1653 - Gov. Johan Printz clears off New Sweden

Christmas in New Amsterdam (engrav. 1879)

January 3, 1653 - Lord Baltimore orders Governor William Stone to regain control of his province by force. He requires people of the colony to swear to him the oath of allegiance as the absolute Lord and Proprietor of Maryland and to obey its laws.

Stone formed a militia with mission to require the settlers to swear allegiance to Baltimore and to disarm and strip of their properties those who would refuse. He put somehow an end to freedom of conscience that characterized the province of Maryland to engage in civil war. 

John Haynes

Early January, 1653 - John Haynes, former governor of Massachusetts and Connecticut, dies in Hartford at the age of 58. Edward Hopkins who ruled the colony alternately with him since 1640 (except for the 1642-1643 period) remains in office.

Despite his questionable implications in some religious controversies and his ambiguous role during the first witchcraft lawsuits in Connecticut, Haynes enjoyed great popularity in a colony that he had largely contributed to ensure development. One of his sons, Hezekiah Haynes had returned to England to serve as an officer in Cromwell's army.

February 2, 1653 - New Amsterdam which has at that time more than 700 residents is incorporated and takes officially its name. The director of the colony Peter Stuyvesant gives a speech in this occasion recalling that his authority is in no way lessened while " he derives his power from God and the Company and not some ignorant subjects. "

The first meeting of the new City Council was held on February 6 under the chairmanship of Mayors Arendt Van Hattem and Marten Kregur. The people of the town began the construction of a wall that would run throughout the Manhattan peninsula to protect them against the incursions of the Indians and a possible English attack. This one was made of earth and wood and had two gates, one at the level of current Broadway and the second at the corner of Pearl Street. Wall Street keeps the memory of this construction.

Mars 1653 - John Endecott is re-elected governor of Massachusetts for the third consecutive year.

April, 1653 - the towns of the Plymouth colony are required to send deputies to Plymouth to accept the new military provisions, given the conflict between England and Holland. 

Captain Thomas Willett who was a member of the War Council was appointed to oversee the distribution of powder and ammunition. He also had the responsibility to lead, together with Myles Standish, the first English expedition against the Dutch positions. This did not take place due to the cessation of hostilities in Europe from August.

Ninigret

May, 1653 - Knowing that he still enjoys John Endecott's benevolent neutrality, Sachem Ninigret sends a group of Niantic warriors on Long Island to attack the Montauk village where lives their iconic sachem Wyandanch. They kill 30 of his men and make 14 prisoners whose the sachem’s own daughter.

Ninigret had taken advantage of his winter spent in New Amsterdam to agree with the Dutch. It was not the first time that he plotted against the English and he had the grudge. Since the death of Miantonomo, his nephew killed by the Mohegan foes with the complicity of Massachusetts, Ninigret had tried to ally with Montaukette sachem Wayndanch but the latter had declined, even delivering his messenger to the English.

The Anglo-Dutch War allowed him to take his revenge by settling accounts with Wayndanch of whom he did not bear his betrayal. He had at first tried to make kill Mandush, sachem of the Shinnecocks, a minor tribe under the Montaukettes but the attempt had failed.

He had decided this time to attack directly Wayndanch, knowing he could rely on Roger Williams’s promise not to intervene in this dispute between Indians.

.Lion Gardiner, who became friendly with Wyandanch since he had bought lands, got personally involved to go to Rhode Island and retrieve the young girl in exchange for a ransom.

May, 1653 - John Sanford is elected president of the Newport and Porstmouth Plantations in Rhode Island, so succeeding William Coddington.

John Sanford (c. 1605 - May, 1654), from Alford, Lincolnshire, he emigrated to New England in 1631 aboard the Lyon. Engaged alongside Anne Hutchinson during the controversy that opposed her to the General Court of Massachusetts, he had followed her after banishment. He had signed the Portsmouth Compact with the other founders of this city. After the death of his first wife, he remarried with Bridget, a daughter of William and Anne Hutchinson. Sanford died just over a month after his election on June 22, 1653.

Artistic view of Providence c. 1650

May, 1653 - Gregory Dexter becomes the new president of Warwick and Providence, Rhode Island.

Gegory Dexter (Olney (Northamptons.) 1610-1700) -  a professional printer, he had his workshop in London. There he began attending the Baptist church and to exchange letters  with Roger Williams. He met him in 1643 and printed his work entitled " A Key into the Language of America " which was the first English translation of the Indian language. Dexter decided to leave to Rhode Island with Roger William and moved to Providence where he took part then in the affairs of the colony until his election as president.

June, 1653 - William Bradford is re-elected governor of Plymouth. Thomas Prence and John Brown are appointed commissioners to the United Colonies.

July 6, 1653 – Powhatan Chief Totopotomoy sends a petition to the General Assembly of Virginia calling on behalf of his people the statutory grant of a land as it had been promised two years before. 

The Assembly decides to give him the choice between the land he already occupies and the one called Ramomak (Romancoke). Two other weroances, Weyanoke Ascomowett, nicknamed king of the " South Indians " and Chiskiak Ossakican, representing the " North Indians " complaint on their side of the allotment of a 5000 acre land.

Ascomowett was granted a land south of the James River beyond the borders marked out in 1646 and Ossakican was confirmed the land where he was already settled with his tribe at the mouth of the Piankatank River. The Assembly ensured that the Indians are compensated for all the territories they had conceded since 1642 to English plantations. This also showed how the Europeans had spread to the north and west foreshadowing the creation of the new County of Gloucester in 1653.

Totopotomoy had succeeded Necotowance in 1649 as leader of the Pamunkeys. The Powhatan confederacy having been dissolved, he did not represent more than the interests of his own tribe with the English authorities. 

June 2, 1653 - The Massachusetts Bay Colony refuses to vote with the United Colonies of New England against the settlers of New Netherlands. The government of Boston actually fear that the Dutch become allied to the Niantic Indians to attack the people of Connecticut.

July, 1653 - the Assembly of Virginia assigns lands to Roger Green along the Roanoke and Chowan rivers, in current North Carolina. A group of settlers does not delay moving there to found the city of Albemarle.

This area was previously explored by fur trader Nathaniel Batts on behalf of merchant and member of the House of Burgesses Francis Yardley who intended to base a trading post there. He had even got on with the Roanoke Indians to purchase a portion of their land but had died before achieving his project.

Gov. Johan Printz

July 27, 1653 - 22 settlers of New Sweden submit a petition to Governor Johan Printz. They denounce the insecurity in which they live and complain about the ban imposed on them to trade with the Indians and Christians. They accuse the brutality and greed of their leader and his ways to override the decisions of the court.

They blamed the governor for giving himself all generosity and earnings while it was forbidden to them to grind their corn, to fish, to chop wood, to mow the grass and even to farm the land from which depended nevertheless their survival. They also demanded the release of Anders Jonson, the Finnish settler wrongfully imprisoned  while his wife and children were starving. They concluded by threatening to send two delegates to report their situation to the queen and the Company of New Sweden.
Enraged, Johan Printz had Jonson executed on August 1st but fearing for his own safety and without waiting for the arrival of the next ship from Sweden, he left early October with his family for New Amsterdam abandoning the direction of the colony to his son-in-law captain Johan Papegoja. He returned to Sweden aboard a Dutch ship and never returned to America where posterity now considered him the tyrant of Delaware.

July 31, 1653 – former governor of Massachusetts and Puritan leader Thomas Dudley dies at Roxbury at the age of 77.

October 10, 1653 - the government of New Amsterdam fixes the price of the  Fulton Ferry between Manhattan and Long Island at 3 per person.

This connection worked since 1642 when it had been organized by Cornelius Dicksen but it was actually a year that the line was regular. The Indians had to pay double fee just because they were often more loaded than the settlers.

November 4, 1653 - The directors of the Dutch West India Company inform Governor Peter Stuyvesant that they are no longer opposed to receive Swedish settlers.

Under  Printz’s government, some settlers had been able to escape towards Maryland and Virginia but it was almost impossible to them to run away to the New Netherlands because of agreements concluded between both colonies. After his abruptly leaving, some colonists returned to New Sweden but others moved to Maryland. New governor Papegoja decided to hire a group of Indians to get them back by force. The runaways resisted but in the confrontation that ensued, two Swedes were shot down and their heads brought to Papegoja.

December 11, 1653 -Newly arrived in New Amsterdam, nobleman Jan Strycker becomes head of a group of residents of Flatbush (Midwout) to write a petition blaming Director Peter Stuyvesant’s behavior... "they apprehend the establishment of an arbitrary government over them; that it is contrary to the genuine principles of well regulated governments that one or more men should arrogate to themselves the exclusive power to dispose at will of the life and property of any individual; that it is odious to every freeborn man, principally so to those whom God has placed in a free state or newly settled lands. We humbly submit that 'tis one of our privileges that our consent, or that of our representatives is necessarily required in the enactment of laws and orders.". 

Jan Strycker (1615-1697)

Jan Strycker (Ruinen, Holland 1615- 1697) born Jan Gerritse de Potter Strijker into an old aristocratic family of Drenthe, he had received in 1643 from the States General of Holland, a domain in New Amsterdam on condition to bring at least 12 new settlers. He spent nine years before he decided to give up his rights and privileges to emigrate to the New Netherlands with his wife and their four children.

1653 – Missionary Reverend  John Eliot publishes in Cambridge a first "catechism" written in Indian language. He succeeds the same year to get into Harvard’s his student John Sassamon, a Massachusett Native who will become afterward his interpreter and his writer with the Wampanoag sachem.