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Here the communal sect attained its full measure of strength, declined, and died. For more than half a century Wieuwerd was the seat of the new church and from it feeble colonies were established at various centres. From Wieuwerd proceeded the colonists who settled in Maryland, and from Wieuwerd proceeded the voice of authority that controlled these colonists.
The final disruption of the Labadists at Wieuwerd was due largely to the inevitable difficulties that have beset and destroyed almost every experiment in the establishment of an industrial community upon a footing of religion.
Some form of organization had been maintained among the Labadists even after the division of the land, but five years after the death of Sluyter the Labadists had ceased to exist as a community. The division in 1698 which marked the disintegration of the community occurred at about the same time as a similar division of the estates of the mother church at Wieuwerd.
It seems almost certain that it was Sluyter of whom William Penn speaks, in his account of his visit to Wieuwerd in 1677, when he had conferences with the Labadists marked on his part by appreciation of the affinity between them and the Friends. This corresponds with what we know of "Dr. Vorstman."
The next removal of the Labadists was to Wieuwerd in Friesland, the northernmost of the Dutch provinces, where they were established under the lead of Pierre Yvon on an estate called Thetinga or Waltha House, which was tendered to them by three ladies devotedly attached to their teachings, the three youngest daughters of the great diplomatist Francis Aarsen, Lord of Sommelsdyk.
The antiquary from whose book this fact is derived says also, "In 1874 I bought at a book-stall in Middelburg a very neatly written translation of the Psalms, with musical notes, prepared by Danckaerts mostly during his American journey, dated at Wieuwerd, and perhaps revised by Anna Maria van Schurman." This manuscript is now in the library of the Zeeland Academy of Sciences at Middelburg.
Thereafter he seems to have lived mostly at Wieuwerd, but he died at Middelburg between 1702 and 1704.
The manuscript is entitled "De CL Psalmen Davids op Nieus volgens de Nederduitschen Text in Nederduits Sangh-Rym gebracht door J.D., Liefhebber der Poësie tot Wiwert in Vrieslant," i.e., "The 150 Psalms of David, translated afresh into Dutch verse in accordance with the Dutch text, by J.D., lover of poetry, at Wieuwerd in Friesland."
When fairly settled upon Bohemia Manor, the Labadists undertook communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland. They cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn, flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form.
In the next winter, however, he put it into its present form, for his own use and that of any who might be edified by it. The preface is dated at Wieuwerd, January 8, 1691, and signed Jasper Danckaerts. With Sluiter we are perhaps somewhat less concerned, but he was a more important figure in the Labadist church.
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