in the same year, and of Reverend Charles Payson Mallary, whose monograph on the Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor, a publication of the Delaware Historical Society in 1888, disclosed the wide genealogical interest pertaining to the Labadist settlement. Thus there was built up a body of substantial information with regard to the environment and the relations of the Labadist colony in the New World. In 1899 was published, in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, The Labadist Colony in Maryland, by the writer of the present introduction. This monograph was largely based upon fresh sources obtained from Europe, including contemporary works by Labadie, his associates and his antagonists, as well as studies of the subject by Dutch and German scholars. The literature of Labadism in the New World, which, in a manner, has been an outgrowth from the journal of the Labadist envoys, is now ample for all serviceable purposes.

The journal of the Labadists, while primarily of value as elucidating an obscure episode in the religious history of the New World, has worth as a human narrative bearing upon incidents and personages and social conditions in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Boston. Thus the student of social, economic, institutional, or geographical conditions in the early period of the settlements upon the Atlantic seaboard will find in this journal much of suggestive and pertinent contribution. Danckaerts viewed his surroundings through the eyes of a fanatical self-satisfaction. For this reason his criticisms or strictures upon persons and conditions are to be received with much discount. But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous note-taker; and the variety and fecundity of his material is not a little due to the trivial and relatively unimportant details which are embodied in the narrative.

The two agents came to North America in search of a suitable place to establish a colony of their sect. Two distinct sets of forces drew them toward Maryland. One of these was the religious toleration which, from the beginning, was established in that province. There is no warrant in the journal for a presumption that this was an inducing cause for their location within the domain of Lord Baltimore. There is much, however, in their antecedent history, and the pressure of persecution to which the Labadists were subjected, to make it exceedingly probable that this policy in the government of Maryland formed a circumstance in the selection that was made. The journalists, who travelled under pseudonyms for the express purpose of keeping their mission secret, might have established their colony in New York had it not been under the rule of Governor Andros, a Catholic, and therefore a subject of particular antipathy to the Labadists.

But the practical weave of circumstance that tended to attract the Labadists to Maryland centred in the fact that, as stated in their narrative, they met in New York one Ephraim Herrman, a young trader from Maryland and Delaware, then recently married. This was the son of Augustine Herrman, "first founder and seater of Bohemia Manor." Augustine Herrman was a Bohemian adventurer, born in Prague, who, after a career of much vicissitude, made his way to New Netherland. He became a force at New Amsterdam, and was an original member of the council of nine men instituted by Governor Stuyvesant in 1647. His connection with Maryland matters dates from his appointment by Governor Stuyvesant as a special commissioner, along with Resolved Waldron, to negotiate with Governor Fendall of Maryland concerning the eastern boundary of Lord Baltimore's province.[6] This mission effected, Herrman entered into negotiations with Lord Baltimore for the drafting of a map of Maryland and Virginia, which would be valuable to his lordship in bringing to a settlement the boundary dispute pending between the two colonies, and in other ways.[7] In this manner Herrman became invested with not less than 24,000 acres of the most desirable lands of what is now Cecil County, Maryland, and Newcastle County, Delaware, which he divided into several tracts under the names Bohemia Manor, St. Augustine Manor, Little Bohemia, and the Three Bohemia Sisters. It is of interest to note that among the acts passed by the Maryland Assembly is one dated 1666, which provides for the naturalization of "Augustine Herman of Prague, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, Ephraim Georgius and Casparus, Sonns to the said Augustine, Anna Margarita, Judith and Francina, his daughters," this being the first act of naturalization passed by any of the colonies.[8]

It was upon Bohemia Manor that the Labadists located their colony. Danckaerts and Sluyter, under the guidance of Ephraim Herrman, made their way to Delaware and Maryland. Upon meeting them the elder Herrman was at first so favorably impressed that he consented to deed to them a considerable tract, in pursuance of his ambition to colonize and develop his estates. On June 19, 1680, the Labadists, having accomplished their mission, set sail for Boston, to which fact are due such interesting recitals as that of their visit to John Eliot, the so-called apostle to the Indians, and their visit to and description of Harvard College. On the 23d day of July the Labadists set sail for Europe.

In 1683 the two Labadists returned again to Maryland, bringing with them the nucleus of a colony. In the meanwhile Augustine Herrman had repented of his bargain, and it was only by recourse to law that the Labadists compelled him to live up to its terms. The deed he executed, dated August 11, 1684, was to Peter Sluyter (alias Vorstman), Jasper Dankers (alias Schilders), of Friesland, Petrus Bayard, of New York, and John Moll and Arnold de la Grange.[9] The tract conveyed embraced four necks of land eastwardly from the first creek that empties into Bohemia River, and extended at the north or northeast to near the old St. Augustine or Manor Church. It contained 3,750 acres. Those engaging with Sluyter and Danckaerts in the transaction were all professed converts to the Labadist faith. It may be noted in passing that the Petrus Bayard named in the conveyance, and who for some time was an active member of the Labadist community, was an ancestor of the late Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James.

When fairly settled upon Bohemia Manor, the Labadists undertook communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland. They cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn, flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form. At its most flourishing period the colony did not number as many as a hundred persons, and in the year 1698 a division of the tract occurred. Sluyter, who was the active head of the colony, reserved for himself one of the necks of land and became wealthy. He died in 1722. Some form of organization had been maintained among the Labadists even after the division of the land, but five years after the death of Sluyter the Labadists had ceased to