THE MUNICIPALITY OF NEW AMSTERDAM 



Bv J. Van Sertima. 



Historians may take exception to the atrociously common reference 

 to Berbice as " the ancient county " on the ground of inexactitude, but 

 they cannot challenge the antiquity of the Municipality of New Amster- 

 dam, for it can legitimately claim it, as also the privilege of established 



fame and prescriptive veneration. Nor is it difficult to trace its 

 aenealogy. With other names and with functions in the main the same, 

 corresponding with social mutations and development, it has existed 

 since the time of William IV. By an Ordinance (New Amsterdam Regu- 

 lations) enacted on the 24th May, 1825. the year «>f the appointment of 

 Sir Benjamin D'Urban as Governor of Demerara and Essequebo, and two 

 years after the slave insurrection on the East Coast of Demerara, the 

 first Board of Management was formed for the superintendence of the 

 town. Yet a few months and it became necessary to pass another law ; 

 and during the same lustrum there was yet another enactment having 

 reference to the governance of New Amsterdam. Seven years passed by 

 and then the Georgetown Town Council was established. The year 

 which saw the termination of apprenticeship of praedial labourers in the 

 colony, Emancipation unalloyed, that is to say, saw the passing of 

 an Ordinance establishing a Board of Police over New Amsterdam. 

 Across the stage of the memory of no one do the deeds of this Board 

 stalk majestically, and no recorders are there who disport themselves in 

 the fields of local history of this kind. Much of what it did has dis- 

 appeared down the gulf of time. During its short life the Board of 

 Police saw to the laying out of the roadways, being authorised to take 

 over as public streets the cross-roads or lanes, on the application of the 

 majority of the owners of property in the lanes ; and these owners were 

 compensated. It also established, on mud lot 14 (the front site), a 

 market the building of which was begun in 1840, the Government 

 having granted the land for the purpose. Forty-five years later the 

 proprietor of mud lot 15 alleged that the Councils market was on part 

 of his land, and it was suggested that the Attorney General s opinion 

 should be taken ; but Mr. Robert Samuel, a member of the Board o 

 Superintendence, argued that as the Council had been in undisturbed 

 possession of the strip of land in dispute for more than a third ot a cen- 

 tury, the Council's ownership could not be questioned. An appreciable 

 percentage of the revenues of the Beard of Police consisted ot retail 

 spirit shop and other licences. 



The necessities of the hour called for more energetic municipal 

 functioning, and in 1844 the Board of Superintendence came into hem.-. 

 All the minutes, books of account and vouchers of the Board of 1 once 

 were "closed and signed ; ' and lodged with its successors, lhe new 

 Board had an Ordinance all to itself. It was numbered 8, and it is a 



