Colonization                      177

lieved that Sarah Rapelye was born at the Wallabout,
and the supposition that the Walloons were there as
early as 1625 helped to foster the idea of this origin
of the name; but it is now known that her parents
did not remove to Long Island till *many years' after
her birth." '

Without waiting for their "houses of the bark of
trees" to be finished, those of the colonists who had
come out as farmers "forthwith put the spade in the
ground and began to plant, and before the Mackerel
sailed [in 1623] the grain was nearly as high as a
man, so that they are bravely advanced." Two years
after the "prosperous beginning" of the first purely
agricultural settlement, further assistance was provided
by the West India Company. In April, 1625, the
Company contracted with one of its Directors to sup¬
ply the colonists with additional live stock and other
necessaries.    This  DireCtor  was   Peter  Evertsen  Hulft,

^ Sarah De Rapelyea was probably born at Fort Orange, now Albany.
Neither the date nor the place of her birth appears in the public records.
Her mother, Catalyna Trico, the wife of Joris Jansen De Rapelje, states in
her deposition made in 1680: "Ye sd Deponent lived in Albany there three
years, in ye year 1626 ye Deponent came from Albany and settled at N. Yorke
where she lived afterwards for many years and then came to Long Island, where
she now lives." Colle£iions of the N. T Genealogical and Biographical Society,
I, iii.