The West India Cotnpany and the Walloons. 



ing here a short time ho returned to Holland, accompanied by the 

 widow and children of the leader, Jesse De Forest, who died three 

 years after the landing of the Walloon colonists. In Leyden, on the 

 27th day of November, 1626, he married Rachel, the eldest daughter 

 of the leader; and ten years later he returned to the colony and was 

 known as Dr. de la Montague, the learned Huguenot physician. He 

 at once took a prominent place in the colony, became a magistrate at 

 Albany, and succeeded Johannes de Decker as vice director and dep- 

 uty at Fort Orange, September 28, 1656. He was a man of many and 

 varied acquirements; and the early records of this county, as we find 

 them in books A and B of Deeds in the Albany county clerk's office, 

 show that all the legal business of the settlement, such as deeds, mort- 

 gages, contracts, wills, inventories of real estate, marriage contracts, 

 licenses, powers of attorney and many other legal forms and customs 

 that are now out cf use, were drawn up and acknowledged by him, as 

 the officer in the service of the West India Company, clerk and vice 

 director at Fort Orange and the village of Beverwyck. 



In conclusion, attention must be called to an error as to the date of 

 the Walloon settlement here, into which Mr. Weiss has fallen. In his 

 history of Albany, in a note to page 19, he says: "Although the writ- 

 ers who have quoted Wassanaer (the Dutch historian) as their author- 

 ity for their statements that the Niew Xederlandt sailed in March, 

 1623, to the Mauritius river with the first colonists of New Nether- 

 land, they as it will be seen by referring to Wassanaer, do not use 

 his dates, which are plainly printed on the margins of the pages of his 

 valuable work. He gives 1624 for the sailing of the vessel carrying 

 the first emigrants to New Netherlands The valuable work he refers 

 to is a " Historical Account of all the Most Remarkable Events iu 

 Europe," and is rather a record of the earliest years of the existence 

 of the West India Company than a history of the settlement of the 

 Dutch in America. The work was brought to light by Brodhead in 

 his researches in Holland, and there is an abstract of it in the Docu- 

 mentary History of the State of New York.* 



Whatever date there may be in the margin of the original work, 

 there certainly is none as regards this fact in the abstract printed in 

 the Documentary History, which reads: "The West India Company 

 being chartered to navigate these rivers, did not neglect so to do, but 

 equipped in the spring — and then the words 'of 1623 ' in brackets — 

 a vessel called the New Netherland, etc./' and there is nothing in the 

 margin to show that any other year is intended. But there is stronger 

 *VoL 8, ^Tamal! edit. 



