Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 | Page 5

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 for a critical valuation of the
Labadists in the early history of Maryland. The publication of the
manuscript secured by Mr. Murphy stimulated interest in the subject,
and at various times monographic contributions appeared upon one or
another phase of the Labadist settlement. Notable were those of
General James Grant Wilson, whose paper on "An Old Maryland
Manor" was published by the Maryland Historical Society in 1890, and
his paper on "Augustine Herrman, Bohemian," by the New Jersey
Historical Society in the same year, and of Reverend Charles Payson
Mallary, whose monograph on the Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor,
a publication of the Delaware Historical Society in 1888, disclosed the
wide genealogical interest pertaining to the Labadist settlement. Thus
there was built up a body of substantial information with regard to the
environment and the relations of the Labadist colony in the New World.
In 1899 was published, in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in
Historical and Political Science, The Labadist Colony in Maryland, by
the writer of the present introduction. This monograph was largely
based upon fresh sources obtained from Europe, including
contemporary works by Labadie, his associates and his antagonists, as
well as studies of the subject by Dutch and German scholars. The
literature of Labadism in the New World, which, in a manner, has been
an outgrowth from the journal of the Labadist envoys, is now ample for
all serviceable purposes.
The journal of the Labadists, while primarily of value as elucidating an
obscure episode in the religious history of the New World, has worth as
a human narrative bearing upon incidents and personages and social
conditions in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Boston.

Thus the student of social, economic, institutional, or geographical
conditions in the early period of the settlements upon the Atlantic
seaboard will find in this journal much of suggestive and pertinent
contribution. Danckaerts viewed his surroundings through the eyes of a
fanatical self-satisfaction. For this reason his criticisms or strictures
upon persons and conditions are to be received with much discount.
But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous
note-taker; and the variety and fecundity of his material is not a little
due to the trivial and relatively unimportant details which are embodied
in the narrative.
The two agents came to North America in search of a suitable place to
establish a colony of their sect. Two distinct sets of forces drew them
toward Maryland. One of these was the religious toleration which, from
the beginning, was established in that province. There is no warrant in
the journal for a presumption that this was an inducing cause for their
location within the domain of Lord Baltimore. There is much, however,
in their antecedent history, and the pressure of persecution to which the
Labadists were subjected, to make it exceedingly probable that this
policy in the government of Maryland formed a circumstance in the
selection that was made. The journalists, who travelled under
pseudonyms for the express purpose of keeping their mission secret,
might have established their colony in New York had it not been under
the rule of Governor Andros, a Catholic, and therefore a subject of
particular antipathy to the Labadists.
But the practical weave of circumstance that tended to attract the
Labadists to Maryland centred in the fact that, as stated in their
narrative, they met in New York one Ephraim Herrman, a young trader
from Maryland and Delaware, then recently married. This was the son
of Augustine Herrman, "first founder and seater of Bohemia Manor."
Augustine Herrman was a Bohemian adventurer, born in Prague, who,
after a career of much vicissitude, made his way to New Netherland.
He became a force at New Amsterdam, and was an original member of
the council of nine men instituted by Governor Stuyvesant in 1647. His
connection with Maryland matters dates from his appointment by
Governor Stuyvesant as a special commissioner, along with Resolved

Waldron, to negotiate with Governor Fendall of Maryland concerning
the eastern boundary of Lord Baltimore's province.[6] This mission
effected, Herrman entered into negotiations with Lord Baltimore for the
drafting of a map of Maryland and Virginia, which would be valuable
to his lordship in bringing to a settlement the boundary dispute pending
between the two colonies, and in other ways.[7] In this manner
Herrman became invested with not less than 24,000 acres of the most
desirable lands of what is