Stuyvesant Farm, also known as the Great Bowery, was the estate of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland, as well as his predecessors and later his familial descendants. The land was at first designated Bowery No. 1, the largest and northernmost of six initial estates of the Dutch West India Company north of New Amsterdam, used as the official residence and economic support for Willem Verhulst and all subsequent directors of the colony.
In 1651, while serving as director, Stuyvesant purchased the land from the company. He capitulated the colony to the English in 1664 and went to Europe for three years, returning to retire to his farm in 1667. The land was kept in the Stuyvesant family for many generations into the American period, and was the namesake of numerous local sites and institutions.
Manatus Map of 1639 under Willem Kieft (north to right)
|
Prior to Dutch colonization, the land where Stuyvesant Farm sat was most likely used or inhabited by Native Americans. The Wappinger and Lenape peoples inhabited Manhattan, using the land as seasonal hunting grounds and also establishing permanent villages there. [1] The Dutch Republic formed the colony of New Netherland in the early 17th century, and Cryn Fredericks of the Dutch West India Company set out six estates north of New Amsterdam to be farmed to support the commanding officers of the colony. The land which made up Stuyvesant Farm was formerly part of two of these estates, the entire Bowery No. 1 and parts of Bowery No. 2 (bowery is an anglicization of the archaic Dutch word for "farm", spelled bouwerie or bouwerij ). [2] These boweries were laid out along a Native American footpath, part of the Northeastern Great Trail and later the Boston Post Road, that would become known as the Bowery Lane after its destination at the Great Bowery. [2]
In 1632, Wouter van Twiller took control of Bowery No. 1 when he became Director of New Netherland. During his stewardship over the farm he oversaw many improvements, including adding a house, a brewery, and barns. The largely self-sufficient farm's primary product is thought to have been the staple wheat, rather than a cash crop like tobacco. The building that would become Stuyvesant's Bowery Mansion was most likely a structure originally erected by the Dutch West India Company's carpenters in 1633. Van Twiller was fired in 1637 and when his replacement, Willem Kieft, arrived in 1638, he found the colony in disarray outside of the impressive Bowery No.1. The Manatus Map of 1639 indicates only half of the six company boweries were in operation, referring to Boweries 2–6 as “five run down bouweries of the Company, which stand idle whereof now, [in] 1639, 3 are again occupied.” [3]
In 1645, Peter Stuyvesant was selected to replace Kieft as Director of New Netherland, and took on the role in 1647. On March 12, 1651, the company directors in Amsterdam authorized the sale of the farm with its dwelling house, barns, woods, six cows, two horses and two African slaves for ƒ6,400 to Stuyvesant, acting through his agent Jan Jansen Damen. [4] [5] By the mid-17th century, an estimated 40 people were enslaved on Stuyvesant Farm. [2] Stuyvesant was the largest private slaveholder on Manhattan; only the company of which he was director held more. Stuyvesant diminished free African-owned properties in the neighboring Land of the Blacks settlement by appropriating some of them to himself, through both purchases and fiat, though most stayed intact. [6]
When England moved to take over New Netherland in 1664, a delegation of twelve met at Stuyvesant Farm to negotiate the Articles of Surrender of New Netherland, and papers were later signed by Johannes de Decker on an English ship in the harbor. [7] Terms were generous enough that Stuyvesant kept his estate and lived the rest of his life there, after a three-year trip back to the Netherlands until the Peace of Breda. [8]
The property was inherited in Stuyvesant family, sometimes with new land acquisitions. [9] [10] The family continued to hold slaves into the early 19th century. [11] The family land area gradually declined into the 19th century as pieces were sold off, both commercially and in some cases to local institutions for a nominal price. The tract of land that comprised Stuyvesant Farm covered what is today's East Village and Stuyvesant Town. [12]
Stuyvesant Square and Tompkins Square Park are both within the limits of the Stuyvesant farm. [23]
The Bouwerie House was a manor house perhaps originally built for Van Twiller, that became the personal property of Stuyvesant and later of his family until it was burned on October 24, 1778. [24] An informal settlement, known as Stuyvesant Village or Bowery Village, grew up adjoining the house to its west. [25] The Bouwerie House is to be distinguished from the governor's house downtown at what became known as Whitehall Street. [26] [27]
Other residences of Stuyvesant family members in the area included Petersfield, a newer "Bowery House", 44 Stuyvesant Street, Hamilton Fish House, and 19 Gramercy Park South. [28] [29]
The estate included a wetland known as Stuyvesant Meadows, part of which was later filled and converted to form Tompkins Square Park. Two creeks, noted for their eel populations, passed through the wetland, Stuyvesant Creek and a feature later called Ninth Street Creek. [30] Stuyvesant Creek also passed by the Bouwerie House and was used in winter for ice skating. [31] The creeks emptied into the East River on Stuyvesant Cove, between Kip's Bay and Corlears Hook. [30]
In 1647, Stuyvesant brought a pear tree from the Netherlands and planted it on his farm. The tree stood at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue until 1867, where it lived for two hundred years, with New York City growing around it. [32] The 1811 street grid covered over the farm but spared the Stuyvesant Pear Tree. The tree remained there, through the founding of Kiehl's Pharmacy at the same corner in 1851, until February 1867 when, weakened by a massive winter storm, it toppled by a wagon collision. [32] [33]
A plaque marking the Stuyvesant tree's spot remains at the corner of 13th Street and Third Avenue. [32] In this neighborhood, pear trees are still planted to commemorate the original pear tree planted by Stuyvesant. [34] A Stuyvesant descendant gifted a cross-section of the original trunk to the New-York Historical Society. [34] Kiehl's planted a new pear tree at the same spot in 2003. [35] [36]
Peter Stuyvesant was a Dutch colonial officer who served as the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was split into New York and New Jersey with lesser territory becoming parts of other colonies, and later, states. He was a major figure in the early history of New York City and his name has been given to various landmarks and points of interest throughout the city.
Fort Amsterdam was a fortification on the southern tip of Manhattan Island at the confluence of the Hudson and East rivers. The fort and the island were the center of trade and the administrative headquarters for the Dutch and then British/Colonial rule of the colony of New Netherland and thereafter the Province of New York. The fort was the nucleus of the settlement on the island and greater area, which was named New Amsterdam by the first Dutch settlers and eventually renamed New York by the English, and was central to much of New York's early history.
The Bowery is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north. The eponymous neighborhood runs roughly from the Bowery east to Allen Street and First Avenue, and from Canal Street north to Cooper Square/East Fourth Street. The neighborhood roughly overlaps with Little Australia. To the south is Chinatown, to the east are the Lower East Side and the East Village, and to the west are Little Italy and NoHo. It has historically been considered a part of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Stuyvesant Street is one of the oldest streets in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs diagonally from 9th Street at Third Avenue to 10th Street near Second Avenue, all within the East Village, Manhattan, neighborhood. The majority of the street is included in the St. Mark's Historic District.
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery is a parish of the Episcopal Church located at 131 East 10th Street, at the intersection of Stuyvesant Street and Second Avenue in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The property has been the site of continuous Christian worship since the mid-17th century, making it New York City's oldest site of continuous religious practice. The structure is the second-oldest church building in Manhattan.
Kieft's War (1643–1645), also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between the colonial province of New Netherland and the Wappinger and Lenape Indians in what is now New York and New Jersey. It is named for Director-General of New Netherland Willem Kieft, who had ordered an attack without the approval of his advisory council and against the wishes of the colonists. Dutch colonists attacked Lenape camps and massacred the inhabitants, which encouraged unification among the regional Algonquian tribes against the Dutch and precipitated waves of attacks on both sides. This was one of the earliest conflicts between settlers and Indians in the region. The Dutch West India Company was displeased with Kieft and recalled him, but he died in a shipwreck while returning to the Netherlands; Peter Stuyvesant succeeded him in New Netherland. Numerous Dutch settlers returned to the Netherlands because of the continuing threat from the Algonquians, and growth slowed in the colony.
Bergen Square, at the intersection of Bergen Avenue and Academy Street in Jersey City, is in the southwestern part of the much larger Journal Square district. A commercial residential area, it contains an eclectic array of architectural styles including 19th-century row houses, Art Deco retail and office buildings, and is the site of the longest continually-used school site in the United States. Nearby are the Van Wagenen House and Old Bergen Church, two structures from the colonial period. St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church founded by early Egyptian immigrants was one of the original Coptic congregations in New Jersey.
The Hamilton Fish House, also known as the Stuyvesant Fish House and Nicholas and Elizabeth Stuyvesant Fish House, is where Hamilton Fish (1808–93), later Governor and Senator of New York, was born and resided from 1808 to 1838. It is at 21 Stuyvesant Street, a diagonal street within the Manhattan street grid, between 9th and 10th Streets in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. It is owned by Cooper Union and used as a residence for the college's president.
Bergen was a part of the 17th century province of New Netherland, in the area in northeastern New Jersey along the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers that would become contemporary Hudson and Bergen Counties. Though it only officially existed as an independent municipality from 1661, with the founding of a village at Bergen Square, Bergen began as a factory at Communipaw circa 1615 and was first settled in 1630 as Pavonia. These early settlements were along the banks of the North River across from New Amsterdam, under whose jurisdiction they fell.
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.
Wolfert Gerritse Van Couwenhoven, also known as Wolphert Gerretse van Kouwenhoven and Wolphert Gerretsen, was an original patentee, director of bouweries (farms), and founder of the New Netherland colony.
The St. Nicholas of Myra Church is an American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese (ACROD) church dedicated to Saint Nicholas, located at 288 East 10th Street, on the corner of Avenue A in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, across from Tompkins Square Park.
The Society of Daughters of Holland Dames is a hereditary organization founded in 1895 whose purpose is to preserve and promote the historical legacy of the seventeenth-century Dutch settlers of New Netherland. The Society sponsors emerging scholars researching New Netherland history. Complementing an initiative by the Holland Society of New York, the Society partnered with the New Netherland Institute (NNI) to promote the availability of online transcriptions and translations of the original seventeenth-century New Netherland administrative records housed at the New York State Library and Archives. The translation of these manuscripts has contributed to an understanding of the impact of the Dutch on the founding of the United States of America and became the historical basis of Russell Shorto's book Island at the Center of the World and many other scholarly works. An up-to-date bibliography appears on the website of the New Netherland Institute. In 2018, the Society published Historical Records 1895-2017 and contributed copies to relevant research libraries. In 2020, the Society updated and copyrighted Researching Your Dutch Ancestors: A Practical Guide.
Peter Gerard Stuyvesant was an American landowner, philanthropist and descendant of Peter Stuyvesant who was prominent in New York society in the 1600s.
The Land of the Blacks was a village settled by people of African descent north of the wall of New Amsterdam from about 1643 to 1716. It represented an economic, legal and military modus vivendi reached with the Dutch West India Company in the wake of Kieft's War. This buffer area with the native Lenape is sometimes considered the first free African settlement in North America, although the landowners had half-free status. Its name comes from descriptions in 1640s land conveyances of white-owned properties as bordering the hereditament or freehold "of the Blacks".
Petrus "Peter" Stuyvesant was a New York landowner and merchant who was a great-grandson of his namesake, Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of New Amsterdam.
The Manatus Map is a 1639 pictorial map of the New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary at the time the area was part of the colony of New Netherland. Entitled Manatvs gelegen op de Noort Rivier it shows the geographic features of the region, as well as New Amsterdam and other New Netherland settlements. The map was drafted when Willem Kieft was Director of New Netherland.
Sapohanikan was a Lenape settlement of the Canarsee now located in close proximity to where Gansevoort Street meets Washington Street near the Hudson River in Manhattan. The people of the settlement were violently displaced under Dutch Governor Wouter van Twiller in the 1630s, who operated a tobacco plantation for the Dutch West India Company.
Nechtanc was a Lenape settlement of the Canarsee located in what is now Two Bridges, Manhattan or the Lower East Side where the East River begins to turn north. In 1643, the settlement was the site of a massacre of Lenape people, mostly women and children, after the governor of New Netherland ordered the people killed as they slept. A simultaneous massacre occurred at Pavonia, just across the East River. The village is alternatively referred to in historical documents as Rechtauk.
In September 1609, Henry Hudson, accompanied by around 20 sailors, navigated the Halve Maen into present-day New York Harbor. Tasked by the Dutch East India Company to discover a route to Asia, Hudson's journey instead led to the Dutch staking claim over an area they named Nieuw Nederland, encompassing what are now parts of the U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Between 1625 and 1626, the newly formed Dutch West India Company founded a settlement at the southern tip of Manhattan to serve as the capital and main trading hub of the colony, dubbing it Nieuw Amsterdam, which would eventually evolve into New York City.