Folio 77. West India Company. Resolution of the States-General. [From the Register of Resolutions of the States-General, in the Royal Archives at the Hague. } Wednesday, 26th January, 1678. Received a letter from the Directors of the Incorporated West India Company, presiding Chamber at Amsterdam, written there the 25th instant, containing in compliance with their High Mightinesses' despatch of the 14" instant, information and advice on the further petition delivered in to their High Mightinesses the same day, by or on the behalf of divers merchants, trading to New Netherland and Virginia, relative to their previous request presented on the twelfth of July last, to obtain some modification or diminution of the Duty on the New duty wherewith the trade to those parts is encumbered. Which being considered, Netherland trade. it is resolved and concluded, that the aforesaid duty shall be, as it is hereby, provisionally modified and regulated, agreeably to the aforesaid information and advice of the aforesaid Presiding Chamber of the West India Company; namely, that from all goods, wares and merchandize sent to New Netherland and Virginia, and coming thence hither, there shall be paid to the said Incorporated West India Company, two per cent ad valorem, except that from peltries alone shall be paid one per cent ad valorem; further, that from tobacco in ordinary tubs, weighing four hundred pounds gross, shall be paid thirty stivers per tub. Extract hereof shall be transmitted to the abovenamed Presiding Chamber of the Incorporated West India Company for information, and to serve furthermore as to the same may appertain. Folio 20. States-General to the Presiding Chamber of the West India Company. to New Netherland [ From the Register of Uitgegane Brieven of the States-General, in the Royal Archives at the Hague. ] THE STATES, &c. Honorable, &c. We have received your letter of the 25th instant, being an Merchants trading answer to our letter of the 14th previous, and agreeably thereto information and and the Virginias. advice on the further petition presented to us on the same day by, or on the behalf of, divers merchants trading to New Netherland and the Virginias, to obtain some modification or diminution of the duties wherewith the trade to those parts is wherewith burthened; and thereupon have adopted the accompanying resolution which we information and to serve further as to the same may Diminution of the duties the trade to those parts is burthened. transmit to you for your appertain. Wherewith, &c. The Hague, 26th January, 1678. The highly interesting Tract, a copy of which follows, has recently been printed for private distribution, by the Honorable HENRY C. MURPHY, United States Minister at The Hague.—ED. THE FIRST MINISTER OF THE DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. There has just appeared in the Kerk-historisch Archief, a work published periodically at Amsterdam, one of those interesting fragments, which the researches of the curious into the history of the settlement of the United States are constantly bringing, for the first time, to light. It is a letter of Jonas Michaëlius, who may now be called the first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in the United States, written at Manhatas in New Netherland on the 11th of August 1628, and communicated to the work above mentioned, with such notices of the life of the writer, as existing materials permit, by Mr. J. J. Bodel Nijenhuis; who deserves well of Americans, and especially of New Yorkers, for the zeal which prompted him to rescue this waif from oblivion, and for the industry which he has exhibited in collecting as far as possible the events in the life of the missionary. We are now carried back five years earlier in the history of the regular ministration of the Gospel in New-York, and are enabled to add one more to the list of clergymen of the Dutch Reformed Church in America, one who, by his attainments and his holy zeal, as well as the high respect with which he was regarded by his learned brethren in Holland, is not unworthy to take his place at the head of the roll of that learned and pious body. This letter is addressed to Dom. Adrianus Smoutius, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at Amsterdam. It was found among the papers of the late Jacobus Koning, clerk of the fourth judicial district of Amsterdam. Further than this its history is unknown; but as Mr. Bodel Nijenhuis justly observes, it is undoubtedly to the importance of its contents that we are indebted for its preservation. Of the author, however, some few incidents interesting both as connected with his life and confirmatory of the claim now established in his behalf, have been discovered. They serve to excite our wonder that no intimation of his ministry and residence at New-Amsterdam has ever before been given. From the researches of Mr. Bodel Nijenhuis we learn that Jonas Michaëlius was born in the year 1577 in North Holland and was educated contemporaneously with Jacob Cats and Ger. Joh. Vossius at the celebrated University of Leyden, in which as appears by its records, he was entered as student of Divinity on the 9th of September 1600. He was settled as minister at Nieuwbokswoude in North-Holland in 1612 and two years later at Hem, in the same neighborhood. In 1624 he was, on the conquest of St. Salvador from the Portuguese to the Dutch arms by Peter Heyn in that year, established as a minister there; but on the recovery of that place by the Portuguese in the following year, he left for Guinea and became the minister at the fort there, then recently taken from the Portuguese. He returned to Holland in 1627 and in January following, as his letter states, embarked with his wife and three children for New Netherland. He was then over fifty years of age. How long after writing his letter he remained in New Netherland is not known. He appears however in 1637 and 1638 to have been again in Amsterdam, when he was requested by the Classis of Amsterdam to return as minister to New Netherland. This he consented to do and the Classis directed an application to be made to the West India Company to send him out. This was refused after some months delay for reasons which do not appear. Whether his advanced age, or the additional expense which the Company would incur, or what other reason caused the rejection of the application, is not known; the confidence which he had of the Classis of Amsterdam shows it must have been some special reason not affecting his standing as a minister. There is what appears to us an important fact in the register of these proceedings of the Classis of Amsterdam. Michaëlius is there styled "late minister in Virginia," (gewezen predikant in Virginia), a circumstance not important, as Mr. Bodel Nijenhuis intimates, because it may thence be inferred that he emigrated from New Netherland to Virginia, for there is no possible reason why he should go there as a "minister" where neither the Dutch nor the French language was spoken; but as confirming the authenticity of the letter itself, which otherwise stands wholly unsupported by other testimony. It shows that Michaëlius had been in North-America as a minister, and the fact that he is mentioned as of Virginia, proves nothing more, taken in connection with the letter, than that the Registrar who penned the minute, had in his mind the idea, which prevailed at that time throughout Europe, and which assigned the general name of Virginia to all that portion of North-America lying between Florida on the South and New France on the North, and embracing the colonies of New-England, New-Netherland and Maryland, as well as the particular colony of Virginia. There is, however, in the letter itself abundant intrinsic evidence of its authenticity. The nationality of the first adventurers, Walloons as well as Dutch; the place of the former residence in Europe of the Governor, Minuit; the war between the Mohawks and the Mohicans, are all stated incidentally in such a manner, that, being at the same time consistent with the facts known from other sources, they leave no reasonable ground for doubt, even without the recognition of the ministry of Mr. |