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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 Labadists abroad exerted an appreciable influence upon the life of their times, and did much to infuse a spirit of evangelical earnestness into the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, which, at the rise of Labadism, was formal and pedantic in its modes of worship and given to theological disputation. Labadie has importance in the history of that church, and is accorded honor in its records.
There is no warrant in the journal for a presumption that this was an inducing cause for their location within the domain of Lord Baltimore. There is much, however, in their antecedent history, and the pressure of persecution to which the Labadists were subjected, to make it exceedingly probable that this policy in the government of Maryland formed a circumstance in the selection that was made.
How she was aunt of de la Grange I do not know. He was the son of Joost de la Grange and Margaret his wife, afterward the wife of Andrew Carr. His wife was Cornelia de la Fontaine. Joining the Labadists in their purchase, he was naturalized by the Maryland assembly in 1684, and in 1692 was understood to be living in their community at Bohemia Manor. 31st, Friday.
That Augustine Herrman's sentiments towards the strange visitants and settlers upon his estate became radically altered, before his death in 1686, is indicated by a codicil in his will in which he directs that certain of his neighbors administer his estate in the place of his son Ephraim, giving as his reason his son's alliance with the Labadists.
Anna Maria Schurmann heard these doctrines when prostrated by a double sorrow, the deaths of her father and brother. She put aside all other interests and devoted herself to those of the Labadists. It is said that after the death of Labadie she gathered his disciples together and conducted them to Vivert, in Friesland.
For two or three days the three men, still studying the canal suit, drove over a picturesque country, visiting the old manor of the Labadists and their Bohemian patron, Augustine Herman, the homestead of the late treaty minister, Bayard, and the ancient Welsh Baptist churches among the hills of the Elk and Christiana, where some of Cromwell's warriors lay.
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.
The journal of the Labadists, while primarily of value as elucidating an obscure episode in the religious history of the New World, has worth as a human narrative bearing upon incidents and personages and social conditions in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Boston.
In 1683 the two Labadists returned again to Maryland, bringing with them the nucleus of a colony. In the meanwhile Augustine Herrman had repented of his bargain, and it was only by recourse to law that the Labadists compelled him to live up to its terms.
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