16 STATEN ISLAND INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
the West India Company succeeded in purchasing it from him. 
(15, 8 AGS. ) 
The first attempts at settlement on Staten Island were due to 
two men, David Petersen DeVries of Hoorn, and Cornelius Melyn 
of Antwerp, both fearless, able, and influential men of affairs of 
the type that had made Holland the foremost nation in the world. 
We are fortunate that they recorded their observations and experi- 
ences so fully and that these records have been preserved. 
David Petersen DeVries tells us in “My Third Voyage to 
America and New Netherland in order to plant a colony upon 
Staten Island for myself and Frederick DeVries, Secretary of the 
City of Amsterdam and a manager of the West India Company, 
undertaken at his request,” of his attempt to plant a colony on 
Staten Island. He says: “The 13th [of August 1636] I re- 
quested Wouter Van Twilliger* to register Staten Island for me, 
as I wished to return and plant a colony upon it, which he con- 
sented to do” (N. N. N. 199), and again on December 26, 1638, 
he relates, “So I brought the ship that same evening before Staten 
Island, which belonged to me, where I intended to settle my peo- 
ole” (CN, IN, IN, aon.) 
“Anno 1639 The 5th of January,” he writes, “I sent my people 
to Staten Island to begin to plant a colony there with assistance to 
build” (N. N. N. 202), and on August 20, 1641, he calls his 
colonists, “the first occupants.’ On January 7, 1640, DeVries 
leased his Staten Island plantation with buildings to Thomas 
Smythe, from Jan. 1, 1640 to Jan. 1, 1646, according to the official 
records (C. D. 13: 7), and in his notes on the 1oth of February 
[1640] DeVries states “I leased out the plantation on Staten 
Island, as no people had been sent me from Holland as was stipu- 
lated in the contract I made with Frederick DeVries, a manager of 
the West India Company.” (N.N. N. 205.) | 
We are told that on the 16th day of July [1640] Cornelis Van 
Thienhoven, secretary of New Netherland, with 100 armed men 
was sent to the Raritan Indians to obtain satisfaction from the 
4 Wouter Van Twiller, Director General 1633-1638. 
