United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This monograph was largely based upon fresh sources obtained from Europe, including contemporary works by Labadie, his associates and his antagonists, as well as studies of the subject by Dutch and German scholars. The literature of Labadism in the New World, which, in a manner, has been an outgrowth from the journal of the Labadist envoys, is now ample for all serviceable purposes.
Thus there was built up a body of substantial information with regard to the environment and the relations of the Labadist colony in the New World. In 1899 was published, in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, The Labadist Colony in Maryland, by the writer of the present introduction.
Yet this information would of itself have been too meagre for a critical valuation of the Labadists in the early history of Maryland. The publication of the manuscript secured by Mr. Murphy stimulated interest in the subject, and at various times monographic contributions appeared upon one or another phase of the Labadist settlement.
Notable were those of General James Grant Wilson, whose paper on "An Old Maryland Manor" was published by the Maryland Historical Society in 1890, and his paper on "Augustine Herrman, Bohemian," by the New Jersey Historical Society in the same year, and of Reverend Charles Payson Mallary, whose monograph on the Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor, a publication of the Delaware Historical Society in 1888, disclosed the wide genealogical interest pertaining to the Labadist settlement.
A curious book in which Pierre Yvon, pastor 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. 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.
It is much to be regretted that the continuation was never written, or has not been preserved, since it would record the actual settlement of the Labadist community in northeastern Maryland. With the fragment was found an interesting manuscript map of the Delaware River, which gives Philadelphia as in existence, and therefore belongs to the period of the second voyage.
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.
James's introduction was written, I have come upon some facts of interest respecting the two Labadist travellers which were not known to Mr. Murphy, who indeed had practically nothing to say regarding their previous life.
This extended narrative, often discursive and circumstantial, contains much that is suggestive upon the beginnings of the middle group of states, and, indeed, the narrative bears upon facts of importance in connection with Massachusetts as well. The original manuscript of the Labadist narrators is now in the possession of the Long Island Historical Society.
It may be noted in passing that the Petrus Bayard named in the conveyance, and who for some time was an active member of the Labadist community, was an ancestor of the late Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James.
Word Of The Day