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Whereas the director general and councilors of New Netherland, sufficiently understand not only by reports but by their own observations, that the magistrates and inhabitants of the village of Midwout cannot agree, but are almost continually at loggerheads, about the formation of their village and the consolidation of the settlement, whereby so necessary an matter has been retarded to the detriment of the commonalty and of private persons; the director general and councilors aforesaid deemed it necessary, after inspection and examination, to provide for it, and have to that end decided upon a model or plan according to which they understand that the aforesaid village ought and shall be formed under existing circumstances; which model and plan they herewith send to the schout, Pieter Tonneman, and the magistrates of the aforesaid village, with express order and command to lay out the settlement and the lots thereunto required in the form agreeably to the aforesaid model, and to allot to them who is first ready to build, without distinction of persons and without making any alteration in the plan; hereby commanding, at the same time, all inhabitants already residing, or hereafter coming to live in the village aforesaid, to submit themselves to the aforesaid order, model and survey, and to the taxes or assessments which the aforesaid schout and magistrates shall find necessary to collect with the advice of the director general and councilors, in order to promote the setting off of the aforesaid village with palisades and a blockhouse. Thus done in the session of the honorable director general and councilors held in Amsterdam in New Netherland. Ady ut supra; (was signed:) P. Stuyvesant, Nicasius de Sille, La Montagne, Cor. van Tienhoven.

References

Translation: Gehring, C., trans./ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. 6, Council Minutes, 1655-1656 (Syracuse: 1995). A complete copy of this publication is available on the New Netherland Institute website.