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Updated: June 21, 2025
He was allowed to write home, which he did in Dutch, for provisions, such as smoked beef, butter, etc. * His friends procured a woman to do his washing, prepare food and bring it to him. * One day as he was walking through the rooms followed by his constant attendant, a negro with coils of rope around his neck, this man asked Onderdonk what he was imprisoned for.
I ever despised private revenge, but that of the public must be in this case, both just and necessary; it is due to the manes of our murdered countrymen, and that alone can protect the survivors in the like situation. Rather than experience again their barbarity and insults, may I fall by the sword of the Hessians." Onderdonk, who quotes this fragment, gives us no clue to the writer.
Protests and appeals, explanations and arguments, were of no avail. When the Heer Governor Stuyvesant said a thing, he meant it, and it was useless for any one to hope for a change. The unpopular Dominie Curtius must go and go he did. But, as he left, the delegation of boys, headed by young Patem Onderdonk, came into the fort and sought to interview the Heer Governor.
"Here is a fine mix-up a regular salmagundi, Patem Onderdonk, and no question. And you did say that this Thanksgiving was all our work. Out upon you, say I! Here are we to be saddled with a worse master than before. Hermanus Smeeman did tell me that Nick Stuyvesant did tell him that Dominie Luyck is a most hard and worry-ful master."
We fear this was a rose-colored view of the matter, though there is no doubt that our commissaries did what they could to alleviate the miseries of captivity. Onderdonk quotes from Gaine's Mercury an advertisement for nurses in the hospital, but it is undated. "Nurses wanted immediately to attend the prison hospitals in this city.
And when that day came the young fellows who then saw the defeat and disappointment of the Heer Governor Stuyvesant were not so certain that Patem Onderdonk was wrong when he claimed that it was all a just and righteous judgment on the Heer Governor for his refusal of the boys' request for no school, and for his treatment of them on that sad Thanksgiving Day when he so harshly rebuked their display of gratitude and lost forever his chance to partake of Patem's Salmagundi.
Next day he was taken to New York. He, with other prisoners, was paraded through the streets to the provost, with a gang of loose women marching before them, to add insult to suffering. Onderdonk says: "After awhile the rigor of the prison rules was somewhat abated."
"Why," said Grace, running up and kissing her little brother affectionately, "I wished your wish would come true, of course." New York boys, especially, will enjoy this tale of the doings of a group of Dutch schoolboys in old New Amsterdam. Little Patem Onderdonk meant mischief. There was a snap in his eyes and a look on his face that were certain proof of this.
So you see little Patem Onderdonk was generally at the bottom of whatever mischief was afoot in those last Dutch days of New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan. But this time he was conjuring a more serious bit of mischief than even he usually attempted. This was plain from the appearance of the startled but deeply interested faces of the half-dozen boys gathered around him on the bridge.
I sometimes fancy I can see that tableau: the frail black figure, nervously twitching his hat before the massive abdomen of Bishop Onderdonk; his threadbare coat thrown against the dark woodwork of the bookcases, where Fox's "Lives of the Martyrs" nestled happily beside "The Whole Duty of Man."
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