Document: Complaint of Pieter van der Linde and others about the dog of Nicolaes Sloper which roams the woods and kills their goats

[ Pi ]eter van [ der ] Linden, aged 48 years, Barent Dircksen, baker, aged sbout 43 years, and Tonis Cray, aged 42 years, jointly complain to the honorable fiscal as follows:

That Nicolaes Sloper has long since been ordered by the honorable director and council of New Netherland to kill or do away with his dog, because the dog was in the habit of killing goats and bucks, which order the above named Sloper has not obeyed, so that said Sloper’s dog and the miller’s dogs[1] have bitten and devoured many goats and bucks, said dogs going daily hunting in the woods. The persons aforesaid offer to confirm this by oath and request that provisionally the aforesaid dogs may be done away with. Done the 9th of April 1643.

Pieter Linde
Barent Dircksen
Tonis Cray
Cornelis van Tienh.