In the 17th century, the Dutch West India Company found that it needed patrons to invest in their ventures in the New World. To those ends it introduced Patroonships, a form of plantation ownership, where wealthy men in Amsterdam in Holland were encouraged to take on areas of wilderness in New Netherland with the proviso that they would send at least fifty colonists to settle there.
One of the best locations was snapped up in 1630 by Michael Pauw, who named his Patroonship, 'Pavonia', after his own Latinised surname. It was located along the west bank shores of the Noorte (Hudson) and Hackensack Rivers and sat opposite Manhattan Island.
Unfortunately, this Patroonship was a dismal failure and Pauw swiftly sold it back to the West India Company. The Company set about resettling Pavonia and in 1633, commissioned the building of a homestead for one of its superintendents, Jan Evertsz Bout. The spit of land on which the house was built was known as Jan de Lacher's Hoeck or Jan, the Laughter's Point after his jocular nature. His homestead was the beginnings of present-day Communipaw, named after the Lenape gamunkpeauke, meaning the 'landing place on the other side of the river'. Bergen was a factorij or trading post for this colony. Plantations, worked by enslaved Africans, spread out across the lowlands between the shoreline and the hills.
A second bouwerie (home farm) was established in 1634, for Bout's replacement, Cornelis Hendriksen Van Voorst, at Ahasimus, the Lenape for 'Crow's Marsh.' Voorst's descendants would play a prominent role in the development of Jersey City.
Dutchman Abraham Isaac Planck was given a land grant for Paulus Hook on May 1, 1638. A small farmstead was set up at Kewan Punt. In Hobuk (Hoboken), the leasehold of Aert Van Putten saw the founding of North America's first brewery.
Further small settlements were established throughout Pavonia, securing a foothold on the west bank of the Noorte River and giving the West India Company strategic control over the trading posts for settlers and natives who dealt in valuable beaver pelts.
As the Swedish and the English move in, can the Dutch survive? Read what happens next time.
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