Setting the Record Straight on Pieter Plockhoy
- Delaware's First Mennonite
by K. Varden Leasa
The following article was written for the Delaware Mennonite
Historical Society and an abbreviated version appeared in that
society's first newsletter in June 2002. But because the author
makes known significant new information on the 1663 Mennonite
settlement in Delaware, it is offered here to reach a larger
readership. The following conclusion to the Plockhoy article
in the Mennonite Encyclopedia must be substantially revised in
light of our new knowledge:
"A settlement of 41 persons was made in America in
1663 at Horekill on the Delaware, but was destroyed after a brief
year of existence in the Anglo-Dutch war of 1664. Plockhoy's
active career apparently came to an abrupt end, due in part no
doubt to the fact that he became blind. Although he and his wife
continued to reside in the neighborhood of Lewes, Del., under
English rule for thirty years, they finally sought and found
refuge in the new Mennonite settlement at Germantown, Pa., where
they lived as public charges for their last six or more years
(1694-1700)" [ME, IV, 196].
In 1913 and 1914 two Amish Mennonite brothers-in-law, Valentine
Bender and William Tressler from Garrett County, Maryland, pioneered
a Mennonite community near Greenwood, Sussex County, Delaware.
It is doubtful these first settlers had knowledge of what happened
in Sussex County exactly 250 years earlier - in 1663-64 - some
thirty miles to the southeast. Along a creek known as the Whorekill,
perhaps on the site of present-day Lewes, a Dutch Mennonite named
Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy established a Christian, cooperative
colony in July 1663. In the late summer of 1664 the colony was
attacked by a party of British marines - attacked so violently
that in the words of one report the settlement was "destroyed
…to a very naile."
The story of Plockhoy's settlement at the Whorekill has long
been a standard feature of "chapter one" in American
Mennonite history books. It is usually cited as the first Mennonite
community in the New World. Because the historical facts are
so meager, the Plockhoy story varies little from book to book.
Usually included are Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy's Mennonite origins,
his philosophical and reforming activities in Europe, his plan
for a utopian nondenominational, egalitarian, democratic colony
in America, the ocean voyage with his rather small number of
fellow pioneers, the brief (and largely undocumented) life of
the community on the primeval Delaware coast, its destruction
by the British in 1664, and the claim that after 1664 there is
virtually no record of the community or of Plockhoy, except for
one last event. The story goes, that about1694, thirty years
later, the old and blind Pieter Plockhoy and wife, made their
way north to Germantown where they were taken in, provided a
house, and cared for by that (partly Mennonite) community.
It is a nice story, but much of it is false. A newly discovered
historical document and years of research by a dedicated genealogist
have vastly expanded what we know about Pieter Plockhoy's Delaware
settlement and at the same time necessitated some major revisions
in the old story.
Although this new information has been available for several
years, Plockhoy scholars do not seem to know about it. (As recently
as January 2002 a major Mennonite journal retold the old story.
) But here, in the first issue of the first Mennonite historical
publication issued in the first state, you can read for the first
time what really happened to the first Mennonite to settle in
Delaware.
But first, for those who have not heard the oft-told tale,
here is a brief account of the life and ideas of this man and
an explanation of how the colony on the Whorekill came to be
in the first place.
Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy was born about 1625 in Zierikzee,
in the province of Zeeland, about sixty miles southwest of Amsterdam.
His family was Mennonite. Along with a friend of his, Galenus
Abrahams de Haan, whose father was the local Mennonite pastor,
young Pieter headed for Amsterdam. Here both Plockhoy and de
Haan threw themselves into the intellectual and spiritual life
of then mighty Holland's largest city. De Haan became the pastor
of the Lamists - the more liberal of Amsterdam's Mennonites.
And Plockhoy became a crusading reformer and pamphleteer with
a plan for a Christian socialist community. Even within the liberal,
progressive wing of the Dutch Mennonite church, Plockhoy and
his ideas were considered radical and utopian.
These ideas had a religious and a socioeconomic dimension.
In religious matters young Pieter was an active Collegiant -
part of a Dutch ecumenical group that sought to bring about a
universal Christendom and opposed schism, doctrine and dogma.
The point was to bring Christians together and break down the
walls between them. Drawing participants from Mennonite and other
denominations, Collegiants favored absolute tolerance for all
opinions, freedom of thought and conscience, reason over tradition,
no state church, no professional clergy and almost no organization.
(Not so twentieth-century sounding was their belief that "divine
truth must be confirmed by signs and miracles.") Their Taizé-like
idea of "church" was a group of Christians from diverse
backgrounds getting together to read and discuss the Scriptures.
Plockhoy embraced the Collegiant ideals completely. But as
social critic and reformer he wrote much more on social and economic
issues than on religious matters. He published a number of pamphlets
and calls for action with titles like, A Way Propounded to Make
the Poor in these and other Nations Happy. He spent several years
in England attempting to persuade the Puritan government of Oliver
Cromwell to sponsor the utopian society he was envisioning -
"a Christian, socialistic settlement" with a foundation
of equality, democracy and freedom. Plockhoy devised elaborate
plans for the smooth functioning of his Christian socialist colony
and ultimately 117 Articles of Association, which read like a
virtual modern democratic constitution! When his hopes for British
support evaporated in the restoration of the monarchy, Plockhoy
returned to Holland and presented his scheme more successfully
to the Amsterdam City Council.
Amsterdam had recently taken control of the southern portion
of New Netherland. The Dutch possessions in America at that time
consisted of present-day New York south clear to the Maryland
border. Plockhoy's plan was to settle his colony along the South
River of New Netherland. (The South River was the Dutch term
for the Delaware River. The Hudson was the North River.) His
negotiations with the Amsterdam City Council dragged on for several
years.
In April 1662, these negotiations were successfully concluded
and the City Council approved a settlement of 25 "Mennonist"
families, agreeing to aid, assist and give each of them as much
land as they could use. Plockhoy had a hard time finding twenty-five
families to emigrate. (He had hoped for a hundred. ) I believe
no more than a couple of the families he took along to Delaware
were Mennonite. The Dutch people were never greatly interested
in emigrating to America. Holland was the most developed and
civilized place on earth in the 1600s. Why risk a six-to-eight
week ocean voyage and the dangers of a savage wilderness when
you already enjoyed "the good life"? Plockhoy's Mennonite
church was the progressive and liberal Lamb congregation - the
majority of whom were probably well-to-do. I imagine he had to
scour the back streets of Amsterdam to find even twenty families
to take the plunge with him into the great unknown. In A Brief
Account of the New Netherlands Situation Plockhoy noted that
one of his main objectives in starting the colony was "…
the relief of many aggrieved and languishing families."
And indeed I think the majority of his colonists were drawn from
the urban poor.
Finally, on the fifth of May 1663 this relatively small group
(approximately forty people) embarked on a ship, the St. Jacob,
headed for America. (The Mayflower, just forty-three years earlier,
had carried 101, more than twice as many, to Plymouth.) The St.
Jacob arrived uneventfully on July 28th at New Amstel (today's
New Castle), after having left "41 souls with their baggage
and farm utensils at the Horekil."
The material just skimmed over is presented more fully in two
articles in the 1949 Mennonite Quarterly Review by Irvin B. Horst
and Leland Harder, as well as in a full-length book by Harder
and his brother Marvin three years later. In fact, the story
of Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy and his Christian socialist colony
is full of rich and well-reported detail almost until that very
day when the settlers disembarked from the St. Jacob and walked
across the sand at Cape Henlopen toward the land chosen for their
new home. All studies recount with frustrating lack of detail
what happened to Plockhoy's Whorekill Colony a little over a
year later. In August 1664, after New Netherland fell to the
English, a British naval force was sent to the lands along the
Delaware to subjugate the Dutch forts and settlements there.
In early September this force, dispatched (and perhaps commanded)
by Sir Robert Carr, appeared at the Whorekill and plundered,
burned and to a great extent destroyed the Dutch settlement.
Until recently, that is as far as the record went. Mennonite
historian Leland Harder wrote, "There remains no record
of the fate of the members of the colony, save Plockhoy himself."
Historian Samuel W. Pennypacker (later a governor of Pennsylvania)
said much the same thing in 1883: "History throws no light
on the subject, and of contemporary documents there are none."
Pennypacker became interested in his Mennonite ancestors and
while researching them also discovered the Plockhoy story. He
was the first to notice the Plockhoy episode in the Germantown
Ratbuch (city council records) and it was Pennypacker who mistakenly
identified the Plockhoy couple mentioned in those records - a
misidentification that was repeated by nearly every article on
Plockhoy for the next 120 years! A quick glance at the relevant
page in the Germantown Ratbuch reveals that the name of the man
who threw himself on the mercy of the first permanent Mennonite
community in America was not Pieter but Cornelis! Why did not
the name "Cornelis" Plockhoy set off alarms for the
many 20th century historians who read over those and other legal
records covering the period 1680 to 1700? Did they all believe
that Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy had a first and a middle name,
Pieter and Cornelis, either of which could be used to denote
him? Did none of them think of applying their knowledge of Dutch
naming practice to this matter? Most of them knew that Cornelisen
was a patronymic and that it indicated only the name of Pieter's
father. Irvin Buckwalter Horst, in his Plockhoy article in Mennonite
Quarterly Review in July 1949 discusses various Dutch authorities
on Plockhoy and mentions that one of them, Professor de Hoop
Scheffer, states "inaccurately" that "Plockhoy's
son came to Germantown." No, Irvin, de Hoop Scheffer was
one of the few who were accurate!
In two issues of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine of
1998 and a separate book in 1999, Dr. Peter Stebbins Craig, genealogist
and retired Washington lawyer, published his 1671 Census of the
Delaware. The result of nearly fifteen years of research on the
early families who settled the area along the Delaware River,
Dr. Craig used a previously unknown historical document along
with land and probate records to provide family histories of
these difficult-to-research pioneers.
As the introduction to Craig's book states: "[The settlements
on the Delaware had been a part of the Province of New York since
1664] … but few of its residents took the trouble to pay
two beavers for a New York patent and the collection of quitrents
(taxes) was far less than it should have been. To correct this
situation, in 1671 a census was taken of former New Sweden and
a similar one at Whorekill (Lewes, Delaware). The resulting censuses,
each on a single piece of paper, have rested in the New York
archives ever since, largely overlooked by historians and genealogists
(emphasis mine)."
Dr. Peter Craig's discovery of the May 1671 Whorekill Census,
and his genealogical conclusions based on it, explicitly and
implicitly tell us a great deal about Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy's
settlement. This is nothing less than a bombshell in Plockhoy
studies. Yet three years later Craig's work seems to have gone
completely unnoticed by American Mennonite and European experts
and authorities!
The Whorekill census was taken less than seven years after
Sir Robert Carr's men "wiped out" the settlement, or
in the words of Sheriff van Sweringen at New Castle, "almost
succeeded in "destroying the quaking society of Plockhoy
to a naile." Peter Craig has used the unusually detailed
census along with land and probate records to indicate who was
living at the Whorekill in 1671 and how they were connected to
one another. This is an excellent example of how historical mysteries
are often solved by genealogists!
Craig writes: "South of New Castle there were no European
settlers until one reached the Whorekill, presently known as
Lewes, Sussex County, Delaware. A fort had been established at
this location by the Dutch in 1659, but no settlement took place
until July 1663, when Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy and forty other
Mennonites [sic] arrived from Amsterdam on the St. Jacob. When
the English captured the Delaware in 1664 the Whorekill settlements
were plundered. By 1671 the community was a mixture of Dutch
and English residents."
The main point for Mennonite historians and Plockhoy students
is clear. The settlement he founded lived on after being plundered
by the British - probably not in the utopian form he had envisioned
- but it did continue to exist.
So what other revelations are found in Dr. Craig's articles
and book?
First, the question of the identity of Plockhoy's settlers
is partially answered. The nucleus consisted of his own family
- a brother and a sister. In 1671 the Whorekill Census was taken
by Plockhoy's brother-in-law, Helmanus Wiltbanck. Wiltbanck was
married to Plockhoy's sister, Janneken Cornelis. In 1671, the
Wiltbancks had two children: Cornelis and Abraham. If the Wiltbancks
were Mennonite, there is no evidence thereof. Pieter Plockhoy's
brother, Harmen Cornelisen, was also living at Whorekill in 1671,
and like the Wiltbancks, probably was an original settler of
the colony. What is particularly fascinating about Harmen is
that he had been a Dutch soldier posted at Fort Sekonnessinck
near the Whorekill in 1660. As Craig notes: "He seems to
have been influential in persuading his brother to choose the
Whorekill for his Mennonite settlement." Harmen was a soldier
and Indian trader and used a different surname than his brother
(Spycker, meaning "nail"; Plockhoy means a "haystack").
A military man, Harmen does not look like a Mennonite.
Second, Craig states conclusively: "Analysis of this
census shows that Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy from Zierikzee,
Zeeland, Netherlands, had died soon after the Mennonite settlement
was established and that his widow, who remarried Willem Clasen,
was also dead [in 1671]. Leadership of the settlement had passed
to Plockhoy's brother-in-law Helmanus Wiltbanck." It looks
like this Willem Clasen was another of Plockhoy's first settlers.
Willem was probably the butcher by that name in Manhattan in
1657. (Harmen Cornelisen was also in Manhattan in 1662, which
suggests that Plockhoy drew some of his community from people
already in America!)
Widow Plockhoy and Willem Clasen had two daughters. One of
them, Elizabeth, appears to have married John Hill in the early
1680s. That would place her birth in the mid-1660s, which, in
turn, makes it look very much like Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy
probably died as early as 1664. I have a strong hunch he died
defending his settlement against the British attacking party
in September of that year. [How ironic! He was perhaps the only
Mennonite and yet was likely one of those who died in combat.
Of course it is just as possible that the soldiers targeted him
for death because he was the leader of a "quaking"
(i.e., Quaker-style?) colony.]
There is no evidence in the census or the biographical details
Craig has unearthed that the 1671 Whorekill settlement was unusual
in any way or that there were any Mennonites living there. As
I argue above, I believe there were very few Mennonites at the
Whorekill from the beginning. One study claims that after the
1664 attack the cooperative society Plockhoy had started continued
for a time. The census proves that the community rebuilt and
regrouped (under Wiltbanck's leadership). But without Plockhoy's
dynamic personality and vision, they were probably unable to
sustain the unique, cooperative aspect of the settlement.
The fact that there was a sizable community at Whorekill in
1671 is proof of rebuilding after 1664. They had to rebuild again
after a similar destruction in 1673 at the hands of troops from
Maryland (who also claimed this region). A couple of men who
set out for assistance during the 1673 attack were killed by
Indians. And the very first Dutch settlement in the area (Zwaanendael
in 1630) was completely destroyed by Indians. This was one dangerous
place to live in the 17th century! What if Plockhoy had founded
his colony somewhere else?
Third, a thorough examination of the inhabitants of the Delaware
region in 1671 (which extended on beyond Philadelphia to the
north) yields quite a few Dutch, but very few who might have
been part of Plockhoy's colony. This supports my argument that
the colony was largely composed of urban poor from Amsterdam,
who took advantage of free passage back to the Netherlands after
the violence of 1664. (I believe the continuity of the original
Plockhoy settlement after 1664 and 1671, and the fact that many
of the 1671 inhabitants are mentioned in Delaware land records
as owning lots in the town of Lewes, suggest that the town of
Lewes grew up precisely on the spot of Plockhoy's colony.)
Fourth, a very interesting aspect of Craig's publications
is that they give us the names of a large number of the soldiers
who carried out the expedition against the Whorekill colony in
1664! Many of them settled in the region, most commonly at New
Castle, site of the fort and military center of the region. Captain
John Carr, of New Castle, was "the chief political and military
officer on the Delaware. … John Carr and his brothers Andrew
Carr and Patrick Carr had been part of Robert Carr's invading
force in 1664." Names of other 1671 inhabitants whom Craig
specifies as part of Carr's force in 1664 are: Robert Scott,
John Marshall, John Cousins, Jan Boyer, Thomas Snelling, Jacob
Jansen, Thomas Wollaston, Edmund Cantwell, John Arskin, Dr. James
Crawford, William Tom, William Sinclair, John Henry, and Charles
Floyd.
Fifth and finally, Dr. Craig's work straightens us out on
who really walked into Germantown in the 1690s. It was not Pieter
and his wife, but: "[t]he person moving to Germantown in
1693 was Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy's blind son, Cornelis Plockhoy
[and his wife]." In the 1671 census, Cornelis was still
listed as a "child" in the household of his stepfather,
Willem Clasen. Records of the town of Lewes cited by various
Plockhoy scholars as referring to Pieter Cornelisen Plockhoy
actually involved his son Cornelis. Cornelis was not forced out
of the area due to inability to build on a granted lot (as some
writers allege). Rather, "…[Cornelis] with his wife
Judith deeded his Lewes lots to his cousin Cornelis Wiltbanck
in December 1693 and moved to Germantown." This evidence
of continuing family relationships (along with his name listed
as beneficiary in the 1700 will of Jan Kipshaven of Lewes ) indicates
that Cornelis Plockhoy was not bereft of friends and family as
so many have suggested. His reasons for going to Germantown to
retire may have had more to do with the fact that it was a nearby,
more advanced community, (where low Dutch was spoken), than the
reasons usually given. I doubt that Cornelis had much of a Mennonite
identity. He was probably born in the 1650s (or no later than
1662) in Holland and came to Delaware with his parents in 1663.
Only if stepfather Willem Clasen was Mennonite would Cornelis
have grown up in a Mennonite home, since his father died about
1664. In 1683 Cornelis was sworn in as a citizen of Pennsylvania
and subject of the King of England (and was thus surely over
twenty-one by then). In 1693 he was probably no more than forty
years old and his blindness (not his age) put him in need of
special care.
In conclusion, it is time historians took notice of the genealogical
detective work of Peter Stebbins Craig. He has given us the first
really new information on Pieter Plockhoy and his colony since
the work of Horst and Harder fifty years ago. It is also an encouraging
and inspirational story. For over 325 years an old piece of parchment
- the 1671 Whorekill Census - lay virtually unnoticed among the
early records of New York, preserved yet silent and lost. Hunting
answers to 17th century Delaware puzzles in New York City led
Craig to this buried nugget. That is good genealogy. That is
good history.
K. Varden Leasa., while employed in the automotive business,
is an active researcher of genealogical, local and church history,
who lives with his family in, Downingtown, Pa. He wrote this
article for the newsletter of the newly-founded Delaware Mennonite
Historical Society in Greenwood, Delaware. |