The first of these were Samuel Godyn and Samuel Blommaert, whose agents, sent out some time previously, on June 1st, 1729, a few days before the passing of the charter, bought for them of the Delaware Indians, the lands on the southwest side of Delaware Bay from Cape Henlopen thirty-two miles northwardly in length, and two miles inland in width. As these were Dutch miles, the tract was 128 English miles long and eight miles broad.

After the passage of the charter and on the 19th of June, 1729, Godyn notified the Chamber of Amsterdam that he had sent out agents to purchase lands, and declared "that he now in quality of 'Patroon' has undertaken to occupy the Bay of the South River, on the conditions (the charter) concluded in the last Assembly of the XIX., as he hath likewise advised the Director Pieter Minuit, and charged him to register the same there."'

> I. O CiUl., Appendix S, p. 479.

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

Minuit iu due time with his Council executed and passed the grant, or "transport" as the Dutch termed the instrument, and sent it to Godyn in Holland. In 1841 Mr. J. Romeyn Brodhead found the original document in the West India House at the Hague, brought it back to New York, and it is now deposited in the State Library at Albany. It bears date the 15th of July 1630, and bears the signatures of Pieter Minuit and his Council, -- the only signatures of those officials known to be iu existence, and is the first title given by civilized men to lands in the present State of Delaware, and the first in New Netherland under the charter of Freedoms and Exemptions of 1629. Its date is two years before Lord Baltimore's charter of Maryland from Charles the First, and fifty-two years prior to William Penn's charter of Pennsylvania from Charles II.