"Mr. Martin seems to make much of the fact that the petition for the sending over of a Latin master stated that there was no Latin school nearer than Boston, but overlooks the fact that there had previously been a Latin school at New Amsterdam, and also the other fact that there was no school at Plymouth, and none but a Latin school at Boston, and that it received only a few of the brighter boys of the wealthier families, to prepare them for college and the ministry."
The earliest laws of the colony show that for the support of schools "each householder and inhabitant should bear such tax and public charge as should be considered proper for their maintenance."27
The first schoolmaster in Breuckelen made his appearance in 1661, on the 4th day of July, in which year the following petition was presented:—
To the Right Hon. Director-General and Council of New Netherland:—
The Schout and Schepens of the Court of Breuckelin respectfully represent: That they found it necessary, that a court messenger was required for the Schepens Chamber, to be occasionally employed in the Village of Breuckelin, and all around, where he may be needed, as well to serve summons, as also to conduct the service of the church, and to sing on Sunday; to take charge of the school, dig graves, etc.; ring the bell and perform what ever else may be required. Therefore, the petitioners, with your Honours' approbation, have thought proper to accept for so highly necessary office a suitable person who is now come before them, one Carel Van Beauvois, to whom they have appropriated the sum of fl. 150, beside a fine dwelling; and whereas the petitioners are apprehensive that the aforesaid C. V. Beauvois would not and cannot do the work for the sum aforesaid, and the petitioners are not able to promise him any more; therefore the petitioners, with all humble and proper reverence, request your Honours to be pleased to lend them a helping hand, in order thus to receive the needful assistance. Herewith awaiting your Honours' kind and favorable answer, and commending ourselves, Honorable, wise, prudent and most discreet gentlemen, to your favor, we pray for your Honours God's protection, together with a happy and prosperous administration, unto salvation. Your Honors' servants and subjects, the Schout and Schepens of the village aforesaid. By order of the same,
[Signed] Adriaen Hegeman, Secretary.
The Directors granted the petition and agreed to pay fifty guilders annually in wampum for the support of the precentor and schoolmaster.
The first school was set up in the little church, which stood near the present junction of Fulton and Bridge Streets. The second public school within the county was opened in the new village of Bushwick.
The area of the county represented by the town of Bushwick had, as we have seen, been purchased by the West India Company in 1638. In 1660 the Wallabout residents had built a block-house on the high point of land overlooking the East River, known as the "Kiekout,"28 or "Lookout." At about the same time (in the month of February), "fourteen Frenchmen, with a Dutchman named Peter Janse Wit" and an interpreter, called upon the Director to lay out a town plot east of the Wallabout settlement. On February 19 the Director, with the Fiscal, Nicasius de Sille, Secretary Van Ruyven, and the sworn surveyor, Jaques Corteleau, came to a spot between "Mispat (Maspeth) Kill," Newtown Creek, and "Norman's Kill,"29 Bushwick Creek, to "establish a village." Here a survey was made, and twenty house lots laid out. The first house was at once erected by Evert Hedeman, and others soon appeared.
In March of the following year "the Director-General visited the new village, when the inhabitants requested His Honour to give the place a name; whereupon he named the town Boswijck," the Town of the Woods. The people of the new village then selected six of their men, from which the governor chose three, to be magistrates, the town remaining subject to the schout of Breuckelen, Amersfoort, and Midwout.
Thus when the first public school was opened in Bushwick, the hamlet scarcely contained twenty houses, a fact which may illustrate the attitude of the Dutch and French in this part of the country toward the question of popular education. The first schoolmaster in Bushwick was Boudwyn Manout, who took charge on December 28, 1662.
The setting up of the third school within the county was effected in a new village called Bedford, lying southeast of the Wallabout and east of Breuckelen. The settlement of this village dates from 1662, in which year, in the month of March, Joris Jan. Rapalje, Teunis Gysbert (Bogaert), Cornelis Jacobsen, Hendrick Sweers, Michael Hans (Bergen), and Jan Hans (Bergen) asked the Director for a grant of unoccupied woodland "situated in the rear of Joris Rapalje, next to the old Bay Road." The Director made the grant, with the stipulation that the petitioners should not make "a new hamlet."
The little settlement thus formed was adjacent on the south to another known as Cripplebush30 (variously spelt in the Dutch orthography of the early days), and lay at the intersection of the Jamaica highway, the Clove Road running to Flatbush, and the Cripplebush Road running to Newtown.
The Bedford school-house was placed in the heart of the village, at the cross-roads. This school, beginning in the year 1663, afterward, according to the records of Teunis G. Bergen, became the present Public School No. 3, and had an interesting history.
THE FERRY IN 1746
Throughout the whole of Stuyvesant's directorship, the quarrels between him and the people were of frequent occurrence, and gained rather than diminished in violence. As we have seen, the tendency observable in the colony was aristocratic, and Stuyvesant fostered such a tendency to the utmost. At one time he sought to institute a division of the burghers into two classes, major and minor, the rights of the major burghers to be hereditary, and to include the sole right to hold office. He had an honorable sense of justice; but his method of exercising justice was eminently paternal. He regarded complaint against a magistrate as nothing less than treason. With his Council, the "Nine Men," he had one wrangle after another. Both the Nine Men and himself repeatedly sent protests to Holland, and the West India Company chose to let the pugnacious Director and his people fight the thing out among themselves.
This indifference on the part of Holland, which plainly took nothing more than a commercial interest in the colony, naturally inspired little loyalty toward the home government. The nation that ignored their protests, let their fortifications crumble from lack of repair, and refused to guard them by proper numbers of soldiery, could expect no ardor of patriotism from those who were so treated.
Meanwhile trouble began to show itself between the Dutch and the Connecticut colony. The latter claimed authority over the English towns on Long Island, and threatened also to take possession of the Dutch settlements. The English were jealous of the rich territory of the Dutch. They beheld the valuable trade which had sprung up through the instrumentality of the Dutch West India Company. They were inclined to consider the Hollanders intruders. The English claimed the entire continent as their domain by virtue of the discovery made by their navigator, Cabot. Efforts were made to settle the disputes and differences, without success. All negotiations proved futile. With the Indians on one side and the English on the other the situation for the New Netherlands was perilous indeed. At last the Long Island towns, with Haarlem, New Amsterdam, and Bergen, assembled in convention and prepared a remonstrance to the home government, charging all their disasters to the lack of interest manifested by the mother country in their welfare. The colonists divided into two parties, one favoring adherence to Holland, the other favoring the acceptance of English rule.
In 1664 Charles II. granted to his brother James, the Duke of York and Albany, a patent of all the territory lying between the Connecticut River and Delaware Bay, in which was included the whole of the Dutch possessions. The Duke immediately dispatched four ships, with 450 soldiers, under command of his Deputy Governor, Colonel Richard Nicolls, to take possession of the territory. The squadron anchored at Nyack Bay, between New Utrecht and Coney Island, in August, 1664. The block house on Staten Island was captured, and all communication between Manhattan and the neighboring colonies was effectually intercepted.
The people were not prepared for this invasion. The very liberality the Dutch loyalists had exercised toward other nations was to seal their doom. The English settlers whom they had welcomed with open arms were anxious for a change of government, and the arbitrary conduct