Document: Ordinance for the payment of tenths

At the session in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland. Present: the honorable lords director general Petrus Stuyvesant and honorable lords councilors Nicasius de Sille and La Montagne. [ The director general ] and councilors of New Netherland hereby make known that at various times they have been ordered and instructed by the lords patroons to collect the tenths that both the colonies and private plantations owe, according to their obtained patents and ground briefs, and some have owed for many years already.

Therefore, the director general and councilors hereby warn everyone, namely, those who are subject to tenths according to patent and deed, that no one undertake to remove cultivated produce, whether it be grain, corn or tobacco, before he has amicably come to an agreement with the director general and councilors about it for the first and coming year, or has shown his produce to the director general and councilors or their representatives, in order to select the tenths in conformity to the orders and customs of our fatherland, under penalty of fifty guilders above the just value of the tenths, according to the valuation by impartial persons, to be paid by those who shall be found to have acted contrary thereto. Thus done at Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, the 27th of June 1656.[i]