8 Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences 



We think, however, that the proper date when local govern- 

 ment was established was Jan. 28, 1664, when an act was passed 

 establishing a court at the recently begun village on Staten Island 

 (Old Town), and appointing David d'Amarex, Piere Billion, and 

 Walraven Lutten, as Commissaries (5). 



The fourth date and event inscribed on the tablet is : 

 1650. First church erected ... by Waldensians. 



The committee of 1906 selected and approved " 1650. Stony 

 Brook settled by Waldensians. First church on Island, erected 

 at Stony Brook." 



The Colonial Records make it evident that there were few 

 people on Staten Island in 1650 (15). Melyn had induced Van 

 der Capellen to send over 70 colonists who arrived in December 

 1650 (16). This colony increased to 90 souls on eleven bou- 

 weries in 1655, when its people were massacred or captured by 

 the Indians (17). We find nothing to show that these colonists 

 were Waldensians, or that they built a church or founded Stony 

 Brook. 



From the Dutch Council Minutes, 1656, we learn that there was 

 a population of six or seven persons on Staten Island at that time 

 (18). Nothing has been found to support the date and events 

 cited but much to contradict them. We find Stony Brook men- 

 tioned in road records dated 1705 and 1708, but not as a village 

 (19). In a patent dated 1702 the locality is referred to as New 

 Dorp (20). The name Stony Brook appears on no early map 

 of which we are cognizant. Robert Ryder, the surveyor, who 

 knew the island thoroughly, in. a manuscript map dated 1670 be- 

 longing to the New York Historical Society, of which this Asso- 

 ciation has a photographic copy, showed Old Town and New 

 Town but did not show Stony Brook. Mr. J. H. Innes, an 

 authority on the settlement of New York and vicinity, doubts 

 "that the Rapaelje family ever settled in Staten Island, or that 

 Waldenses founded Stony Brook, there being no documentary 



