Colonial days in old New York

by Alice Morse Earle

CHAPTER VIII
THE DUTCH VROUWS

There is much evidence to show that the women of Dutch descent of the early years of New Netherland and New York had other traits than those of domestic housewifery; they partook frequently of the shrewdness and business sagacity and capacity of their Dutch husbands. Widows felt no hesitation and experienced no difficulty in carrying on the business affairs of their dead partners; wives having capable, active husbands boldly engaged in independent business operations of their own; their ventures were as extended and fearless as those of the men. They traded for peltries with the Indians with marked success. I suspect part of the profit may have come through the Indian braves’ serene confidence in their own superior sagacity in bargaining and trafficking with the “white squaws.” The Labadist travellers wrote thus despitefully of a “female-trader” in Albany in 1679:—

“This woman, although not of openly godless life, is more wise than devout, although her knowledge is not very extensive, and does not surpass that of the women of New Netherland. She is a truly worldly woman, proud and conceited, and sharp in trading with wild people as well as tame ones, or what shall I call them not to give them the name of Christians, or if I do, it is only to distinguish them from the others. She has a husband, who is her second one. He remains at home quietly while she travels over the country to carry on the trading. In fine, she is one of the Dutch female-traders who understand the business so well. If these be the persons who are to make Christians of the heathen, what will the latter be?”

Certain traits of a still more influential and widely known female-trader in New Netherland are shown to us in Dankers’ pages through slight but extremely vivid side-lights, but which (having been written on shipboard) may perhaps be taken with the grain of palliative salt which should frequently be cast upon the condemnatory utterances of sea-weary, if not sea-sick, passengers on the raging deep when they regard everything connected with the odious ship which confines them. We are introduced to this colonial woman of affairs in the sub-title of the journal, which states that the journey to New Netherland was made “in a small Flute-ship called the Charles, of which Thomas Singleton was Master; but the superior Authority over both Ship and Cargo was in Margaret Filipse, who was the Owner of both, and with whom we agreed for our Passage from Amsterdam to New York, in New Netherland, at seventy-five Guilders for each Person, payable in Holland.”

This “Margaret Filipse” was the daughter of Adolph Hardenbrook who settled in Bergen, opposite New Amsterdam. She was the widow of the merchant trader Peter Rudolphus De Vries when she married Frederick Philipse. Her second husband was a carpenter by trade, who worked for Governor Stuyvesant; but on his marriage with the wealthy Widow De Vries, he became her capable business partner, and finally was counted the richest man in the colony. She owned ships running to many ports, and went repeatedly to Holland in her own ships as supercargo. She was visited by Dankers in Amsterdam in June, 1679. According to the custom of his religious sect, he always called her by her Christian name, and wrote of her as Margaret. He says:—

“We spoke to Margaret, inquiring of her when the ship would leave. She answered she had given orders to have everything in readiness to sail to-day, but she herself was of opinion it would not be before Monday. We offered her the money to pay for our passage, but she refused to receive it at that time, saying she was tired and could not be troubled with it that day.”

They waited patiently on shipboard for several days for Madam Philipse to embark, and at last he writes:—

“We were all very anxious for Margaret to arrive, so that we might not miss a good wind. Jan and some of the other passengers were much dissatisfied. Jan declared, ‘If this wind blows over I will write her a letter that will make her ears tingle.’”

Landing at an English port, the travellers bought wine and vinegar, “for we began to see it would go slim with us on the voyage,” and Margaret bought a ship which was made ready to go to the Isle of May and then to the Barbadoes. Over the purchase and equipment of this ship arose a great quarrel, for “those miserable, covetous people Margaret and her husband” tried to take away the Charles’ long-boat because timber for a new one was cheaper in New York than in Falmouth, England. Naturally, the passengers objected to crossing the Atlantic without a ship’s-boat. Dankers complained further of Margaret’s “miserable covetousness,”—that she made the ship lay to for an hour and a half and sent out the jolly-boat to pick up a ship’s mop or swab worth six cents; and the carpenter swore because she had not furnished new leather and spouts for the pumps. Dankers explained at length the enhancement of the Philipse profits through some business arrangement and preferment with the Governor, by which Frederick Philipse became the largest trader with the Five Nations at Albany, had a profitable slave-trade with Africa, and, it is asserted, was in close bonds with the Madagascar pirates. Whether “Margaret” favored this trade with the pirates is not known; but it could probably be said of her trade, as of many others in the colony, that it was hard to draw the dividing line between privateering and piracy.

Her calling was not singular in New Amsterdam. The little town abounded in women-traders.