New Amsterdam (lower Manhattan) ca. 1660
Peter Stuyvesant (c.1612 – August 1672), served as the
last Dutxh Director-General of the colony of New Nwthwrland from 1647 until it
was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New
York. He was a major figure in the early history of New York City. Stuyvesant's
accomplishments as director-general included a great expansion for the
settlement of New Amsterdam beyond the
southern tip of Manhattan. Among the projects built by Stuyvesant's
administration were the protective wall on Wall Street, the canal that became Broad
Street, and Broadway.
Although conventionally referred to in English today as
"Peter Stuyvesant", Stuyvesant's given name was actually
"Pieter" or "Petrus"; "Peter" is not found in
historical records.
In April 1644, he attacked the Spanish-held island of Saint
Martin and lost the lower part of his right leg to a cannon ball. He returned
to the Netherlands, where his right leg was amputated and replaced with a
wooden peg. Supposedly, Stuyvesant was given the nickname "Old Silver
Leg"
In May 1645 he was selected by the Dutch West India
Company to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of the New Netherland
colony. He arrived in New Amsterdam on May 11, 1647. In September 1647, he
appointed an advisory council of Nine Men as representatives of the colonists.
Stuyvesant and his family were large land owners in the
northeastern portion of New Amsterdam, and the Stuyvesant name is currently
associated with the Stuyvesant Town housing complex as well as Stuyvesant
Square, a park in the area. His farm, called the "Bouwerij" – the
seventeenth-century Dutch word for farm – was the source for the name of
the Manhattan street The Bowery, and the chapel facing Bouwerie's long approach
road (now Stuyvesant Street) became St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. The
contemporary neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn includes Stuyvesant
Heights and retains its name. Also named after him are the hamlets of Stuyvesant
and Stuyvesant Falls in Columbia County, NY, where descendants of the early
Dutch settlers still live and where the Dutch Reformed Church remains an
important part of the community, as well as shopping centers, yacht clubs and
other buildings and facilities throughout the area where the Dutch colony once
was. More modestly, Peter Island in the British Virgin Islands was also named
after Stuyvesant during the Dutch West India Company's administration of that
Territory.
Stuyvesant was a great believer in education. In 1660 he
was quoted as saying that "Nothing is of greater importance than the early
instruction of youth." In 1661, New Amsterdam had one grammar school, two
free elementary schools, and had licensed 28 masters of school. To honor
Stuyvesant's dedication to education and New Amsterdam's legal-cultural tradition
of toleration under Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan was named
after him.
Map of New Amsterdam 1668
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