Jasper Danckaerts

Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680

In 1679 and again in 1683, Dutchman JASPER DANCKAERTS (b. 1639) journeyed twice to the New World, with companion Peter Sluyter, on behalf of their Labadist Protestant community, in search of a suitable place to establish a colony of their sect. Danckaerts's diary of the voyages was lost until American historian HENRY C. MURPHY (1810-1882) stumbled across the manuscript in a bookstore in Amsterdam. Murphy's translation forms the basis for the 1913 edition of Danckaerts's journal, of which this is a replica. Edited by American historians BARTLETT BURLEIGH JAMES (1867-1953) and J. FRANKLIN JAMESON (1859-1937), this is an extraordinary firsthand document of the settling of colonial America, and of an obscure, mostly forgotten episode in the religious history of the New World. Replete with closely observed details of ocean travel and social conditions in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Boston, it makes for a delightful read for lovers of 17th-century colonial America.