ST.CHARLES and PEARTREE with first Jewish immigrants to New Amsterdam.
1654

Watercolor 14" x 21"


Nieuw Amsterdam

Early in the seventeenth century, the Dutch turned their attention to North America and the Hudson River. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was granted a charter to land that covered the American coast from Chesapeake Bay to Newfoundland, between the territories claimed by France to the north and England to the south. and forts and trading posts were built up and down the Hudson River. This land was formally proclaimed New Netherlands in 1623.

The Company was interested in colonization only as far as it supported trade, but to support the garrisons at the forts, farming settlements were encouraged. In 1624 thirty families left Holland to plant colonies in the Hudson River Valley, and they settled around the fort being constructed at the southern end of Manhattan Island. The island was purchased from the Indians for the price of sixty guilders, and the town that was to become New York City was incorporated in 1626 as Nieuw Amsterdam.

The United Provinces of the Netherlands was remarkable for it’s spirit of religious and ethnic tolerance. These ideals extended to their colonies in America, and anyone was welcome who was willing to work and observe the laws of the growing colony. In 1639 a Muslim owned a farm on Manhattan, and 1654 saw the arrival of the first Jews in Nieuw Amsterdam. On or about August 22, the fluyt PEEREBOOM arrived from Amsterdam. Among the passengers were Jacob Barsimon, and probably Asser Levy and Solomon Pieterson. A couple of weeks later the SINT CATRINA anchored off the beach, and on board were twenty-three Jews, “big as well as little”. With no docks to land on, they all had to be ferried ashore to begin their new life in the New World.