Griffis, William Elliot, The story of New Netherland

(Boston and New York :  Houghton Mifflin Company,  1909.)

Tools


 

Jump to page:

Table of Contents

  Page [49]  



CHAPTER VI

VTALTER VAN TWILLER, DIRECTOR-GENERAL

The funny fellows, both penmen and artists,
who saw American Dutchmen a century or two
after New Netherland had passed away, and who
have essayed to write or picture the history of
New Amsterdam, give us the impression that most
of the Dutch colonists were old and fat, stupid,
choleric, and lazy, and lived in a cloud of tobacco
smoke. Thus these caricaturists cast a glow more
humorous than luminous over the early history of
the State of New York. In picturing van Twiller,
the successor of Minuit, some of them have made
a big blunder, for they have confounded father
and son. They have set before us their idea of
the fourth Director of New Netherland, from the
father, Walter van Twiller, born in 1580, instead
of the real person, his son, Walter, who first
saw the light, as the Nijkerk records show. May
22, 1606. So far from being the aged, fat, and
overgrown person represented in caricature. Van
Twiller was youthful and inexperienced, and his
faults were those of a young man unused to au¬
thority and hampered by his instructions.

In Guelderland, the van Twiller estate, men¬
tioned as early as a. d. 1530, lay in the hamlet of
  Page [49]