Peter Stuyvesant served as the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York.
Background
Pieter Stuyvesant was born in 1610 in Peperga, Friesland, in the Netherlands, to Balthasar Stuyvesant, a Reformed Calvinist minister, and Margaretha Hardenstein. He grew up in Peperga, Scherpenzeel, and Berlikum.
His father was before 1619 the pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church at Scherpenzeel (now in West Stellingwerf), but in 1622 removed to Berlicum, in the classis of Franeker. The mother of Petrus having died in 1625, his father remarried in 1627, and was in a third pastorate at Delfzyl in Groningen from April 1634 until his death on May 26, 1637. Petrus had a sister Anna, who was married to Samuel Bayard, and he had two half-brothers and two half-sisters.
Education
Stuyvesant, Petrus, , Netherlands 1592 1672 Male Colonial Leader director-general of New Netherland, called Peter by the English, was a grandson of Johannes of Dokkum, in West Friesland, Netherlands, and a son of the Rev. Balthazar Johannes Stuyvesant, graduate of the University of Franeker, and his wife Margaretta (Hardenstein) Stuyvesant.
Career
He early entered a military career, serving his country at home and abroad and thus supplying the desires of his adventurous spirit. He was in the service of the Dutch West India Company in 1635 as a supercargo in Brazil.
In 1643 he went to the Leeward Islands as governor of the Dutch possessions of Curacao and adjacent islands, and in 1644 led an expedition against the island of St. Martin, making an attack in March and raising the siege on April 16. It was in this affair that Stuyvesant was shot in the right leg, which was afterward amputated and buried at Curacao and not in Holland, as hitherto claimed. He returned to the Fatherland for recuperation and to have an artificial limb supplied, referred to afterwards as his "silver leg" on account of its adornments.
On October 5, 1645, Stuyvesant appeared in person before the Zealand Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, "offering his services" and requesting speedy aid in his equipment to go to New Netherland.
On July 28, 1646, he was commissioned by the States-General as director-general of "New Netherland and the places situated thereabout, as well as the aforementioned islands of Curacao, Buenaire, Aruba and the dependencies and appurtenances thereof", and on Christmas of 1646 his expedition of four vessels sailed out of the Texel to sea. Besides the soldiery, servants, traders, and adventurers there were on board a new body of officials for New Netherland, Stuyvesant's wife and his widowed sister Anna, with her three sons. Stuyvesant ordered the ships to stop first at Curacao, whence, after a few weeks, they sailed to New Amsterdam; there the fleet anchored on May 11, 1647, amid great rejoicing of the commonalty.
A few years later Stuyvesant's critics said his bearing on this occasion was "like a peacock, with great state and pomp", and as thoughtless of others as if he were the Czar of Muscovy. But such charges need to be judged in the maze of political controversy and in comparison with other events.
On May 27 he appointed a naval commander and a superintendent of naval equipments, and on June 6 provided to fit out a naval expedition against the Spaniards who were operating within the limits of the West India Company's charter. The first ordinance promulgated after his arrival at New Amsterdam for internal good order was on May 31 on the sale of intoxicants and on Sunday observance. He became a church-warden on July 22 and took up the reconstruction of the church in Fort Amsterdam.
Son of a minister and son-in-law of another, he was himself a strict adherent of the Reformed Church and not liberal to other ideas in religion. This inclination, egged on by the clergy and the provincial council, led to the enactment of an ordinance on February 1, 1656, forbidding "Conventicles and Meetings, whether in public or private" (Stokes, IV, 164) that were not according to the synod of Dort, principally directed against the Lutherans, but operative as well against Quakers and others.
In June, the secular directors of the company at Amsterdam reproved Stuyvesant and urged leniency, but the general attitude against dissent in New Netherland remained throughout the Dutch regime. In 1650 Stuyvesant's salary was 250 guilders monthly and a subsistence of 900 guilders per annum.
On March 12, 1650, the directors of the company conveyed to him their "Great Bouwery, " or Farm No. 1, for 6, 400 guilders, located at "about the present 5th to 17th Streets and from the East River to an irregular line coinciding approximately with Fourth Avenue, " New York City, known thereafter as "Stuyvesant's Bouwery". In 1658 there was conveyed to him a town site on the East River (now State Street), then at the foot of the present Whitehall Street, upon which he erected a substantial mansion with gardens, owned in 1686 by Governor Dongan and named by him "The Whitehall. " This was perhaps the finest residence in New Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant's career as director-general was marked by many progressive measures. He promoted intercolonial relations with the English, drove the Swedes from the Delaware, increased commerce, and by a variety of edicts sought to regulate internal affairs. His acts were often harsh and dictatorial. He was jealous of his official prerogatives. His idea of government was submission of the people to the official will.
On September 25, 1647, he instituted a Board of Nine Men to aid in promoting the general welfare and many good things were done for a time by this cooperation. But in 1649 the scenes were stormy. The commonalty sought and Stuyvesant opposed an independent municipal control at New Amsterdam. The people's representatives drew up a "Remonstrance" (Vertoogh) on July 28 to the States-General for redress of their grievances of many years.
The people won their municipal government by proclamation of February 3, 1653. But the inhabitants were as lax in public obligations to their city officials as they had been and continued to be toward the provincial authority.
After Stuyvesant's surrender of New Netherland to the English at his farm house on August 27/ September 6, 1664, he withdrew from all public affairs. In 1665 he went to the Netherlands to defend his official conduct and upon his return to New York lived on his farm until his death at the age of eighty years.
Achievements
Petrus Stuyvesant was a major figure in the early history of New York City and his name has been given to various landmarks and points of interest throughout the city (e. g. Stuyvesant High School, Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village, Stuyvesant Plaza, Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood, etc. ).
Stuyvesant's accomplishments as director-general included a great expansion for the settlement of New Amsterdam beyond the southern tip of Manhattan. Among the projects built by Stuyvesant's administration were the protective wall on Wall Street, the canal that became Broad Street, and Broadway. Stuyvesant, himself a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, opposed religious pluralism and came into conflict with Lutherans, Jews, Roman Catholics and Quakers as they attempted to build places of worship in the city and practice their faiths.
Views
Quotations:
He promised "life, estate, and liberty to all who would submit to the king's authority. "
Personality
He was jealous of his official prerogatives.
Connections
He married on August 13, 1645, Judith Bayard (1608 - 1687), in the Walloon Church of Breda, where her father, the Rev. Lazare Bayard, deceased, had been for years minister of that French Protestant congregation. She was a sister of Samuel Bayard of Amsterdam who had married Stuyvesant's sister Anna. Two sons were born in New Netherland of his marriage, Balthazar Lazarus (baptized May 27, 1647) and Nicholas William (1648 - 1698).
