American Minute for June 3rd:
The Dutch sent Henry Hudson to find a water route across America to the Pacific. Though unsuccessful, Hudson claimed the land along the "Hudson" River, and there the Dutch West India Company founded New Netherlands, receiving its charter JUNE 3, 1621. Franklin Roosevelt told the Detroit Jewish Chronicle, March 7, 1935: "All I know about the origin of the Roosevelt family in this country is that all branches bearing the name are apparently descended from Claes Martenssen Van Roosevelt, who came from Holland sometime before 1648." The Chamber of Amsterdam wrote in articles for the Dutch Colony, 1624: "They shall within their territory practice no other form of divine worship than that of the Reformed religion...and thus by their Christian life and conduct seek to draw the Indians and other blind people to the knowledge of God and His word, without, however, persecuting any on account of his faith, but leaving each one the use of his conscience." The Charter of Freedoms, June 7, 1629, gave land to wealthy "Patroons" who helped 50 families emigrate, stating: "Colonists shall...in the speediest manner...find out ways and means whereby they may support a Minister and Schoolmaster, that thus the service of God and zeal for religion may not grow cool." In 1664, the Dutch Colony of New Netherlands was taken over by the English and renamed New York.
Endnotes
Staten Island, Microsoft7 Encarta7 Online Encyclopedia 2000, http://encarta.msn.com 8 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. http://odur.let.rug.nl/usanew/E/newnetherlands/nl5.htm, The United States of America & the Netherlands, 6/14 The towns of New Netherland, By George M. Welling: In the early sixties of the seventeenth century, Pieter Plockhoy of Zeeland province, The Netherlands, started the first of the many Utopias which shine in the pages of American history. In 1662 he sailed from Holland with twenty-four families, to establish his colony of 'universal Christian brotherhood,' ... to raise up an universal magistrate in Christendom, that can suffer all sorts of people (of what religion soever they are) in any one country, as God suffers the same in all the countries of the world.' The city of Amsterdam met the expenses of the expedition. The place chosen was on the Delaware River, & the following year forty more immigrants joined those already there. Plockhoy's Utopia was soon to come to a terrible end. It resisted the British troops of Sir Robert Carr which landed in New Netherland in 1664, & was destroyed 'to a very naile.'
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