Background
Jacob was born in 1616 in the Netherlands, perhaps in Amsterdam, perhaps in Enkhuizen.
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Jacob was born in 1616 in the Netherlands, perhaps in Amsterdam, perhaps in Enkhuizen.
He signed his poems with the device Noch Vaster, meaning "still firmer" than a stone dam. According to the Formulierboek of the Amsterdam Classis, Jacob Jacobss. van Steendam was "to go to the West Indies as a comforter of the sick"; but instead, he spent eight years on the Gold Coast, returning to Holland in 1649 with a large collection of poems, which he published under the title of Den Distelvink (3 vols. , 1649 - 50).
He was an industrious rhymester with a good memory for Bible texts, but his poems contained little that was worth preserving. In 1652 he bought a farmstead at Amersfoort (Flatlands), and in the following year two houses at New Amsterdam and a farm at Mespath.
He contributed to the fund raised for the defense of New Amsterdam against the Indians in 1653 and 1655; in 1655 he was orphan master, and in 1660 he and other burghers petitioned the Governor and Council for a license to import slaves and other commodities from the Gold Coast.
As a business man Steendam was interested in the prosperity of New Amsterdam. Accordingly, seeing its welfare neglected by the West India Company and its future imperiled by the scarcity of colonists, he published in 1659 Klacht van Nieuw Amsterdam in Nieuw Nederlandt tot Haar Moeder, a poem addressed to the mother city in Holland. This poem was followed in 1661 by 'T Lof van Nuw Nederland, an extravagant eulogy of the many attractions of the colony.
The burgomasters of Amsterdam shortly afterward financed a scheme of Pieter Corneliszen Plockhoy to plant a Mennonite settlement on the South (Delaware) River. A pamphlet by Plockhoy, Kort en Klaer Ontwerp (1662), in which he set forth the conditions for participation in his enterprise, contained "Prickel-Vaerzen" ("Spurring Verses") by Steendam, descriptive of the advantages of settlement in that far country. When this pamphlet saw the light, Steendam was evidently back in Holland.
In April 1663 he petitioned for permission to fence in his land at Mespath Kil, but he never returned to New Netherland. Instead, resuming the profession of comforter of the sick, he sailed for the East Indies in 1666 in the company of his wife and children. The Consistory at Batavia sent him to Bengal, but on August 16, 1667, appointed him orphan master at Batavia. Here, in 1671, he published Zeede-Zangen voor de Batavische Jonkheyt (Moral Songs for the Batavian Youth).
He died, evidently, before September 1673.
Jacob Steendam became known as the first poet of New York (formerly New Netherland) after setting in the New World. He published his famous 3-volume poetry collection, Den Distelvink ("The Goldfinch"). Besides, he was the author of a pamphlet called 'Praise of New Netherlands'( area between the Delaware and the Connecticut River at the time).
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
He was an industrious rhymester with a good memory for Bible texts.
During a brief residence in Amsterdam he married Sara de Rosschou.
