PLOCKHOY
TO CAPE HENLOPEN
1663
Pierer
Cornelisz Plockhoy was born a Mennonite around 1625 in Zierikzee, a
Dutch province of Zeeland. Plockhoy was an Idealists, not all that
much knowledgeable of the hard nose political reality of a strict
social economic class that goverened the European people for
centuries. He advocated a society where there are no classes , no
disperity between rich and poor, an egalitarian colony in new
America.
Sometime
between 1658 and 1660 he obtained financial backing by the City of
Amsterdam to support a colony and set about to recruit the desired
colonists, farmers, fishermen and craftsmen. In the month of May
1663, he and about 40 followers set sail for America on the ship
Saint Jacob, which arrived off Cape Henlopen in July 1663, and
Plockhoy led the colonists, bag and bagage and farm utensils, ashore.
The
Dutch and England were at war and two years after this settlement was
established , after Dutch Peter Stutvesant surrendered New Amsterdam,
the English sent Sir Robert Carr to Delaware where he had little
difficulty subduing the dutch settlements, including the Plockhoy
settlement. The Duke of York ordered Carr that the Dutch Colonists
in Delaware were to be treated with humanity and gentalness,
however, Carr boasted that he destroyed the 'Quaking society of
Plockhoy to a nail', and Plockhoy just vanished.
Abstract
of Delaware Diary of Michael Morgan in the Delaware Coast Press,
Wednesday May 4, 2016.
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