherland. We can only guess at his reasons. However, in 1642 Rhode Island’s liberties were only guaranteed by the Covenants and Compacts of its towns. There was no Charter from the English government to confer legal status, and the individual settlements were not yet organized into a colony. Various New England colonies laid claim to part of the territory, and sporadically threatened this nest of heretics and their Narragansett Indian allies. In 1642 Roger Williams duly left for England to secure a Patent, but he did not return with one until 1644. Even then, factions and differences among the settlers prevented a colony from immediately coalescing. Coddington did not want Newport to come under the control of a united Rhode Island with Roger Williams at the helm, and Portsmouth likewise wanted to preserve its independence from the mainland.

Beddard and his fellows may therefore have sought the protection of a nation-state and legal title to their land, as guaranteed in a patent. Accustomed to religious freedom in Rhode Island, it made sense for him to resettle in another colony with a reputation for tolerance, and to join with his fellow patentees (including other former Rhode Islanders) in insisting on a explicit “liberty of conscience” clause in their new town charter. Indeed, back in 1638 the signers of the Portsmouth Compact had originally considered founding their new community in New Netherland, before Roger Williams persuaded them to join him near his Providence Plantations.

After 1645 the name Beddard (in all its forms) abruptly vanishes from the historical record. Either he died shortly after signing the Charter, or he soon moved to a different community from which no early records have survived. The surname does not resurface in any of its forms in readily accessible genealogical records for over a century. However, we hope that this project will bring to light new information on all the Signers. If you are, or think you might be, a descendant of Thomas Beddard, or if you have information to share regarding him, please contact the Bowne House at office@bownehouse.org.

The Indian Deed of 1639: Prelude to the Flushing Charter

Before the Flushing Charter, there was the Indian Deed.

Flushing, or “Vlissingen,” was built on land previously purchased from Native Americans. The 1629 Charter for the colony of New Netherland dictated that settlers “must satisfy the Indians of that place for the land,” rather than simply squatting there or occupying it by force. The Dutch Colonial Records in the New York State Archives contain several of these so-called “Indian Deeds.” This original document, labeled “Indian Deed to the Directors of the West India Company for Land on Long Island,” is dated January 15, 1639. It conveys most of present-day Queens and Nassau County to the government of New Netherland. (The paper was damaged in the Capitol Fire of 1911 in Albany.)

 
 

ANCIENT PLACES: THE BOUNDARIES OF THE LAND

The document records that Mechoswodt, the chief sachem of Marossepinck, Sintsinck, and its dependencies, appeared in person at Fort Amsterdam to transfer his patrimonial lands on the western end of Long Island (“called in the Indian tongue Suan Hacky”) to the Dutch, with the consent of its co-owners, named as Piscamoc, his cousin, Wattewochkouw, Kachpohor, and Ketachkwawars. It describes a tract “reaching in length along the southside of said island from Reckouw Hacky to Sicketeuw Hacky, and from said Sicketeuw Hacky in width to Martin Gerritsen's Bay, and thence in length westwardly along the East River to the Vlaecks Kil.” (Suan Hacky, meaning “place of scattered shells,” refers to sewan or wampum, the prized natural resource of Long Island.)

The modern equivalents of these ancient place names remain uncertain. Marossepinck, known as Massapeague to the English, probably refers to Massapequa, off South Oyster Bay. Sintsinck, literally “stone upon stone,” was the Indian name for Manhasset Bay on the northern shore, settled by the Matinecock and dubbed “Schout’s Bay” by the Dutch. Reckouw Hacky (Rockaway) formed the south-west corner of the purchase, and presumably lay somewhere around the present-day Rockaways. Sicketeuw Hacky to the east has been translated “Secatogue,” the name of an Indian band who lived around West Islip; a 1656 map by Adriaen van der Donck shows its (very) approximate location.  As for Martin Gerritsen’s Bay, the Dutch applied this name inconsistently to various bodies of water along the Sound, but here it likely means Oyster Bay, which became the recognized border between Dutch and English territory in Long Island. Finally, according to Long Island historian Frederick Van Wyck, Vlaeck’s Kil, or “Kill of the Flats,” may refer to Newtown Creek.

 

“Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs”: detail from Van Der Donck’s Map of New Netherland, 1656. - Note “Sickete Wachty” on the south shore.

 

Mechoswodt and his people retained the right to live on their former land, to farm, fish, hunt, and generally make a livelihood there. They were promised the protection of the Dutch, presumably against New England settlers and hostile Indian tribes that might covet the sewan shells prized all the way to the Great Lakes. Both parties must have hoped this deal would bring peace and security.

[Read a translation of the Deed from the New York State Archives]

The treaty ending Kieft’s War, 1645.

SIX LOST YEARS: KIEFT’S WARS

However, instead of wooing new inhabitants Kieft almost immediately provoked a series of costly conflicts. There were attempts to exact tribute from the tribes, skirmishes over drunken tavern murders and allegations of stolen swine (the “Pig War” of 1640.) In 1642, despite the pleas of his own councilors, the Director ordered the Pavonia Massacre, an attack on several hundred Wappinger refugees who were fleeing their Mohawk attackers upriver. The massacre, which saw the murder of whole families in their sleep and the torture and mutilation of infants, sparked “Kieft’s War.” Twenty Algonquian tribes ravaged Dutch settlements in retaliation; religious dissident Anne Hutchinson and her family at their Bronx homestead were among the victims. The Long Island Indians stayed neutral- until Kieft plundered their maize stores to provision New Amsterdam for the coming siege. Then the Canarsee, Manhattan, Massapequa, Matinecock, Merrick, Rockaway, and Secatogue bands all took up arms. The newly purchased territory became depopulated, as colonists fled their farms to shelter in Fort Amsterdam. Chief Sachem Mechoswodt himself may have perished in a Dutch raid on Marrosopinc/Massapequa in 1644, for a different Sachem sued for peace on behalf of Marrosopinc the following month, while Mechoswodt himself never reappears in the record. It took the Pound Ridge Massacre outside Greenwich- in which English mercenaries under Captain Underhill fired an encampment with hundreds trapped inside- to finally bring the tribes to parley. A treaty was signed in 1645. Thus six long years elapsed between the signing of the Indian Deed and the grant of the Flushing Charter.

A BOWNE HOUSE “INDIAN DEED”?

The existence of this Indian Deed calls into question an old tradition that the Bownes purchased their land from the Matinecock for “6 silver guilders and 4 fathoms of wampum.” No such bill of sale exists in Bowne’s papers, and no mention of the purchase appears in either his Journal or his Account Book. If the Dutch already owned the land, why would Bowne need to purchase it from the Indians? However, the history of neighboring Hempstead leaves a margin for doubt. There, English settlers arriving in 1643 paid the Indians for the land, despite the existing Dutch title. (Upon discovering this, Kieft swiftly granted them a patent to bring them under Dutch administrative control.) Possibly the boundary lines of Kieft’s purchase were as unclear then as today; alternatively, the Indians may have felt that Kieft’s War had voided the deal. Some Indians may have disputed Mechoswodt’s right to dispose of their lands in the first place, or misunderstood the terms of a sale negotiated by a third party. To confuse matters further, the Indians had an altogether different cultural understanding of land ownership than the Europeans, and at least in the early days of contact they often believed that they were simply licensing the use of their land, not permanently alienating it. Indeed, after the English took over the colony they ultimately felt the need to buy out all the Dutch patents and re-purchase the town of Flushing from the Matinecock.

THE NEXT GENERATION: SACHEM TACKAPOUSHA

In 1685 Governor Thomas Dongan of New York granted the town a new Patent, with expanded boundaries. The Dongan Patent of Flushing to John Bowne and his fellow residents lists “Tackapousha Sachem, Qussaw, Wascoe, Suscanenian Ats Rumsack and Werah, Cetharum, Nimham, Shumsheweham, Nimham’s Sonne, and Oposon” as the sellers of the land, “in consideraçõn of a valuable sume...to the full satisfaçõn of the Indians.” Sachem Tackapousha was the son of Mechoswodt and the most influential leader among those Indian bands who remained in western Long Island. The Patent refers to “a further strengthening of the title” granted in the 1645 Patent, and promises “to Distroy all Cause, matters, and Pretences for controversy, or Variences that might at any time arrive from Tackapousha, [etc....] or any Person or Persons, whether Christian or Indian.” Whatever ambiguity existed regarding the claim to Flushing was settled. However, in the accompanying bill of sale, the Indians did reserve from their patrimony “the privilege of cutting bulrushes forever.”

[Explore the Dutch Colonial records in the New York State Archives digital collections]

Learn more about the Matinecock people

Next in Profiles of the Charter Signers: Thomas Beddard