Lot
A15
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Description
House, garden, and orchard. Stokes.
Please read the Stokes page for a description of the Company's Garden on Heere Street.
Full Stokes Entry (See images below)
The house, garden and orchard of Hendrick van Dyck. Van Dyck sailed from Holland in "den Waterhondt" early in June, 1640, bearing a commission as military commander for the West India Company, and bringing a company of soldiers with him. He had formerly held the office of fiscal of the military court of the province of Utrecht, which he only resigned on his departure for New Netherland. Kiliaen van Rensselaer, in a letter of introduction to Director Kieft, speaks of him as a man of rank, courageous, intelligent, and able. — Van Rensselaer Bowier MSS., 472, 473, 487.[']
Van Dyck's activities in the early Indian wars, 1642-44, are recited at length in the Journal of New Netherland 1647. — Jameson's Nar. N. Neth., 275, 283. On June 28, 1645, he received his commission as fiscal {N. Y. Col. Docs., I: 494), returning to New Netherland with Stuyvesant in May, 1647, to take up his new duties. In March, 1652, he was removed from office by the director and council. — Cal. Hist. MSS., Dutch, 126.
During these five years, Stuyvesant had excluded him from the council chamber twentynine months, according to the Remonstrance {N. Y. Col. Docs., I: 308), "for the reason, among others . . . that he cannot keep a secret." Jacob van Couwenhoven and Jan Evertsen Bout said of him that he was "utterly intolerable in words and deeds; an addle pate." — Ibid., I: 23S-
There is no doubt that most of Van Dyck's shortcomings were caused by his intemperance. He acknowledges this fault in his defense to the States General protesting against his removal from office. — Ibid., I: 491-513. After his retirement as fiscal, Van Dyck continued to reside on his property on Broadway. He was still taxed here in 1677 {M. C. C, I: 54, 55), in which year also a well was ordered to be made "in the broad way against M"' Vandickes." — Ibid., I: 47. The small fruit orchard shown on the Castello Plan, at the river end of Van Dyck's land, is famous in the history of the city as the place where the Indian massacre of September, 1655, had its origin. The incident is thus tersely related in a letter from the directors to Stuyvesant, in response to his letter of October 31, 1655, asking for assistance against the savages:
As far as we can learn from the transmitted papers and verbal reports of other private parties, the former Fiscal Van Dyk has laid the first foundation for this dreadful massacre and given the most offence, by killing one of the squaws for taking some peaches or other fruits from his garden. If this is true, then we wonder . . . that he has not been brought to justice as a murderer. — A^. Y. Col. Docs., XIII: 49, 70.
Van Dyck says, in 1652, that he is "burdened with a wife and four children." — Ibid., I: 491. In 1655, Nicolaes de Meyer, afterwards mayor of New York, married Lydia van Dyck, of Utrecht. Ten years later, Jannetje van Dyck, of North Holland, married Johannes Coly (John Cooley), of London. — Marriages in Ref. Dutch Ch., 19, 31. These were Hendrick van Dyck's daughters. — Rec. N. Am., I: 389; IV: 174; VI: 302.
THE company's GARDEN ON THE HEERE STRAET
All the land between Hendrick van Dyck's and Cornelis Groesens's formed, as early as 1638, the garden and orchard of the West India Company. Director-General Stuyvesant, in 1649, carved out two grants from the south end, for his infant sons, Balthazar and Nicholas William. — See Map and Key of Dutch Grants. This act of nepotism was not well received, and seven years later the governor conveyed the land back to the burgomasters, who divided it up into five grants, which they partitioned among themselves and their favoured friend. Captain Fredrick de Koningh, of the man-of-war "De Waagh." At the time that the Castello Plan was drawn, none of the grants in the orchard had been built upon, or even surveyed off. The formal Dutch flower-beds had not been disturbed, and the fruit trees still stood like lines of soldiers drawn up in regular formation. An ornamental gateway opened onto a broad path [•] leading down to a summer-house near the river; at the extreme north-western point of the enclosure was a quaint little pagoda.
Some years later, a narrow street was cut through from Broadway to the fortification called the Oyster Pasty Mount. Naturally, it was known as Oyster Pasty Lane; modern New York calls it Exchange Alley. This narrow passage was dedicated to public use, April 8, 1697, by an instrument recorded in Liber Deeds, XXI, page 212:
All that Certaine Piece or Parcell of Ground Scituate lying and being in the West Ward of y^ Citty in the Street Commonly Called the broad-way leading to a Certaine Old Fortification Called Oyster Pasty Containing in breadth in Front and in the Rear twelve foot, and in Length two hundred and fourty foot, more or less, etc.
It was, however, "open on the ground" as early as 1683. — Ihid., XIII: 10.
['] In the Breeden Raedt, it is stated that the fiscal, Hendrick van Dyck, "had committed a well-known murder at Utrecht, and had been compelled to go from thence on account of it." — Vertoogh van Niru Nederland, and Breidtn Raedt, trans, by H. C. Murphy, 173.
Van Dyck's activities in the early Indian wars, 1642-44, are recited at length in the Journal of New Netherland 1647. — Jameson's Nar. N. Neth., 275, 283. On June 28, 1645, he received his commission as fiscal {N. Y. Col. Docs., I: 494), returning to New Netherland with Stuyvesant in May, 1647, to take up his new duties. In March, 1652, he was removed from office by the director and council. — Cal. Hist. MSS., Dutch, 126.
During these five years, Stuyvesant had excluded him from the council chamber twentynine months, according to the Remonstrance {N. Y. Col. Docs., I: 308), "for the reason, among others . . . that he cannot keep a secret." Jacob van Couwenhoven and Jan Evertsen Bout said of him that he was "utterly intolerable in words and deeds; an addle pate." — Ibid., I: 23S-
There is no doubt that most of Van Dyck's shortcomings were caused by his intemperance. He acknowledges this fault in his defense to the States General protesting against his removal from office. — Ibid., I: 491-513. After his retirement as fiscal, Van Dyck continued to reside on his property on Broadway. He was still taxed here in 1677 {M. C. C, I: 54, 55), in which year also a well was ordered to be made "in the broad way against M"' Vandickes." — Ibid., I: 47. The small fruit orchard shown on the Castello Plan, at the river end of Van Dyck's land, is famous in the history of the city as the place where the Indian massacre of September, 1655, had its origin. The incident is thus tersely related in a letter from the directors to Stuyvesant, in response to his letter of October 31, 1655, asking for assistance against the savages:
As far as we can learn from the transmitted papers and verbal reports of other private parties, the former Fiscal Van Dyk has laid the first foundation for this dreadful massacre and given the most offence, by killing one of the squaws for taking some peaches or other fruits from his garden. If this is true, then we wonder . . . that he has not been brought to justice as a murderer. — A^. Y. Col. Docs., XIII: 49, 70.
Van Dyck says, in 1652, that he is "burdened with a wife and four children." — Ibid., I: 491. In 1655, Nicolaes de Meyer, afterwards mayor of New York, married Lydia van Dyck, of Utrecht. Ten years later, Jannetje van Dyck, of North Holland, married Johannes Coly (John Cooley), of London. — Marriages in Ref. Dutch Ch., 19, 31. These were Hendrick van Dyck's daughters. — Rec. N. Am., I: 389; IV: 174; VI: 302.
THE company's GARDEN ON THE HEERE STRAET
All the land between Hendrick van Dyck's and Cornelis Groesens's formed, as early as 1638, the garden and orchard of the West India Company. Director-General Stuyvesant, in 1649, carved out two grants from the south end, for his infant sons, Balthazar and Nicholas William. — See Map and Key of Dutch Grants. This act of nepotism was not well received, and seven years later the governor conveyed the land back to the burgomasters, who divided it up into five grants, which they partitioned among themselves and their favoured friend. Captain Fredrick de Koningh, of the man-of-war "De Waagh." At the time that the Castello Plan was drawn, none of the grants in the orchard had been built upon, or even surveyed off. The formal Dutch flower-beds had not been disturbed, and the fruit trees still stood like lines of soldiers drawn up in regular formation. An ornamental gateway opened onto a broad path [•] leading down to a summer-house near the river; at the extreme north-western point of the enclosure was a quaint little pagoda.
Some years later, a narrow street was cut through from Broadway to the fortification called the Oyster Pasty Mount. Naturally, it was known as Oyster Pasty Lane; modern New York calls it Exchange Alley. This narrow passage was dedicated to public use, April 8, 1697, by an instrument recorded in Liber Deeds, XXI, page 212:
All that Certaine Piece or Parcell of Ground Scituate lying and being in the West Ward of y^ Citty in the Street Commonly Called the broad-way leading to a Certaine Old Fortification Called Oyster Pasty Containing in breadth in Front and in the Rear twelve foot, and in Length two hundred and fourty foot, more or less, etc.
It was, however, "open on the ground" as early as 1683. — Ihid., XIII: 10.
['] In the Breeden Raedt, it is stated that the fiscal, Hendrick van Dyck, "had committed a well-known murder at Utrecht, and had been compelled to go from thence on account of it." — Vertoogh van Niru Nederland, and Breidtn Raedt, trans, by H. C. Murphy, 173.