Augustine Herrman, Beginner of the Virginia Tobacco Trade, Merchant of New Amsterdam and First Lord of Bohemia Manor in Maryland/Chapter 8

by Leon Heck

Chapter VIII

THE PERSONAL LIFE OF AUGUSTINE HERRMAN

Before the publication of the early colonial records of the American Atlantic states, the seventeenth century was the dark age of American history. It was an age of half-legendary heroes about whom tradition and family hearsay wove many a fanciful and highly colored tale. And there were few men living in those times about whom legend has woven more fancy than Augustine Herrman; reconstructing him in keeping with his romantic birthplace, Prague, in his still more romantic country, Bohemia. Tradition has speculated for more than two hundred years about his historic quarrel with Peter Stuyvesant. Some believe that it arose because the two were in love with a certain Jannetje or Jane Verlett, the fair daughter of Casper and Judith Verlett, first of the Dutch colony of Good Hope, near Hartford, Connecticut and later of New Amsterdam. Whether she spurned the tempestuous old Dutch governor we do not know, but it is a matter of record that she married Augustine Herrman, December 10, 1651 at New Amsterdam.^[1] Others in a less romantic mood believe that Stuyvesant and Herrman quarreled over the map which Herrman made for Lord Baltimore, but obviously this assumption is untrue because the map was not even begun until at least eight years after the quarrel. We have in a former chapter gone into this question to some length and have offered a number of reasons to account for the breach between Herrman and his chief; here in a less serious chapter, but probably a more interesting one, we need only say that the reason why Stuyvesant quarrelled with Herrman was for the same reason that he quarrelled with Adriaen Van der Donck and Govert Loockermans or any other man of enterprise, ability and energy. The simple fact seems to be that Stuyvesant could not get along with anyone who had a mind of his own.

The most famous and fanciful legend woven around Herrman’s name is that of the famous white horse, which story alone is ample to make him forever immortal in the traditions of American annals; and it is fortunate that the subject has been woven into art in the form of a painting depicting Herrman and his steed. According to the story, sometime between 1663 and 1673 (the precise year is of no particular consequence), Herrman rode up from Bohemia Manor to look after some property interest he still held in New Amsterdam. Those who choose the earlier date insist that Peter Stuyvesant had him arrested for deserting him for Lord Baltimore; while those who persist in the later date say that the Dutch, who for a short time regained possession of New York, arrested him as a traitor for secretly turning over New Amsterdam to the English in 1664.^[2] But regardless of the precise year and the reason whereof, he was arrested. Whereupon Herrman suddenly feigned madness and refused to mount his white charger which he had ridden from Maryland. Accordingly Herrman and the horse were led to the second story of a stone warehouse, where he was securely locked in. The Dutchmen, believing that their prisoner was safely confined for the night, departed to their homes; and as was their wont, went to bed early. Toward the dead hours of night, one who chanced to burn a midnight candle was startled to hear a tremendous crash in the direction of the warehouse, and rushing to his door he was just in time to see, by the light of a full moon, two weird figures leap from the building, a flash of ghostly white across the Bowling Green and the terrific speed of a white horse toward the North River, bearing aloft the haughty figure of the lord of Bohemia Manor. Straight across the deep, wide river did the faithful beast convey his master to the Jersey shore, thence across the wild country of New Jersey, over the Delaware River, back home to Cecil County, Maryland. Some of the more imaginative believe, perhaps, that the noble animal, like Dick Turpin’s horse which fell dead beneath the mighty tower of York Minster after conveying the highwayman hither from London in an overnight trip, perished when he brought his master to the very door of the Manor house; whilst others of a more humanitarian turn of mind assert that he lived many years thereafter, roaming, by special license, all the green meadows of Bohemia Manor,

 

“Where he and his master would frolic for hours,
Amidst the green grass and the tiny blue flowers.”

 

At any rate, it seems that Herrman buried the faithful horse in grand state and had a monument erected over his grave. Later a painting was made of Herrman and his horse, and this portrait with the engraving on the map are the only two likenesses we have of Augustine Herrman.^[3]

First of all, Herrman was an adventurer, as that term was applied to men of rank during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who undertook to form new colonies in the New World. In the eighteenth century the term “cavalier” was used and during the nineteenth century the word “pioneer” denoted much of what the adventurer was like two or three hundred years earlier. To Herrman, life was one long series of adventures, noble and honorable. By birth and education Herrman was an aristocrat in the best meaning of the word and ever remained one both as a merchant and trader of New Amsterdam and later as lord of Bohemia Manor. He seemed to be above the small and petty things of life, and one can think of no incident that better illustrates his nature than his willingness to overlook the triviality of Peter Stuyvesant in the matter of the absurd letter given him on his mission to Governor Coddington of Rhode Island. There appears never to have been an active resentment or even an attempt of retaliation against Stuyvesant on Herrman’s part. This was not because Herrman was without temper and passion. Far from it; for on occasions he could become quite angry, but he punished his enemies openly and fairly. Herrman, if we are to judge by his many lawsuits, both in New Amsterdam and Maryland, was as quarrelsome and sometimes unreasonable as any of his highspirited contemporaries; but he did manage to keep his temper under control for the most part. A good cultural education in his youth had taught him the advisability of moderation.

There is very little contemporary information by which we might judge Herrman’s family life. That his home life with his first wife was happy and satisfactory seems conclusive, for she seems to have been a lady of no little culture and refinement as judged by the standards of early seventeenth century America. Unfortunately she did not live long to enjoy her title as wife of the first lord of Bohemia Manor; but Herrman and his first wife were highly regarded by the third Lord Baltimore for their grace and hospitality. Jannetje Herrman died about the year 1664, having born to her husband two sons and three daughters.^[4]

In 1666 Herrman married Catherine Ward of Upper Baltimore County. She was probably the daughter of his neighbor, Henry Ward.^[5] Very little is known of the second Lady Herrman beyond the description given by the Labadist diarists. Yet she could not have been the most amiable and affable of women to be described even by a bigoted fanatic as “miserable, doubly miserable and too miserable to describe.” There most certainly was something about Catherine Ward Herrman that was not altogether to her credit, even though she may have merited only a one-hundredth part of the severe criticism of Sluyter and Dankaerts. She most likely was not the type of woman of Jannetje in point of amiability, grace and charm; and for this reason the Manor House was not the center of social life as formerly, a fact that Herrman himself no doubt much regretted. We would judge, too, from both the direct evidence of the Labadist diarists and from other indirect sources that Catherine Herrman made life uncomfortable for the children of her husband by his first wife.

Yet after the death of Jannetje there was another woman besides his daughters who was always a source of happiness to Herrman. This was Jannetje’s sister, Anna Hack who, during the New Amsterdam period of Herrman’s life had played such an important part. In 1665 (or early in 1666) her husband, Dr. George Hack had died, leaving her two sons, George Nicholas and Peter, and two daughters, Katherine and Ann. The Hacks, as we have before pointed out, were also large landowners in Cecil County, one of the largest of their estates, Hackston on the northern shore of the Sassafracx River, consisting of eight hundred acres. Another of the Hack estates was located on the southern shore of the Bohemia River nearly opposite the manor house and this site is still known as Hack’s Point.^[6] After the death of her husband, Anna Hack with her sons and daughters continued to reside in Maryland, though she still retained much land in Virginia. Peter Hack bought more land in Cecil County, but it seems that at about the time of Augustine Herrman’s death he returned to Virginia, where he became active in the political life of that colony.

Among Herrman’s long list personal friends, the names of the third Lord Baltimore, Govert Loockermans and Adriaen Van der Donck figure most prominently. Lord Baltimore was lavish in his grants to Herrman, never tiring of the hospitality of Bohemia Manor and always ready to increase Herrman’s influence and prestige. Loockermans and Van der Donck were his best friends during his merchant days. Van der Donck, New Amsterdam’s first and only historian, describes Herrman as “a curious man and a lover of the country”.^[7] It is also in this connection that Van der Donck speaks of Herrman cultivating a superior variety of indigo on Manhattan Island.

No sooner did Herrman become an English subject and subsequently the lord of a manor than he adopted the habits and daily life of a British nobleman. He constructed a deer park south of the Manor House, about which we have already spoken. Always a skilled horseman, he took to foxhunting and eventually was convinced that a country gentleman should spend much of his time at this sport. Consequently he became as hard-riding a squire as one could find in the English domains of two continents. When Herrmann was asked one day why he was going to will the whole of Bohemia Manor to one son, he replied to the effect that by making a number of heirs he would also be making just as many foxhunters. Herrman was also very fond of shooting. Judging from the entry in the Labadist journal about being kept awake by the wild fowl, one would judge that duck hunting was excellent on the Bohemia River in those days. On one occasion it is related that his son Ephraim, upon bringing down only four wild fowl with one shot, complained about his bad luck and declared that a dozen was his usual number.

Judging from Herrman’s financial difficulties from time to time, one would infer that he was not the most careful person about matters pertaining to money; not that he was by any means a spendthrift. He was a generous man and doubtless gave away much and at times when he could ill afford to do so. His kindness in receiving Sluyter and Dankaerts under his roof is proof of his generosity; particularly so when he was repaid by only slander of himself and family.

As to religion Herrman was likely much in advance of his day. So far as we know, he kept to the Protestant faith. His life was contemporary with an age that ushered in countless religious sects, each professing the true doctrine of salvation, condemnning the rest as unchristian. It was an age of blind bigotry and an incapacity toward toleration and understanding. Men of education were wont to turn away from all religious discussion and build up their own theology upon that type of philosophy that appealed to them most. His liberal tendencies in religious matters Herrman no doubt received from his parents, whom we suppose to have been among the leading Protestants of Prague. While in New Amsterdam he and his family were members of the Dutch Reformed Church and here his children were christened. On his manor Herrman erected a small chapel where he and his family and servants worshipped and assembled for prayers. It was called St. Augustine’s chapel. Dankaerts’ statement that Herrman was a “very godless person” probably reflects less on Herrman than it does on the Labadist diarist.

Perhaps the outstanding attribute of Augustine Herrman’s personality was his normal and rational attitude toward life in general. In an age torn on the one hand by religious persecution and fanaticism and on the other by material greed, he was among the few of the seventeenth century Americans who stand out and above the petty trivialities that troubled men’s minds. Because it did so, it is instructive for us today to read of his life.

 

1. Valentine’s Manual (1861), p. 644. The marriage record gives the name Janneken. In his will Herrman refers to his first wife as Joanna. Their marriage registry is in Collegiate Church, New York City.
2. For an interesting and well written popular account of Herrman’s life see E. N. Vallandingham’s article in the New York Sun for Oct. 23, 1892 reprinted in Phillip’s Rare Map of Va. and Md., pp. 18–23.
3. Various versions of the Story of Herrman and his horse exist among family traditions. One has it that under the pretense of exercising his horse in the confines of Fort Amsterdam, permission for which was permitted him, he caused the horse to leap through the embrasure from which one of the cannons had been withdrawn. Swimming the North River the horse carried Herrman as far as New Castle where it died. There is an interesting metrical version of the story in George Alfred Townsend’s “Tales from the Chesepeake”. One-half of a horse bit was recovered from the ruins of the first manor house of exactly the same pattern as the bit in the portrait of Herrman and his horse. The original portrait is said to be lost. A reproduction appears in Elroy McKendree Avery’s History of the United States (1910), Vol. III. p. 51. A copy is also in the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. March 20, 1941, the Maryland State Legislature appropriated the sum of $200.00 for a portrait of Herrman to be hung in the Capitol at Annapolis. Former U. S. Senator Thomas F. Bayard of Wilmington, Del., has a copy of a painting of Herrman and his horse, that is more pleasing than the one owned by the Md. Hist. Soc. The original copy is in the possession of Senator Bayard’s cousin, Mrs. Melville.
4. The Maryland Historical Society possesses a painting of Jannetje Verlett Herrman. She is represented as a refined and delicate type of woman.
5. Matthews, E. B. Maryland Geological Survey, Vol. 2. p. 375.
6. Johnston, George, History of Cecil County, Md., 1881. p. 71.
7. Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant, Amsterdam, 1656. (Description of New Netherland.) The full text of the translation is given in the New York Historical Collections, Vol. I, 2nd Series (1841). This is, of course, the earliest history of New York and the original edition is of the greatest importance to the student of seventeenth century America.