Home / Shonnard, Frederic, and W.W. Spooner. History of Westchester County, New York, from its Earliest Settlement to the Year 1900. New York: The New York History Company, 1900. / Passage

History of Westchester County, New York, from its Earliest Settlement to the Year 1900

Shonnard, Frederic, and W.W. Spooner. History of Westchester County, New York, from its Earliest Settlement to the Year 1900. New York: The New York History Company, 1900. 319 words

this point the document specified simply that the company " Further may promote the of fertile and uninpopulating habited regions, and do all that the advantages of these provinces [the United Netherlands], tin- profit and increase e.*' of commerce shall requir "Brief as is this language," ian, aptly says a recent histor " there Avas enough of it to express the vicious principle underlying colonization as conducted in those days. It was the advantage of these provinces that must be held mainly in view-- t h a t is, the h o m e country must receive the main NETHERLAND. benefit from the settlements wherever made, and commerce must be made profitable. The welfare, a subsidiary present or prospective, of colonies or colonists, was quite This accounts for much of the subsequent injustice, consideration.

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oppression, and neglect which made life in New Netherland anything but agreeable, and finally made the people hail the conquest by England as a happy relief."1 Early in the month of May, 1623, the first shipload of permanent settlers from Holland came up Xew York Bay. They were Walloons -- thirty families of them, -- from the southern or Belgic provinces of the Lower Countries, which, having a strongly preponderating proCatholic element, had declined to join the northern Protestant provinces in the revolt against Spain. These Walloons, stanch Huguenots in religious profession, finding life intolerable in their native land, removed, like the sturdy English dissenters, to Holland, and there gladly embraced opportunity to obtain permanent shelter from persecution, as well as homes for themselves and their families, in the new countries of America. They were not Hollanders, and had nothing in common with the Dutch except similarity of religion; they did not even speak the Dutch language, but a French dialect. The ship which bore them, the " Xew Xetherland," was a fine vessel for those days, of 266 tons burden.