Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 | Page 4

colony which was effected in Maryland that without this account the story of the first communal sect in America might have failed of adequate recording.
[Footnote 5: Volume I. Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies in 1679-80, by Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter of Wiewerd in Friesland (Brooklyn, 1867).]
But while the Journal of Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, the two envoys--or of Jasper Danckaerts, who did the actual writing--is of especial interest in relation to an incident in the early settlement of Maryland, the gauge of its value may be applied as well in other directions. This extended narrative, often discursive and circumstantial, contains much that is suggestive upon the beginnings of the middle group of states, and, indeed, the narrative bears upon facts of importance in connection with Massachusetts as well.
The original manuscript of the Labadist narrators is now in the possession of the Long Island Historical Society. It was bought by the Society at the Murphy sale in 1884. It is written in a fine, good hand on paper of about 8-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches. The pages are numbered with three successive numberings: (A) 1-72, (B) 1-16, 25-192, 217-231, (C) 1-47, the first section corresponding to the voyage to America; the second, to the travels in the middle colonies; the third, to the experiences of the journalist and his companion in New England and on the voyage home. In the second division there is no gap between pages 16 and 25, but after page 192 there is a considerable hiatus. In narrative, this extends over a few days only, June 13-19, but the omitted portion probably also contained a description of the city of New York and the beginning of an account of the Indians. The remaining pages of this section, pages 216-231, proceed with this account, treating of the weapons of the Indians, their treaties with the whites, their intelligence, their burial customs, their virtues and vices, their knowledge of God and their worship, and finally of the beaver and his habits. As the journalist could have had no original contributions to make with regard to the American aborigines, his observations upon this subject have no especial value, and have been omitted.
The manuscript when found was accompanied with six sheets of pen-and-ink drawings. The text appears to be a carefully transcribed copy, plainly written in a different handwriting from that of the drawings. The latter, as the marks upon them show, are the original sketches made upon the spot. All are reproduced in Mr. Murphy's edition of the journal. The first shows the figure of an Indian woman and four fishes, two of them rare and two common. The second drawing shows the entrance to New York Bay at Sandy Hook as seen from the house of Jacques Cortelyou at Nayack (Fort Hamilton). The third is a detailed and exceedingly interesting view of New York as it was in 1679, taken from Brooklyn Heights; it is reproduced in the present volume. The fourth and fifth give views of New York from the east and from the north, while the sixth plate presents a map of the Delaware River from the Falls at the present site of Trenton down to Burlington.
The manuscript of the narrative reproduced in this volume is accompanied by a similar manuscript for a second voyage made in 1683, April 12-July 27, entered upon 16 pages of foolscap, and then copied upon 48 pages of quarto size, the former in a different and much more difficult hand than the journal of 1679-1680, the copy in a handwriting similar to that of the latter. Twelve pages of the 48 are verses, and the remainder do not carry the traveller beyond the completion of his voyage. As this second narrative includes nothing bearing directly upon the experiences of the chronicler after his arrival upon the shores of the New World, it has not seemed worth while to translate it and bring it into the present volume. It is much to be regretted that the continuation was never written, or has not been preserved, since it would record the actual settlement of the Labadist community in northeastern Maryland. With the fragment was found an interesting manuscript map of the Delaware River, which gives Philadelphia as in existence, and therefore belongs to the period of the second voyage.
Prior to the discovery of the Journal of Danckaerts it was indeed traditionally known that a sect of Labadists in the first half of the seventeenth century had located a colony on the estates of Augustine Herrman in Maryland. There were fragmentary references to these people in the early records of the state and in historical manuscripts, with isolated notices in contemporary writers. Yet this information would of itself have been too meagre