Peter Stuyvesant

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Peter Stuyvesant circa 1660

Peter Stuyvesant (born about 1612, Peperga (Friesland), Netherlands; died February, 1672, in present-day New York City, USA[link] (in Dutch). The birth year is often given as 1592, but recent research of primary sources suggest 1612 to be more probable.) served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664. He was a major figure in the early history of New York City.

Stuyvesant's accomplishment as director-general included a great expansion for the settlement of New Amsterdam (later renamed New York) beyond the southern tip of Manhattan. Among the projects built by Stuyvesant's administration were the protective wall on Wall Street, the canal which became Broad Street, and Broadway.

Stuyvesant and his family were large land owners in the northeastern portion of New Amsterdam, and the Stuyvesant name is currently associated with the Stuyvesant Town housing complex and Stuyvesant High School (where he is fondly known as "Pegleg Pete" and the football team is called the Peglegs in his honour), among other locations. This farm, called the "Bouwerie" (the seventeenth-century Dutch word for farm, which was also used for other farms in New Netherland) was the source for the name of the Manhattan street Bowery, and the chapel facing Bouwerie's long approach road (now Stuyvesant Street) developed into St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. Stuyvesant's grand official residence at the very tip of Manhattan was renamed "Whitehall" by the English and survives in another New York street name, Whitehall Street.

Religion in New Amsterdam

Convinced that rapid growth of non-Christian as well as non-reformed Christian churches would overrun the predominant church and endanger the stability of the young colonial society, director general and council sought to bolster the position of the Dutch Reformed Church by trying to reduce religious competition from denominations, such as Jews, Lutherans, Catholics and Quakers. However, religious plurality was already a legal-cultural tradition in New Netherland as it was in the motherland. The directors of the West India Company of Amsterdam, Stuyvesant's superiors, overruled him in all matters of intolerance by reprimanding him and requiring him to revoke intolerant rulings which the director general and his council had taken, particularly the rather harsh measures against the Quakers, who were considered anarchistic agitators and a threat to the public order due to their non-conformist and vociferously proselytizing ways.

Jews were allowed to become legal residents on the basis of "reason and equity" in 1655 under Stuyvesant's rule, despite the initially objections some members of the Dutch Reformed Church Council of which Stuyvesant was a member.

Education

Stuyvesant was a great believer in education. In 1660 he was quoted as saying that “Nothing is of greater importance than the early instruction of youth”. In 1661, New Amsterdam had one grammar school and two free elementary schools and had licensed 28 masters of school. To honor Stuyvesant's dedication to education and New Amsterdam's legal-cultural tradition of toleration under Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan was named after him, in spite of his initial objections to the arrival, in 1654, of a large group of Sephardim from Dutch Brazil without West India Company passports. Stuyvesant High School was a predominantly Jewish school for boys at the time of its founding in 1904.

Other Information

Prior to his appointment as Director-General of New Netherland, Stuyvesant was a Dutch West India Company director in charge of the so-called 'abc islands' of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. For the latter he had been appointed as Governor. He lost one of his legs in a battle with the Spanish over the island of Sint Maarten and wore a pegleg for most of his adult life, leading the Native Americans to dub him "Father Wooden Leg".

Stuyvesant is credited with introducing tea to the United States.

The last direct descendant of Peter Stuyvesant to bear his surname was Augustus van Horne Stuyvesant, Jr., who died a bachelor in 1953 at the age of 83 in his Cass Gilbert-designed mansion at 2 E. 79th St. Rutherford Stuyvesant, the 19th century New York developer, and his descendants are also descended from Peter Stuyvesant. However, Rutherford Stuyvesant changed his name from Stuyvesant Rutherford in 1863 to satisfy the terms of a will. Other descendants of Stuyvesant include Hamilton Fish and Tom Kean, both governors of New Jersey and musician Loudon Wainwright III.

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Trivia

• A German cigarette brand is named Peter Stuyvesant after him. These are popular in Australia and South Africa, where they are known as 'Stuyvos' and 'Stuyvies' respectively.

References