Cornelis Jacobsen Mey,often spelled Cornelius Jacobsz May in Dutch,was a 17th-century Dutch explorer,captain,and fur trader. Mey was the first Director of New Netherland and was stationed at Fort Amsterdam. Mey was the captain of the ship Nieu Nederlandt which delivered the first boat load of colonists to New Netherland in north-east America.
May is believed to have been from Hoorn in the northwest Netherlands but may have been born in the smaller village of Schellinkhout,located just east of Hoorn. His brother is believed to have been Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout for whom the island of Jan Mayen is named.[1] Both brothers were cousins of Jan Cornelisz May,a prominent Dutch sailor and voyager[2] who led several expeditions to the Northeast passage and circumnavigated the world with Joris van Spilbergen between 1614 and 1617.
1614 to 1616 expeditions in North America
In 1614,May was the first to sail the Mauritius River,now known as the Hudson River,where he entered into an agreement with various competing Indian tribal traders. On October 11,1614,May became party to the New Netherland Company,which received an exclusive patent from the States General of the Netherlands for four voyages to be undertaken for the next three years to territories discovered between the 40th and 45th parallels at the exclusion of all other Dutch through January 1618.
From August 1616 to November 1616,the New Netherland Company tried unsuccessfully to secure a patent for a territory located between the 38th and 40th parallels at Delaware Bay,which had been surveyed from 1614 to 1615 by Cornelis Hendricksz from Monnikendam on the ship Onrust. In 1616,Cornelis Hendricksen,sailed the Onrust up the Zuyd Rivier,now known as the Delaware River,from Delaware Bay to its northernmost navigable reaches,on a voyage to ransom three fur traders taken from Fort Nassau on the North River.[3]
On behalf of the successor company of the New Netherland Company,May explored and surveyed the Delaware Bay on a ship named called the Blyde Boodschap,for the exploration of territories to the west of and below Manhattan,and those in as far south as the fortieth degree in Virginia and engaged in trade with the Indians there in 1620. In 1621,he ordered the construction of a factory at Fort Nassau at the mouth of Big Timber Creek.[3]
Two of the six business partners with two ships,Blijde Boodschap and Bever,focused on exploration and trade in the Zuidt Rivier,or Delaware River,were Thijmen Jacobsz Hinlopen and Samuel Godijn. Cape Hinlopen,now spelled Cape Henlopen in Delaware,is named after Thijmen Jacobsz Hinlopen. Cape Hinlopen was New Netherland's most southern border on the 38th parallel. Godyn's Bay,now Delaware Bay,was named for Samuel Godyn,one of the first patrons in New Netherland and a director of the Dutch West India Company and the Northern Company.
First colonists of New Netherlands
Nieu Nederlandt ship portrait
May was unable to trade in the South River,now known as the Delaware River,to the exclusion of competing Dutch companies. Though the competing Dutch companies were eventually able to reach agreement on New Netherlands,discord arose again which was finally settled by arbitrators in Amsterdam,on December 23,1623. In 1624,the 38th and 39th parallels region came under the final jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Company with the delivery of New Netherland,including the Walloon and Flemish families.[4]
May was the captain of the ship Nieu Nederlandt (aka New Netherland) which delivered the first boat load of colonists to New Netherland,first at Fort Orange,the trading post near present-day Albany,New York,and then on Governors Island,in present-day New York City,in 1624. In the spring of 1624,May returned to New Netherland in command of the Nieu Nederlandt with the first group of settlers,mostly young Walloon families. Some were sent to company lands in Connecticut. Two families and eight single males took a sloop to the Zuidt (South) River,now the Delaware River,and established Fort Wilhelmus. Eight men were also left on Nut Island to promote the fur trade,and the remaining 18 families proceeded to Fort Orange.[5] Having transformed New Netherland into a Dutch province,May was named the province's first director.[6][7] During May's brief directorship,Fort Orange was completed on the North River,and Fort Nassau on the South River.[8]
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading factory gave rise to the settlement around Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River. In 1624, it became a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic and was designated as the capital of the province in 1625. New Amsterdam became a city when it received municipal rights on February 2, 1653.
New Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the east coast of what is now the United States of America. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to Cape Cod. Settlements were established in what became the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
The Netherlands began its colonization of the Americas with the establishment of trading posts and plantations, which preceded the much wider known colonization activities of the Dutch in Asia. While the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 in present-day Indonesia, the first forts and settlements along the Essequibo River in Guyana date from the 1590s. Actual colonization, with the Dutch settling in the new lands, was not as common as by other European nations.
Samuel Blommaert was a Flemish/Dutch merchant and director of the Dutch West India Company from 1622 to 1629 and again from 1636 to 1642. In the latter period, he was a paid commissioner of Sweden in the Netherlands and he played a dubious but key role in Peter Minuit's expedition that led to the Swedish colonizing of New Sweden. For years Blommaert was involved in the copper trade and industry. In 1645 he was appointed for a third time as a manager of the WIC, being one of the main investors from the beginning.
Adriaen Courtsen Block was a Dutch private trader, privateer, and ship's captain who is best known for exploring the coastal and river valley areas between present-day New Jersey and Massachusetts during four voyages from 1611 to 1614, following the 1609 expedition by Henry Hudson. He is noted for possibly having named Block Island, Rhode Island, and establishing early trade with the Native Americans, and for the 1614 map of his last voyage on which many features of the mid-Atlantic region appear for the first time, and on which the term New Netherland is first applied to the region. He is credited with being the first European to enter Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River, and to determine that Manhattan and Long Island are islands.
Cape Henlopen is the southern cape of the Delaware Bay along the Atlantic coast of the United States. It lies in the state of Delaware, near the town of Lewes, where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. Off the coast on the bay side are two lighthouses, called the Harbor of Refuge Light and the Delaware Breakwater East End Light.
Willem Verhulst or Willem van Hulst was an employee of the Dutch West India Company and the second (provisional) Director of the New Netherland colony in 1625–26. Nothing can be verified about his life before and after this period. Verhulst may have consummated the purchase of Manhattan Island on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, although there is still considerable debate over the evidence that also supports the purchase by Peter Minuit.
The Onrust was a Dutch ship built by Adriaen Block and the crew of the Tyger, which had been destroyed by fire in the winter of 1613. The Onrust was the first ship to be built in what is now New York State, and the first fur trading vessel built in America. The construction took four months in the winter of 1614 somewhere in New York Bay. Help from the local Native population is surmised based on the relationship developed by Jon Rodriquez, left on the island during a previous voyage. The Onrust was 44.5 feet long and capable of carrying 16 tons.
The Peach War, sometimes called the Peach Tree War, was a one-day occupation of New Amsterdam on September 15, 1655, by several hundred Munsee, followed by raids on Staten Island and Pavonia. 40 colonists were killed and over 100, mostly women and children, were taken captive.
Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific Jonkheer the city of Yonkers, New York, is named. Although he was not, as sometimes claimed, the first lawyer in the Dutch colony, Van der Donck was a leader in the political life of New Amsterdam, and an activist for Dutch-style republican government in the Dutch West India Company-run trading post.
Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout was a Dutch seafarer and explorer.
Zwaanendael or Swaanendael was a short-lived Dutch colonial settlement in Delaware. It was built in 1631. The name is archaic Dutch for "swan valley." The site of the settlement later became the town of Lewes, Delaware.
Cornelius Steenwyck served two terms as Mayor of New York City, the first from 1668 to 1672 and the second from 1682 to 1684.
New Netherlanders were residents of New Netherland, the seventeenth-century colonial outpost of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America, centered on the Hudson River and New York Bay, and in the Delaware Valley.
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th century colony of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America. The claimed territory included southern Cape Cod to parts of the Delmarva Peninsula. Settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Its capital, New Amsterdam, was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on Upper New York Bay.
Thijmen Jacobsz Hinlopen, was one of the leaders of the Dutch merchant and whaling company of Noordsche Compagnie beginning in 1617 and participant in the New Netherland Company, interested in furs. Thijmen was a prominent trader in corn from the Baltic carrying on trade to Genoa and Portugal.
Joris Jansen Rapelje was a member of the Council of Twelve Men in the Dutch West India Company colony of New Netherland. He and his wife Catalina (Catalyntje) Trico (1605–1689) were among the earliest settlers in New Netherland.
Cornelius Hendrickson was a Dutch mariner and explorer who charted the North American coastline near present-day New Jersey.
Adriaen Jorissen Thienpoint or Tienpoint was a Dutch sea captain-explorer who commanded several ships to the newly developing colonies of New Netherland and New Sweden as well as other holdings of the Dutch Empire in North America in the early 17th century.
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