Purchase price of Hudson County

In 1630, three Delaware natives "sold" the land of Pavonia or Hudson County to Dutch Burgermaster Michael Pauw for:

80 fathoms (146 m) of wampum, 

20 fathoms (37 m) of cloth, 

12 kettles, 

six guns, 

two blankets

one double kettle, and half a barrel of beer. 

These transactions were dated July 12, and November 22, and represent the earliest known conveyance for the area. 

Four years earlier, in 1626, these same Delaware natives had allegedly been responsible for 'selling' Manhattan Island to Pieter Minuit for 60 guilders before moving on to Pavonia.

4 interesting facts about New Jersey

The first American brewery was opened in Hoboken in 1642.

All New Jersey counties are classified as metropolitan areas - the only state in the USA to do so.

New Jersey is home to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island*.

Highlands, New Jersey, has the highest elevation along the entire Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine.

* This fact is particularly interesting as I'm sure most of us in the UK think these are in New York.

New Jersey - Ancient Heritage

Research for my novel, Manhattan Legacy, was a long and involved process during which I discovered so much about the beginnings of the United States of America in the 17th century. It took me on a fascinating journey and shook up a lot of my previously ignorant notions of America.
New Jersey is one such surprise. Far from being a place of rich housewives, Italians, Jersey Shore tourists and a strong accent, this State has an ancient history as rich and as fascinating as any in the world. An incredible heritage.

During the Jurassic Period, some 180 million years ago, New Jersey abutted North Africa. The Appalachian Mountains were a result of this head-on collision. Glaciers that formed during the Ice Age retreated to give rise to numerous swamps, rivers and gorges, including Glacial Lake Passaic formed from the melting waters of the Wisconsin Glacier and Glacial Lake Hackensack.

Around 10,000 years ago, the original peoples of America were feisty Paleo-Indians, survivors of inhospitable terrain and harsh weather. The Lenni Lenape, immigrants from the Mississippi Valley, were nomadic, big-game hunters, tracking wooly mammoths, giant sloths, sabre-toothed tigers and six-foot tall beavers across the icy wastelands of New Jersey an area called Scheyichbi by the Lenape. As the climate continued to become warmer, these prehistoric animals disappeared and, in their stead, was easier prey like white-tailed deer, raccoon and bear. The Lenape fished along the shoreline of New York Harbour using nets and fish hooks to collect clams, mussels and oysters and sea fish.

The Lenape of this region gradually became known as the Delaware. Their stone tools became more efficient and, with the advent of the bow and arrow, they began to settle in places for longer, built oval, bark-shingled houses and practised small-scale agriculture. They grew squashes, beans, maize and tobacco and gathered nuts such as walnuts, chestnuts and beechnuts.

With venison, oysters, clams, corn, sweet potatoes and walnuts on the menu, their diet would be the envy of some of today's more discerning diners.

By the time the first European explorers arrived in the 16th century there were 8,000 to 20,000 Delaware living in parts of Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. Life was to change dramatically for New Jersey's Delaware natives when Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed along the New Jersey coastline in 1524.

It's an extraordinary thing to realise that, far from being a 'newly-established' country, the USA is home to one of the world's oldest peoples.

The European Invasion! Read part two in my next blog.

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How I survived rape, psychopaths and gangsters and wrote my first book, Manhattan Legacy

With the list of my academic and workplace history neatly recounted under the 'About Me' heading on my Blogspot, I can now add the real story: the one that allows me to write about harrowing subjects, such as rape, murder, abuse and rejection, with authority.

Born of a schizophrenic mother, I have always been ambivalent about relationships and how much I mattered in them. I was twelve when my mother was finally carried away, restrained, quite literally, by men in white coats. There were incidents during the previous three years when I'd been drawn into her different personas – she'd fantasize about my father being dead; she'd declare, taking her hands off the steering wheel, that my deceased Grandma was driving the car; she'd leave me to be accused of stealing from a shop when Grandma hadn't turned up to pay. She had one of her worst episodes - trying to kill herself by driving into a hedge - while I was at school and I'd arrived home just as she was being taken away for 'treatment'.

My mother had never wanted me and blamed me for sentencing her to life with a man she disliked. In those days divorce was not an option. Three months later after undergoing ECT and psychotic drug treatments she returned home, a stranger to me, needing forty-two pills a day and constant monitoring.

Four years later my father moved us to London, which was wonderful, overwhelming and frightening to a naïve girl from the backwaters of Hertfordshire.

My next nightmare was at the hands of a friend of my father, Sam*, tasked to introduce me to London life. I suffered rape and humiliation at the hands of this man and his friends.

I escaped my parents' acrimonious marriage breakdown by moving in with a much older man, an alcoholic with violent moods and from a totally different background, a true East Ender, born within the sounds of Bow Bells. This was Hackney and Dalston long before they became a chic place to live, with pubs that harboured thieves and murderers, gyms that fostered the planning of crimes and council flats that held parties to celebrate successes by the likes of the Krays and the Richardsons. I was witness to a brutal gangland killing, was beaten badly myself and lived in hovels. It took me four years to return to my mother.

My next escape arrived in the form of a charming, good-looking man, well known in music industry circles, a social animal seen at every important premiere, gig and club opening. It was only when I married him and committed myself to bringing up my two sons that I discovered the back story. I lived a weird life of deceit and lies for 23 years before he finally walked out, leaving us homeless and penniless. I suffered a nervous breakdown.

Quite a life so far. But as you can see, I can talk about the disturbing world of psychopaths, mentally disturbed people and physical and mental abuse with authority. I've only skimmed over the above details – there's far, far more to come. I plan to divulge the full story of my life in future blogs.

* Not his real name

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Why I wrote Manhattan Legacy

To remember why I wrote my book, I need to think back to when I first had the idea to commit to a novel. No particular subject had gripped me and I had already started many projects that are yet to be developed.

I was casually grazing through sites on the internet which, back in 2000, were slow to load and lacking much content, when I came across details of a book about Wall Street. The book was called The Great Game by John Steele Gordon, the acclaimed business historian. I read some of the sample material and found myself drawn into a riveting history of a little lane, originally called Het Cingel, in New Amsterdam that went on to change the nature of trading and commerce forever. 

I bought the book, read to page 192, and then saw the picture that was to capture my imagination. It was a simple, woodcut illustration depicting a primitive palisade beside which two men in doublets, boots and breeches stood discussing the merits of a high wall. Above the two chatting men was a guard, musket over one shoulder, patrolling atop the four-foot high breastwork that supported the twelve-foot pales. It was 1653 and this was newly-built Wall Street in New Amsterdam, a Dutch colonial town on the tip of Manhattan Island, that would become the foundation upon which New York was built.

One of the men had a peg-leg and was pointing at the wooden defence with his walking stick. That man, the man responsible for ordering the construction of the wall as protection for the colony against attacks by natives and foreign enemies, was Governor Pieter Stuyvesant.

I researched 17th century history and, in particular, the period of history now known as the Golden Age of Discovery, finding not only warring nations in Europe, the beginnings of global slavery, religious intolerance and conflict, pirates, Native Americans, witch hunts, racial and gender inequality, countries fighting for territorial and maritime supremacy in the New World, but also the extraordinary birth of the first truly modern nation. This was novel-writing gold!

The characters in my first novel, Manhattan Legacy, live in that Age: they feel, smell, see and experience 17th century life. Mostly, though, my book is about how one individual can create and influence a series of events that have far-reaching consequences for many other people. The fact that the thousands of choices, decisions and laws made during that period still affect us today is a constant source of spine-tingling awe for me.

The surviving characters from my first novel will feature in my next and subsequent books.

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Why Give Thanks?

Part Two

Giving thanks to God, whatever the religion or belief system, has been part of every culture since time immemorial: for health, for victory over rivals and for plentiful harvests. Special dates are set for these Festivals and most are celebrated on an annual basis.

The tradition of Thanksgiving in the United States has its roots in English history. In 1536, during the reign of King Henry Ⅷ, there were 95 Church holidays and 52 Sundays, when no work was allowed and attending Church services was mandatory. After the Reformation, this number was reduced to 27, with some Puritans wishing to eliminate Christmas and Easter festivities, too!

The 'Holy Days' became Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving. Fasting Days were to mark disasters and threats and Thanksgiving Days to celebrate special blessings coming from God.

Puritans and Pilgrims who emigrated from England took these traditions with them to New England. Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621 and 1623 and the Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631 are among the first Thanksgiving Days recognised in American history.

Harvest festivals did not become an annual affair in New England until the late 1660's, when Dutch-held territories in the New World were seized by the English. Thanksgiving proclamations were declared by both State and Church until after the American Revolution and were invariably on differing dates. An annual nationwide Thanksgiving date was announced by George Washington in 1789 and it was to be known as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God.”

In 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed that the last Thursday in November was to be a day when all Americans, from Northern and Southern States, joined together in unity to celebrate Thanksgiving. Unfortunately the Confederacy refused to recognise Lincoln's authority and it was not implemented until the Reconstruction in the 1870's.

On 26^th December 1941, President Franklin D Roosevelt signed a joint resolution in Congress citing the fourth Thursday In November as the national Thanksgiving Day.

It is always with a sense of envy that I watch reports of Americans celebrating this very important festival. People travel for hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to be reunited with their relatives on this special day and reaffirm their love and care for one another and their country.

In England, we do not have any comparable occasion. The Scots have Burn's Night, the Irish celebrate St.Patrick's Day and the Welsh have St. David. St. George's Day, honouring our English Saint, is a lukewarm, recently revived attempt at recognising England, but somehow it only seems to be drunks and fanatics who enjoy it, nor do our harvest festivals have quite the importance or relevance they once had with the advent of supermarkets and all-year-round imported foodstuffs. In a way it's very sad and not having our Day of Thanksgiving doesn't allow us to embrace our past and acknowledge those that built our country.

America – your ancestors survived unimaginable hardships in crossing the Atlantic, starvation, hostile environments, adversities we can only wonder at, but your adventurous spirit and sense of nationality prevailed - you should always give thanks for that!

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Why Give Thanks?

Part One

It wasn't a great journey - 3,000 miles in a leaky, wooden galleon, at the mercy of all the elements: thunderstorms, howling gales, freezing snowstorms, maggoty meat, weevil-infested biscuits, soured beer, no water, all within an atmosphere of stinking animal ordure, human vomit and Death on constant call with his life-ending scythe.

Then, imagine stepping onto stable ground, the churning sea behind you, ahead green meadows, flowers, fully clothed trees, the sweet smell of brine-less air and tinkling streams of pure mountain water.

Yes, this is your first first day in the New World. Here you can worship your God without fear of persecution, you can build a cabin to house your growing family, till the land and grow your grain and vegetables and live in freedom and happiness..

Paradise Arrived!

No, not really!

Where's your first meal coming from? Where is your shelter for the first night? What do you do with your worldly possessions? Your seed crops are spoiled from exposure to seawater on board ship. What plants are poisonous? What wild animals are lurking in the forests ready to kill you?

Henry Hudson described the island of Manhattan as “The land is the finest for cultivation that I have ever in my life set foot upon, and it also abounds in trees of every description.”

This account, along with glowing reports from the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, had enticed all manner of people to the New World: Pilgrims, Puritans and Calvinists, who sought religious freedom of worship and settlers, who wanted a life away from the strictures of poverty, punitive laws, robbing nobles and European wars.

The truth of this new land, though, was not what the colonists had expected - it was an alien territory of disease, the unbearable cold of a mini Ice Age, no food and very little shelter. There was, however, God's love, hope, a gritty determination to succeed and the local natives, the Wampanoag.

The Mayflower's Pilgrims landed on December 16^th, 1620 and set up home in a deserted Wampanoag village, Patuxet. It had been abandoned four years earlier after an outbreak of the plague, brought by earlier Europeans, had wiped out two-thirds of the tribe in the region, which, pre-pestilence, had numbered between 50,000 and 100,000.

Although the Wampanoag had noted the arrival of strangers, they had not regarded the newcomers as a warlike threat as they were accompanied by woman and children. The natives observed them through their first winter, but kept their distance.

On March 16^th, 1621, Samoset, a member of the Moneghan tribe from Maine, visited Patuxet. He returned the following day accompanied by a Wampanoag native called Tisquantum or Squanto. It was this kindly man who showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn, where and how to fish and what nuts and berries were safe to eat. That same month the Pilgrims and Ousamequin or Massasoit, the Pokanoket Wampanoag Chief, agreed a treaty of mutual protection.

In the Autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims harvested their first crop, and it was a fine yield. The Pilgrims sent four men 'on fowling' and, according to an account by Pilgrim Edward Winslow, one of only two sources of this historical event, they used guns to capture their prey. On hearing the gunfire, Massasoit believed his settler friends were under attack and showed up at Patuxet ready to give support.

The natives were invited to join in the harvest festivities, but there were 90 natives and there wasn't enough food for all. Massasoit sent his men out to hunt and they brought back five deer which they presented to William Bradford, the English leader.

The ensuing feast lasted for three days. There was venison, seafood, water-fowl, maize bread, pumpkin, squashes of all description and possibly 'fowl' or turkey.

How did this small feast of sharing and giving thanks at Patuxet become Thanksgiving, one of the greatest annual events in American history? See Part Two of 'Why Give Thanks?' tomorrow, on the Eve of Thanksgiving.

For more on 17th century Manhattan life read my novel, Manhattan Legacy, available as a print copy or eBook.


Read my novel Manhattan Legacy available on Lulu.com

Read reviews of Manhattan Legacy on Amazon

You can buy Manhattan Legacy in various ebook formats on Smashwords