JOURNAL OF JOHN BOWNE: FOLIO 49, VERSO (back)
Continued from September 11, 1662: The Arrest of John Bowne
“So the next day like a wicked hard-hearted man he carried me in a boat to Monhatons, leaving my family in that condition, and put me in the Cort a gard before the Governor’s door…”
Journal of John Bowne, photostatic copy (Bowne House Archives). Original at N.Y. Historical Society.
To be continued September 13, 1662.
Notes on the Text
he carried me: “He” being Resolved Waldron, the Schout of New Amsterdam
Monhatons: Manhattan (also known as “Mannados,” “Manahatta,” “Manatus”, “Manhados,” etc.)
leaving my family in that condition: At the time of his arrest the previous day, Bowne and others were nursing his sick wife and child at home. As it was too late in the day to depart for Fort Amsterdam, Waldron left his company of soldiers behind to stand guard over the sickbed scene, while he went drinking in the town until evening. Presumably he and his men then bedded down for the night in this house of contagion. We can only speculate how the soldiers felt about being confined for so many hours in a one-room farmhouse in proximity to two patients “so ill that we kept watch two and three together.”
the Cort a gard: apparently an archaic word for “jail”
the Governor’s door: Peter Stuyvesant was often called “Governor,” though his actual title was “Director-General.” His house is shown just down the street from the Fort on the map below.
“The Towne of Mannados or New Amsterdam,” aka “The Duke’s Plan.” circa 1664. (British Museum)
This map, known as “The Duke’s Plan,” shows the layout of New Amsterdam at the time of the British takeover in 1664; it was based on a Dutch original dating from circa 1661. The quadrangular structure at the tip of the island is the Fort where Bowne was taken. Stuyvesant’s nearby residence is labeled as “Governor’s House.” (Note that the top of the map faces East, not North.) “Longe Isleland” barely appears in the frame, illustrating its socially and geographically marginal status in New Netherland. Virtually the only feature identified along its shoreline is the “Passage” through which Waldron would have brought Bowne via the boat, namely the East River. The remoteness of the so-called “out-plantations” left the settlers vulnerable, but also more remote from central authority, leaving room for the smugglers of Oyster Bay and the Quakers of Flushing alike to take root.