FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71  
72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   >>   >|  
rman explorers came to Venezuela also with a printing-press and with fifty miners to explore the mountains. A number of German craftsmen accompanied the first English settlers who came with Captain John Smith to Virginia. Soon after Henry Hudson had discovered the river which bears his name, Christiansen, a German, became the explorer of that stream. He also built the first homes on Manhattan Island, 1613, and laid the foundations of New Amsterdam and Fort Nassau, the present cities of New York and Albany. Peter Minuit (Minnewit), the first Director-General of New Netherland, was also a German, born in Wesel, on the lower Rhine. He arrived in New Amsterdam on May 4, 1626, and one of his first acts was the purchase of Manhattan Island, 22,000 acres, from the Indians for trinkets valued at $24. He remained at his post till 1631, when he, soon after, became the founder and first director of New Sweden, at the mouth of the Delaware River. He lost his life in the West Indies during a hurricane. His successor in New Sweden was another German, Printz von Buchau, during whose regime, from 1643 to 1654, the colony became very successful and thereby aroused the jealousy of the Dutch, who, while Buchau was on a trip to Europe, attacked the colony and annexed it to New Netherland. When New Netherland, in 1664, fell a prey to the English, the colony had among its citizens numerous Germans, most of them Lutherans. A native of Hamburg, Nicholaus de Meyer, became burgomaster of New York in 1676. Another German, Augustin Herrman, made the first reliable maps of Maryland and Virginia. J. Lederer, a young German scholar, who came to Jamestown in 1668, was the first to explore Virginia and part of South Carolina. Lederer's itinerary, written in Latin, was translated by Governor Talbot of Maryland into English and published 1672 in London; etc. However, it was at Germantown, at present a suburb of Philadelphia, that Germans broke ground for the first permanent German settlement in North America. A group of Mennonites, 33 persons, landed October 6, 1683. They were received by William Penn and Franz Daniel Pastorius, a young lawyer from Frankfort on the Main. In Germantown Gerhard Henkel preached before 1726, and St. Michael's Church was begun 1730 and dedicated by the Swede J. Dylander in 1737. Pastorius had landed in America with several families on August 20 of the same year in advance of the Mennonite emigrants, in order to prepare for the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71  
72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

German

 

Virginia

 

colony

 

English

 

Netherland

 
Manhattan
 

Lederer

 

Sweden

 

landed

 

America


Germantown
 

Pastorius

 

Amsterdam

 

present

 

Island

 

Maryland

 

explore

 
Buchau
 

Germans

 

Governor


translated

 

native

 

Lutherans

 

Talbot

 

published

 

numerous

 
citizens
 
London
 

written

 
Hamburg

Another

 

scholar

 

Jamestown

 
Augustin
 

Herrman

 

reliable

 

burgomaster

 

Carolina

 
Nicholaus
 

However


itinerary

 

October

 

Church

 

dedicated

 

Michael

 

Henkel

 
preached
 
Dylander
 

Mennonite

 

advance