The Palatine Emigration. 



125 



appointed governor of the province, Lord Lovelace having 

 died, to make a report to the board of trade of a plan for 

 the disposal of them. Of the measures he suggested, only 

 one was adopted, that of the transporting a portion of 

 them to New York, to engage in raising naval stores, tar, 

 rosin and turpentine. Lord Sunderland writes expressly, 

 January 7, 1710, that it was approved by the queen, and 

 by a special act of parliament they were made denizens of 

 the kingdom for the occasion. They signed a contract or 

 covenant with the government before embarking promising 

 that in consideration of a loan of the queen for their trans- 

 portation and maintenance for a while, they would labor 

 on such land as should be allotted to them in the produc- 

 tion of naval stores, till such time as they should have dis- 

 charged the loan, that they would not quit the province 

 without leave from the governor, would not manufacture 

 woolen goods, and at the end, each person was to receive 

 forty acres of land, free of all taxes for seven years. 

 The passengers in the convoy, which consisted of ten ships, 

 were under the direction of Mr. Du Pre as commissary, 

 and remained so after their arrival in New York. In 

 March, they set sail with Gov. Hunter ; the ships were an 

 excessively long time in reaching New York, were crowded 

 and destitute of provisions, and four hundred and seventy 

 of them died on the passage. The ships came in at inter- 

 vals from the 14th of June to the 24th of July. The 

 emigrants for awhile encamped on the common, and after- 

 wards at Nut island, now Governor's. A special act of 

 legislation created a temporary government over them on 

 the island. Smith records that " many of these people 

 settled themselves in New York, where they built a 

 Lutheran church." It appears that in 1713, there were 

 from one hundred and fifty to two hundred of them in 

 New York, one of whom was John Peter Zenger, then 

 13 years old, whose trial for libel as publisher of a news- 



