Introduction ince 1974, the New Netherland Project (now the New Netherland Re- Ssearch Center) has translated and transcribed over 7,000 pages of Dutch- language administrative records from the archives of New Netherland, now in the collections of the New York State Archives and Albany County Hall of Records. The translations have been published in twelve books as part of the New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch / New Netherland Documents series.1 The introductions to these books are printed below.2 New Netherland’s central archive was housed at New Amsterdam and com- prised fifty or more books that contained a wide variety of records. An inven- tory of these books conducted in 1820 listed and briefly described 49 books, 47 of them labeled A–Z and AA–PP (some alphabetic designations were duplicated).3 This arrangement survived until the middle of the nineteenth- century when E.B. O’Callaghan, as custodian of historical manuscripts for the state of New York, decided that they could be more logically organized. O’Callaghan proceeded to reorganize the individual documents according to genre: The original books and some loose papers became 23 volumes, each containing a specific type of document. He then compiled a calendar that cited the documents according to volume and page number.4 Despite being subjected to myriad dangers over their more than 300 years, this body of records has largely survived. However, important gaps were noted by O’Callaghan in his Calendar, and subsequently by New York State archivst and translator A.J.F. van Laer. 1 Early volumes were published in the series New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. With the Curacao Papers in 1987, the series was renamed the New Netherland Docu- ments series. 2 Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638–1642 predated the New Netherland Project and includes an introduction by Peter Christoph. All other introductions are by Charles T. Gehring, with the exception of Fort Orange Records, 1654–1679, by Charles T. Geh- ring and Janny Venema, and Curacao Papers, 1640–1665, by Charles T. Gehring and Jacob Schiltkamp. 3 This inventory is printed in New York Legislative Documents, 43rd. session, 1820, No. 2 under the title “A Catalogue of the Records in the Office of the Secretary of State of New-York, on the first day of January, 1820.” Its appendix includes several excerpts from historical documents explaining possible incidents of loss. 4 For a detailed description of O’Callaghan’s rearrangement, see the introduction to Volume XVI, part 1, Laws & Writs of Appeal, 1647–1663. New Netherland Institute Introduction | ii O’Callaghan’s Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State; Part 1: Dutch Manuscripts, 1630–1664, is available here. Van Laer’s The Translation and Publication of the Manuscript Dutch Records of New Netherland, With an Account of Previous Attempts at Translation is available here. With some exceptions­­—including several Fort Orange records not included in the Calendar—the translations in the New York Historical Manuscripts / New Netherland Documents series follow the Calendar arrangement, which is listed below in bold-type. Beneath each entry is publication information about the corresponding translation. For a list organized by translation with the corresponding manuscript arrangement below, see the appendix. Volume I: Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638–1642 Published as same. (Available online) Volume II: Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1642–1647 Published as same. (Available online) Volume III: Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1648–1660 Published as same. Volume IV: Council Minutes, 1638–1649 Published as same. Volume V: Council Minutes, 1652–1654 Published as same. Volume VI: Council Minutes, 1655–1656 Published as same. Volume VII: Council Minutes Entries in this volume are duplicated in volumes VI and VIII. Volume VIII: Council Minutes, 1656–1658 Tranlsation in process. Volume IX: Council Minutes, 1660–1661 Translation in process. iii | Introduction New Netherland research Center Volume X: Council Minutes, 1661–1665 (in 3 parts)5 Translation in process. Volume XI: Correspondence, 1647–1653 Published as same. (Available online) Volume XII: Correspondence, 1654–1658 Published as same. (Available online) Volume XIII: Correspondence, 1659–1660 Translation in process. Volume XIV: Correspondence, 1661–1662 Translation in process. Volume XV: Correspondence, 1663–1664 Translation in process. Volume XVI Part I: Ordinances, 1647–1658 Grouped with part IV of the same volume: published as Volume XVI, part 1, Laws & Writs of Appeal, 1647–1663 Part II: Fort Orange Records, 1656–1657 Grouped with part III of the same volume and two volumes (1652–1656 6 and 1658–16597) housed at the Albany County Hall of Records: pub- lished as Volume XVI, part 2, Fort Orange Court Minutes, 1652–1660. Part III: Fort Orange Records, 1660 Grouped with part II of the same volume and two volumes (1652–1656 8 & 1658–16599) housed at the Albany County Hall of Records: published as Volume XVI, part 2, Fort Orange Court Minutes, 1652–1660. Part IV: Writs of Appeal, 1658–1663 Grouped with part I of the same volume: published as Volume XVI, part 1, Laws & Writs of Appeal, 1647–1663 Volume XVII: Curacao Papers, 1640–1665 Published as same. (Available online with transcription) Volume XVIII: Delaware Papers, 1648–1660 Grouped with Volume XIX: published as Delaware Papers, Dutch Period, 5 Part I: 1661–1662; Part II: 1663; Part III: 1664–1665 6 Not included in the Calendar. 7 Included in the Calendar under Volume XVI, part II, Volume A. 8 Not included in the Calendar. 9 Included in the Calendar under Volume XVI, part II, Volume A. New Netherland Institute Introduction | iv 1648–1664 Volume XIX: Delaware Papers, 1661–1664 Grouped with Volume XVIII: published as Delaware Papers, Dutch Pe- riod, 1648–1664 Volume XX: Delaware Papers, 1664–1678 Grouped with Volume XXI: published as Delaware Papers, English Period, 1664–1682 Volume XXI: Delaware Papers, 1679–1682 Grouped with Volume XX: published as Delaware Papers, English Period, 1664–1682 Book GG: Patents Grouped with Books HH and II: published as Land Papers, 1630–1664 Book HH, part I: Deeds Orignally Book II, this was grouped with books GG and HH: published as Land Papers, 1630–1664 Book HH, part II: Patents Orignally book HH, this was grouped with Books GG and II: published as Land Papers, 1630–1664 Not included in the Calendar but part of the New York Historical Manuscripts / New Netherland Documents series are Fort Orange Records, 1656–1678 and Fort Orange Records, 1654–1680. These publications comprise two bound volumes of records stored at the Albany County Hall of Records labeled Deeds A and B respectively. Volume I Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638–1642 he government of New Netherland was established in 1624 by the West TIndia Company. In 1626 a Director-General was appointed, who was as- sisted in his duties by a Council and a Provincial Secretary. The publication of the records of the Council and the Provincial Secretary is therefore of the greatest importance to students of the early history of the European settle- ments in America. The present publication is a translation of all the existing Registers of the Provincial Secretary and of the earliest surviving volume of Council Min- utes. Unfortunately, records in these series prior to the administration of Director-General Willem Kieft are lost; his predecessor, Wouter van Twiller, may have turned the earlier records over to the West India Company, whose records were destroyed in the nineteenth century. That any records survive at all is a wonder, for the archives of New Neth- erland have led a precarious existence, and one worth recounting in brief. After the British conquest in 1664, the Provincial Secretary turned the ar- chives over to the new government. They returned to Dutch control when the province of New York was captured in 1673, and in the following year the colony and its records reverted to the British. The New York Historical Manuscripts, Dutch and British, remained with the secretary of the colony until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, when they were placed in the home of a New York City alderman. They were removed to Kingston in June 1776 by the Provincial Congress, and at the end of the war were sent to the Secretary of State in New York City. When Albany became the State capital the records were moved to the Secretary’s new office there. About 1850 the Secretary engaged Dr. E. B. O’Callaghan to rearrange forty-six volumes of the Dutch records, which were rebound in twenty vol- umes. The arrangement of an additional two volumes of land patents and deeds was not altered. In 1881 the twenty-two volumes were transferred to the Manuscripts Division of the State Library, along with translations by Francis A. Van der Kemp and E. B. O’Callaghan. A. J. F. van Laer reviewed the available translations in a 1910 Education Department bulletin. He found Van der Kemp’s work “so poor that it need not be considered at all,” and Berthold Fernow’s efforts, which had been pub- lished in volumes 12–14 of Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New Netherland Institute Reg of the Prov Sec, 1638–1642 | 2 New York, were termed “unsatisfactory.” O’Callaghan’s translation contained errors both of “omission and commission” and the language was “at times unnecessarily strained,” but it was “a vast improvement on the translations of Van der Kemp.” O’Callaghan had prepared manuscript translations of vol- umes 1–4 of the records which with “comparatively little labor could be pre- pared for publication.” Van Laer and his assistant, Peter Nelson, began the “comparatively little labor” in 1910. A. J.