This week, For the Record recognizes a little-known, but significant anniversary in the history of the City of New York: February 2, 1653.

In 1977, City Council President Paul O’Dwyer successfully campaigned to have the date on the flag of New York City changed from 1664 (the year of the English takeover) to 1625, the year that the Dutch West India Company (the Company) directed a fort and settlement to be built in lower Manhattan. However, although the settlement in lower Manhattan was called New Amsterdam, it would be many years before it became a place that the Dutch would recognize with a separate municipal government.

When General Petrus Stuyvesant arrived on the shores of Manhattan in 1647, the Dutch colony of New Netherland was in crisis. The prior Governor, Willem Kieft, was reviled and had been recalled to Holland after starting a brutal and disastrous war with the native peoples. Stuyvesant had been sent to restore order to the colony and reassure the colonists.

Stuyvesant asked the people of New Netherland to select eighteen representatives from whom he created an assembly of Nine Men.[1] The lawyer Adriaen van der Donck would later join the assembly and take a presiding role. Van der Donck soon set about gathering complaints from colonists to send to Holland. Stuyvesant forbade this and when the members continued to meet in secret, he had van der Donck arrested. Eventually van der Donck was released and he drafted a remonstrance, which he and two other members took to Amsterdam to present to the Dutch legislative body the States General. Amongst their demands was a call for a municipal government for New Amsterdam. They had little success at first but van der Donck’s 1650 publication, Vertoogh Van Nicuw Nederlandt, attracted public interest in the colony and raised concern that it was being mismanaged. Fearful that they might lose control over the colony, the Company eventually relented. On April 4, 1652, the Directors informed Stuyvesant via letter that he could form a municipal government with a schout, two burgomasters, and five schepens. Roughly analogous to a sheriff, two mayors and five city councilmen, but the burgomasters and schepens served as the lower court of justice as well as city administrators.[2]

Stuyvesant had received word by June 1652 that he could establish a city government, but waited until February 2nd, 1653, Candlemas Day. In Amsterdam, this was the day the Burgomasters and Schepens traditionally took their oaths of office. On this day he issued a lengthy document (a copy of this document is in the New York Public Library) that related how the Directors in Holland would “favor this new and growing city of New Amsterdam and the inhabitants thereof with a court of justice, to be constituted as far as possible… according to the laudable custom of the city of Amsterdam, name-giver to this newly developing city.”[3]

The new court was given legislative authority “between the two rivers to the Fresh Water [the pond at around Worth Street]” but in matters of criminal justice their authority extended the whole of the island and included “the inhabitants of Amersfoort, Breuckelen and Midtwout,” Dutch towns in present-day Brooklyn. The burgomasters were also charged with “alignment of houses, streets and fences… in an orderly fashion,” and developing any needed public buildings “such as churches, schools, a court house, weigh house, charitable institutions, dock, pier, bridges and other similar works….” And also, the ability to designate public officers such as “orphan masters, church masters, surveyors, fire wardens” as the need would arise. It was not quite the representative government that we think of today, but it was the start of the municipal government of what would become New York City.

The Records of New Amsterdam in the Municipal Archives [minus some earlier ordinances issued by Stuyvesant] start a few days after the charter was issued, with a prayer for divine guidance. Some of the sentiments do not age as well as others, but this passage seems timeless: “Let us remember that we hold Court, not of men, but of God, who sees and hears everything. Let respect of person be far from us, so that we may judge the poor and the rich, friends and enemies, inhabitants and stranger according to the same rules of truth and never deviate from them as a favor to anybody, and whereas gifts blind the eyes of the wise, keep our hearts from greed, grant also, that we condemn nobody lightly or unheard, but listen patiently to the litigants, give them time to defend themselves.”

The prayer is undated but was probably written on the 2nd or on the first day of court, the 6th, because the next page starts with this:

“Thursday, February 6, 1653… Their Honors, the Burgomasters and Schepens of this City of New Amsterdam, herewith inform everybody, that they shall hold their regular meetings in the house hitherto called the City tavern, henceforth the City Hall, on Monday mornings from 9 o. c, to hear there all questions of difference between litigants and decide them as best as they can. Let everybody take notice hereof. Done this 6th of February, 1653, at N. Amsterdam.”

The most important feature of this lower court was that any person, male or female, could petition the court, citizen, and non-citizen alike. These court records form the backbone of the Dutch records held by the Municipal Archives and are part of a record of municipal government that extends until today.

The government of New Amsterdam was formed when the Dutch were at war with the English. In March 1653, concerned over tensions with the English to the north, the court ordered a wall built to protect the colony. To learn more about the history of the wall that became Wall Street go to New Amsterdam Stories.

What did it mean to be a citizen of New Amsterdam? In 1657 the question was answered with the establishment of the burgher right – essentially city citizenship. To learn more, go to New Amsterdam Stories.

[1] Historical Society of the New York Courts, “The Nine Men and the 1649 Remonstrance of the Commonality of New Netherland” https://history.nycourts.gov/about_period/nine-men/

[2] See also, Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World.

[3] Seymann, Colonial Charters, Patents and Grants to the Communities Comprising the City of New York. P. 177-189.