Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 | Page 6

now Cecil County, Maryland, and Newcastle
County, Delaware, which he divided into several tracts under the names
Bohemia Manor, St. Augustine Manor, Little Bohemia, and the Three
Bohemia Sisters. It is of interest to note that among the acts passed by
the Maryland Assembly is one dated 1666, which provides for the
naturalization of "Augustine Herman of Prague, in the Kingdom of
Bohemia, Ephraim Georgius and Casparus, Sonns to the said Augustine,
Anna Margarita, Judith and Francina, his daughters," this being the first
act of naturalization passed by any of the colonies.[8]
[Footnote 6: Journal of the Dutch Embassy to Maryland, 1659, by
Augustine Herrman, in Narratives of Early Maryland, in this series, pp.
309-333.]
[Footnote 7: A copy of this map is in the British Museum. No other is
known.]
[Footnote 8: Maryland Archives, II. 144.]
It was upon Bohemia Manor that the Labadists located their colony.
Danckaerts and Sluyter, under the guidance of Ephraim Herrman, made
their way to Delaware and Maryland. Upon meeting them the elder
Herrman was at first so favorably impressed that he consented to deed
to them a considerable tract, in pursuance of his ambition to colonize
and develop his estates. On June 19, 1680, the Labadists, having
accomplished their mission, set sail for Boston, to which fact are due
such interesting recitals as that of their visit to John Eliot, the so-called
apostle to the Indians, and their visit to and description of Harvard
College. On the 23d day of July the Labadists set sail for Europe.
In 1683 the two Labadists returned again to Maryland, bringing with

them the nucleus of a colony. In the meanwhile Augustine Herrman
had repented of his bargain, and it was only by recourse to law that the
Labadists compelled him to live up to its terms. The deed he executed,
dated August 11, 1684, was to Peter Sluyter (alias Vorstman), Jasper
Dankers (alias Schilders), of Friesland, Petrus Bayard, of New York,
and John Moll and Arnold de la Grange.[9] The tract conveyed
embraced four necks of land eastwardly from the first creek that
empties into Bohemia River, and extended at the north or northeast to
near the old St. Augustine or Manor Church. It contained 3,750 acres.
Those engaging with Sluyter and Danckaerts in the transaction were all
professed converts to the Labadist faith. It may be noted in passing that
the Petrus Bayard named in the conveyance, and who for some time
was an active member of the Labadist community, was an ancestor of
the late Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James.
[Footnote 9: Baltimore County Land Records.]
When fairly settled upon Bohemia Manor, the Labadists undertook
communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the
European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland.
They cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn,
flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the
conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form. At its most
flourishing period the colony did not number as many as a hundred
persons, and in the year 1698 a division of the tract occurred. Sluyter,
who was the active head of the colony, reserved for himself one of the
necks of land and became wealthy. He died in 1722. Some form of
organization had been maintained among the Labadists even after the
division of the land, but five years after the death of Sluyter the
Labadists had ceased to exist as a community. The division in 1698
which marked the disintegration of the community occurred at about
the same time as a similar division of the estates of the mother church
at Wieuwerd. There the disintegration came about through consultative
action; in Maryland, by the logic of events.
The founder of the system of religion which came to be known as
Labadism, Jean de Labadie, was born in France, at Bourg near

Bordeaux, on February 13, 1610. His father was a French noble and a
soldier of fortune, who rose to be governor of Guienne. His parents
entered him at the Jesuit College, where he completed his novitiate and
took the first vows, and in 1635 he was ordained as a priest. Early
manifestations of an erratic temperament, a mystical habit of mind, and
physical frailty, led to his severance from the Society of Jesus. He
entered upon a preaching mission, and, coming under the attention of
Père Gondran, second general of the Congregation of the Oratory at
Paris, he received a call to that city, and, according to his own
statement, the entire body of the Sorbonne united in the call.
Labadie soon acquired a fame that went beyond the borders of France,
for oratorical ability and theological precision. His former associates,
the Jesuits, originated stories against his