15 November 1664. Letter. “Vice-director Beck to Stuyvesant; negro children whom Mrs. Stuyvesant had baptized, sent to Curaçao and then sold through mistake to the...

Church Records Old Bergen Church, Jersey City BAPTISMS from 1 January 1666 to 1 February 1789. Translation: HSY, (1913) 20-108 MARRIAGES from 3 December 1665...

Most of New Netherland's enslaved people were brought to the colony either through the inter-colonial or transatlantic slave trade. The first enslaved laborers arrived in New Netherland as early as 1625.

Translation from Gehring, Council Minutes, Volume V, 1652-1654, doc. 17, pgs. 11-12 [Monday the 12th of February 1652 at Fort Amsterdam, present the director-general, La Montagne and...

Volume V – Council Minutes, 1652–1654 PDF – Volume 5 – Council Minutes, 1652-1654 translation (scanned book images) The council minutes document civil and criminal...

Translation from Van Laer, Register of the Provincial Secretary, Volume II, 1642-1647, doc. 111b, pgs. 223-224 This day, date underwritten, before me, Cornelis van Tienhoven, secretary of...

This collection comprises a great variety of papers, including journals of voyages, deeds, leases, contracts, accounts and inventories of cattle; but the most important item...

Translation from Van Laer, Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts, pp. 137-153
Image: Title page of the “Freedoms and Exemptions,” published in 1630.

Unlike the plantation systems of the southern and Caribbean colonies, New Netherland's economy did not rely on a cash crop cultivated by unfree laborers. Nevertheless, the enslaved population proved very valuable to the colony's growth and development.

In June of 2015, Mayor Bill De Blasio unveiled a plaque in lower Manhattan to commemorate the eighteenth-century slave market that once operated at the foot of Wall Street.

In the 1970s, planned development threatened the Flatts. Excavations, advocacy, and community support preserved the site. By 2002, it became Schuyler Flatts Cultural Park, a National Historic Landmark and public treasure.

In 1650, Arent van Curler joined an embassy to the Mohawks, shaping its diplomacy. Len Tantillo’s painting imagines everyday trade—bark canoes, Flatts horses, and gifts of sewant exchanged along the river.