Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 | Page 9

under the pressure of religious and civil proscription, due in most cases to acts of insubordination, there seemed no place remaining for them except the shores of the New World. No history of communism can be complete that does not include the experiment entered upon by Jean de Labadie and his followers in the Old World, and by the Labadist colonists in America. It is unfortunate that more complete information with regard to the actual economic value of the Labadist community cannot be had, but such information could not greatly differ from the facts that are well known as to the economic and industrial character of the Maryland population in general.
BARTLETT B. JAMES.

NOTE B
Since Dr. James's introduction was written, I have come upon some facts of interest respecting the two Labadist travellers which were not known to Mr. Murphy, who indeed had practically nothing to say regarding their previous life.
Jasper Danckaerts was born at Flushing in Zeeland May 7, 1639, the son of Pieter Danckaerts and Janneke Schilders--which explains his using Schilders as a pseudonym during his American expedition. He became a cooper in the service of the East India Company at Middelburg.[17] A curious book in which Pierre Yvon, pastor of the Labadist church after Labadie's death, describes the death-bed conduct and speeches of members of the sect, gives us glimpses of the diarist's family life.[18] They may enable us to look more kindly upon that censorious writer. Under date of May, 1676, the pastor commemorates the death of "our sister Susanna Spykershof, wife of our brother Dankers. She came to us at Zonderen" (Sonderen, a temporary stopping-place near Herford) "with her husband, leaving without difficulty her birth-place and dwelling-place Middelburg and all her acquaintances.... The trials and dangers they underwent were common to the two.... Both were at the same time, at Altona, accepted as members of the body of Christ [the Labadist church].... She loved her husband tenderly, but when God called him elsewhere, to the service of His work and children, she embraced His will therein with much love; which was especially edifying in her, since before this, when she was living in the world, she was wont to be in great anxiety whenever he was away from home on their own concerns. At Bremen, when a portion of our community was there, then at Altona, and here in Friesland, God visited her with great sufferings," and she died at the age of thirty-three, soon after the death of their youngest child.[19]
[Footnote 17: F. Nagtglas, Levensberichten van Zeeuwen (Middelburg, 1890), I. 146.]
[Footnote 18: Getrouw Verhael van den Staet en de laetste Woorden en Dispositien sommiger Personen die God tot sich genomen heeft, uyt de Gereformeerde en van de Werelt afgesonderde Gemeynte, voor desen gegadert tot Herfort en Altena, en tegenwoordig tot Wiewert Vrieslant (second ed., in New York Public Library, Amsterdam, 1683), pp. 30-32. The original French, Fidelle Narré des états et des Dernières Paroles (Amsterdam, 1681), and an English version (ibid., 1685), are in the British Museum.]
[Footnote 19: See p. 130, note 1, infra.]
When Cornelis van Sommelsdyk went out to Surinam as governor in 1683, a body of Labadists sought an asylum there. A little later Danckaerts, after his second voyage to New York, went out with reinforcements to their settlement of La Providence in Dutch Guiana, which soon proved a failure.[20] In 1684 he was naturalized by a Maryland act,[21] but this does not prove that he was then in the province or long remained there. Thereafter he seems to have lived mostly at Wieuwerd, but he died at Middelburg between 1702 and 1704. He left behind him an elaborate manuscript, which he was just about to publish at the time of his death, entitled "Triumf des Hebreeuwsche Bibels" (triumph of the Hebrew Bible over secular chronology) in which he styles himself "Jasper Danckaerts, lover of wisdom, of sacred emblems, history, and theology, at Middelburg in Zeeland." The antiquary from whose book this fact is derived says also, "In 1874 I bought at a book-stall in Middelburg a very neatly written translation of the Psalms, with musical notes, prepared by Danckaerts mostly during his American journey, dated at Wieuwerd, and perhaps revised by Anna Maria van Schurman."[22] This manuscript is now in the library of the Zeeland Academy of Sciences at Middelburg. I am greatly indebted to Mr. W.O. Swaving, librarian of that society, who has kindly furnished me with a copy of the preface to this manuscript, as also of Danckaerts's note on his Indian Bible.[23]
[Footnote 20: Some writers put the Surinam venture before the voyage of 1679, and it is noticeable that Danckaerts says he has been in the West Indies; p. 61, infra. But the little "book of saints" which has just been mentioned says, of a Juffrouw Huyghens, who died