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In 1665, Stuyvesant went to the Netherlands to report on his term as governor. On his return to the colony, he spent the remainder of his life on his farm, Stuyvesant Farm, of sixty-two acres outside the city, called the Great Bouwerie, beyond which stretched the woods and swamps of the village of Nieuw Haarlem.
Peter Stuyvesant (born c. 1592, Scherpenzeel, Friesland, Netherlands—died February 1672, near New York, New York [U.S.]) was a Dutch colonial governor who tried to resist the English seizure of New York. Stuyvesant was the son of a Calvinist minister.
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The last and most efficient of Dutch proconsuls in the European struggle for control of North America, Peter Stuyvesant is remembered as the stubborn, somewhat choleric governor of the Dutch West India Company's base on the mainland. A zealous Calvinist, he brought a relatively effective government to the colony, absorbed the nearby rival Swedish s...
Born at Scherpenzeel, Friesland, Stuyvesant was the son of a Calvinist Dutch Reformed minister. He attended school in Friesland, where he heard much about New Netherland and about Holland's war with Spain. He became a student at the University of Franeker but was apparently expelled, for reasons unknown, about 1629.
Patriotic, and desiring adventure, Stuyvesant entered the service of the Dutch West India Companyfirst as a clerk and then, in 1635, as a supercargo to Brazil. By 1638 he had become chief commercial officer for Curaçao; in 1643 he returned there as governor. The following year he led an unsuccessful attack against the Portuguese colony of St. Marti...
Though harsh and dictatorial, Stuyvesant introduced a number of needed reforms, particularly directed toward improving New Amsterdam's living conditions. He appointed fire wardens and ordered chimney inspections, instituted a weekly market and annual cattle fair, required bakers to use standard weights, somewhat controlled traffic and sanitation, r...
One of Stuyvesant's first official acts was to organize a naval expedition against the Spaniards operating within the limits of the West India Company's charter. A force sent against Ft. Christina in 1655 conquered Sweden's province on the Delaware River and absorbed the settlements into New Netherland. Peace was made with marauding Native American...
The governor's salary plus allowances (approximately $1, 600, all told) enabled Stuyvesant to purchase a bouwerie, or farm, of 300 acres north of the city wall and a town lot for a house with gardens beside the fort. He lived comfortably in these, and his two sons were both born in New Amsterdam. In 1664, while England and Holland were still at pea...
Henry Kessler and Eugene Rachlis, Peter Stuyvesant and His New York (1959), is the most scholarly and readable study of Stuyvesant. Informative is John Franklin Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland (1909; new ed. 1952). Bayard Tuckerman, Peter Stuyvesant (1893), although outdated, is valuable. Hendrick Willem Van Loon, Life and Times of Pieter Stu...
Picard, Hymen Willem Johannes, Peter Stuyvesant, builder of New York, Cape Town: Hollandsch Afrikaansche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1975.
Peter Stuyvesant, also known as Petrus Stuyvesant, is an important figure in the history of New York City [earlier New Amsterdam], New York State and New Netherland. His name is still commonly used, especially in New York State, for street names, school names, building names, etc.
In 1664 the British seized the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. They met no resistance, for the people were glad to escape the rule of the governor, Peter Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant was born in Scherpenzeel, Friesland, the Netherlands, in about 1592.
Peter Stuyvesant was the last Dutch director-general of the New Netherland colony, serving from 1647 until its surrender to the English in 1664. His leadership marked a critical period in the development of Dutch colonial settlements, characterized by attempts to strengthen the economy and enforce order, but also faced challenges from diverse ...
Petrus Stuyvesant is best known as New Netherland longest, most influential, and last Dutch governor, having served until the English overthrew the colony’s Dutch administration and renamed it New York in 1664.
