r of the Labadist church after
Labadie's death, describes the death-bed conduct and speeches of
members of the sect, gives us glimpses of the diarist's family
life.[18] They may enable us to look more kindly upon that censorious
writer. Under date of May, 1676, the pastor commemorates the death of
"our sister Susanna Spykershof, wife of our brother Dankers. She came
to us at Zonderen" (Sonderen, a temporary stopping-place near Herford)
"with her husband, leaving without difficulty her birth-place and
dwelling-place Middelburg and all her acquaintances.... The trials and
dangers they underwent were common to the two.... Both were at the
same time, at Altona, accepted as members of the body of Christ [the
Labadist church].... She loved her husband tenderly, but when God
called him elsewhere, to the service of His work and children, she
embraced His will therein with much love; which was especially
edifying in her, since before this, when she was living in the world,
she was wont to be in great anxiety whenever he was away from home on
their own concerns. At Bremen, when a portion of our community was
there, then at Altona, and here in Friesland, God visited her with
great sufferings," and she died at the age of thirty-three, soon after
the death of their youngest child.[19]

[Footnote 17: F. Nagtglas, _Levensberichten van Zeeuwen_ (Middelburg,
1890), I. 146.]

[Footnote 18: _Getrouw Verhael van den Staet en de laetste Woorden en
Dispositien sommiger Personen die God tot sich genomen heeft, uyt de
Gereformeerde en van de Werelt afgesonderde Gemeynte, voor desen
gegadert tot Herfort en Altena, en tegenwoordig tot Wiewert Vrieslant_
(second ed., in New York Public Library, Amsterdam, 1683), pp. 30-32.
The original French, _Fidelle Narre des Etats et des Dernieres
Paroles_ (Amsterdam, 1681), and an English version (_ibid._, 1685),
are in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 19: See p. 130, note 1, _infra_.]

When Cornelis van Sommelsdyk went out to Surinam as governor in 1683,
a body of Labadists sought an asylum there. A little later Danckaerts,
after his second voyage to New York, went out with reinforcements to
their settlement of La Providence in Dutch Guiana, which soon proved a
failure.[20] In 1684 he was naturalized by a Maryland act,[21] but
this does not prove that he was then in the province or long remained
there. Thereafter he seems to have lived mostly at Wieuwerd, but he
died at Middelburg between 1702 and 1704.