olumes, Albany,
1901-1905). From 1639, if not earlier, a committee of the classis,
called "Deputati ad Res Exteras," was given charge of most of the
details of correspondence with the Dutch Reformed churches in America,
Africa, the East and foreign European countries.

As mentioned by Wassenaer, "comforters of the sick," who were
Ecclesiastical officers but not ministers, were first sent Out to New
Netherland. The first minister was Reverence Jonas Jansen Michielse, or,
to employ the Latinized form of his name which he, according to clerical
habit, was accustomed to use, Jonas Johannis Michaelius. Michaelius was
born in North Holland in 1577, entered the University of Leyden as a
student of divinity in 1600, became minister at Nieuwbokswoude in 1612
and at Hem, near Enkhuizen, in 1614. At some time between April, 1624,
and August, 1625, he went out to San Salvador (Bahia, Brazil), recently
conquered by the West India Company's fleet, and after brief service
there to one Of their posts on the West African coast. Returning thence,
He was, early in 1628, sent out to Manhattan, where he arrived April 7.
It is not known just when he returned to Holland, but he appears to have
been under engagement for three years. In 1637-1638 we find the classis
vainly endeavoring to send him again to New Netherland, but prevented
by the Company, which had a veto upon all such appointments in its
dominions.

About half a century ago the following precious letter of Michaelius,
describing New Netherland as it appeared in its earliest days to the
eyes of an educated clergyman of the Dutch Church, was discovered
in Amsterdam, and printed by Mr. J.J.Bodel Nijenhuis in the
_Kerk-historisch Archief_, part I. An English translation of it, with an
introduction, was then privately printed in a pamphlet by Mr. Henry C.
Murphy, an excellent scholar in New Netherland history, who was at that
time minister of the United States to the Netherlands. This pamphlet,
entitled _The First Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in the United
States_ (The Hague, 1858), was reprinted in 1858 in _Documents relative
to the Colonial History of the State of New York_, II. 757-770, in 1881
in the _Collections of the New York Historical Society_, XIII, and in
1883, at Amsterdam, by Frederik Muller and Co., who added a photographic
fac-simile of full size and a transcript of the Dutch text. In 1896 a
reduced fac-simile of the original letter, with an amended translation