Prior to the discovery of the Journal of Danckaerts it was indeed traditionally known that a sect of Labadists in the first half of the seventeenth century had located a colony on the estates of Augustine Herrman in Maryland. There were fragmentary references to these people in the early records of the state and in historical manuscripts, with isolated notices in contemporary writers. Yet this information would of itself have been too meagre for a critical valuation of the Labadists in the early history of Maryland. The publication of the manuscript secured by Mr. Murphy stimulated interest in the subject, and at various times monographic contributions appeared upon one or another phase of the Labadist settlement. Notable were those of General James Grant Wilson, whose paper on "An Old Maryland Manor" was published by the Maryland Historical Society in 1890, and his paper on "Augustine Herrman, Bohemian," by the New Jersey Historical Society in the same year, and of Reverend Charles Payson Mallary, whose monograph on the Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor, a publication of the Delaware Historical Society in 1888, disclosed the wide genealogical interest pertaining to the Labadist settlement. Thus there was built up a body of substantial information with regard to the environment and the relations of the Labadist colony in the New World. In 1899 was published, in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, The Labadist Colony in Maryland, by the writer of the present introduction. This monograph was largely based upon fresh sources obtained from Europe, including contemporary works by Labadie, his associates and his antagonists, as well as studies of the subject by Dutch and German scholars. The literature of Labadism in the New World, which, in a manner, has been an outgrowth from the journal of the Labadist envoys, is now ample for all serviceable purposes.
The journal of the Labadists, while primarily of value as elucidating an obscure episode in the religious history of the New World, has worth as a human narrative bearing upon incidents and personages and social conditions in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Boston. Thus the student of social, economic, institutional, or geographical conditions in the early period of the settlements upon the Atlantic seaboard will find in this journal much of suggestive and pertinent contribution. Danckaerts viewed his surroundings through the eyes of a fanatical self-satisfaction. For this reason his criticisms or strictures upon persons and conditions are to be received with much discount. But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous note-taker; and the variety and fecundity of his material is not a little due to the trivial and relatively unimportant details which are embodied in the narrative.
The two agents came to North America in search of a suitable place to establish a colony of their sect. Two distinct sets of forces drew them toward Maryland. One of these was the religious toleration which, from the beginning, was established in that province. There is no warrant in the journal for a presumption that this was an inducing cause for their location within the domain of Lord Baltimore. There is much, however, in their antecedent history, and the pressure of persecution to which the Labadists were subjected, to make it exceedingly probable that this policy in the government of Maryland formed a circumstance in the selection that was made. The journalists, who travelled under pseudonyms for the express purpose of keeping their mission secret, might have established their colony in New York had it not been under the rule of Governor Andros, a Catholic, and therefore a subject of particular antipathy to the Labadists.
But the practical weave of circumstance that tended to attract the Labadists to Maryland centred in the fact that, as stated in their narrative, they met in New York one Ephraim Herrman, a young trader from Maryland and Delaware, then recently married. This was the son of Augustine Herrman, "first founder and seater of Bohemia Manor." Augustine Herrman was a Bohemian adventurer, born in Prague, who, after a career of much vicissitude, made his way to New Netherland. He became a force at New Amsterdam, and was an original member of the council of nine men instituted by Governor Stuyvesant in 1647. His connection with Maryland matters dates from his appointment by Governor Stuyvesant as a special commissioner, along with Resolved Waldron, to negotiate with Governor Fendall of Maryland concerning the eastern boundary of Lord Baltimore's province.[6] This mission effected, Herrman entered into negotiations with Lord Baltimore for the drafting of a map of Maryland and Virginia, which would be valuable to his lordship in bringing to a settlement the boundary dispute pending between the two colonies, and in other ways.[7] In this manner Herrman became invested with not less than 24,000 acres of the most desirable lands of what is now Cecil County, Maryland, and Newcastle County, Delaware, which he divided into several tracts under the names Bohemia Manor, St. Augustine Manor, Little Bohemia, and the Three Bohemia Sisters. It is of interest to note that among the acts passed by the Maryland Assembly is one dated 1666, which provides for the naturalization of "Augustine Herman of Prague, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, Ephraim Georgius and Casparus, Sonns to the said Augustine, Anna Margarita, Judith and Francina, his daughters," this being the first act of naturalization passed by any of the colonies.[8]
It was upon Bohemia Manor that the Labadists located their colony. Danckaerts and Sluyter, under the guidance of Ephraim Herrman, made their way to Delaware and Maryland. Upon meeting them the elder Herrman was at first so favorably impressed that he consented to deed to them a considerable tract, in pursuance of his ambition to colonize and develop his estates. On June 19, 1680, the Labadists, having accomplished their mission, set sail for Boston, to which fact are due such interesting recitals as that of their visit to John Eliot, the so-called apostle to the Indians, and their visit to and description of Harvard College. On the 23d day of July the Labadists set sail for Europe.
In 1683 the two Labadists returned again to Maryland, bringing with them the nucleus of a colony. In the meanwhile Augustine Herrman had repented of his bargain, and it was only by recourse to law that the Labadists compelled him to live up to its terms. The deed he executed, dated August 11, 1684, was to Peter Sluyter (alias Vorstman), Jasper Dankers (alias Schilders), of Friesland, Petrus Bayard, of New York, and John Moll and Arnold de la Grange.[9] The tract conveyed embraced four necks of land eastwardly from the first creek that empties into Bohemia River, and extended at the north or northeast to near the old St. Augustine or Manor Church. It contained 3,750 acres. Those engaging with Sluyter and Danckaerts in the transaction were all professed converts to the Labadist faith. It may be noted in passing that the Petrus Bayard named in the conveyance, and who for some time was an active member of the Labadist community, was an ancestor of the late Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James.
When fairly settled upon Bohemia Manor, the Labadists undertook communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland. They cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn, flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form. At its most flourishing period the colony did not number as many as a hundred persons, and in the year 1698 a division of the tract occurred. Sluyter, who was the active head of the colony, reserved for himself one of the necks of land and became wealthy. He died in 1722. Some form of organization had been maintained among the Labadists even after the division of the land, but five years after the death of Sluyter the Labadists had ceased to exist as a community. The division in 1698 which marked the disintegration of the community occurred at about the same time as a similar division of the estates of the mother church at Wieuwerd. There the disintegration came about through consultative action; in Maryland, by the logic of events.
The founder of the system of religion which came to be known as Labadism, Jean de Labadie, was born in France, at Bourg near Bordeaux, on February 13, 1610. His father was a French noble and a soldier of fortune, who rose to be governor of Guienne. His parents entered him at the Jesuit College, where he completed his novitiate and took the first vows, and in 1635 he was ordained as a priest. Early manifestations of an erratic temperament, a mystical habit of mind, and physical frailty, led to his severance from the Society of Jesus. He entered upon a preaching mission, and, coming under the attention of Père Gondran, second general of the Congregation of the Oratory at Paris, he received a call to that city, and, according to his own statement, the entire body of the Sorbonne united in the call.
Labadie soon acquired a fame that went beyond the borders of France, for oratorical ability and theological precision. His former associates, the Jesuits, originated stories against his morality and sought to bring him into trouble with the authorities. The attacks to which he was subjected led him to adopt a broad though wholly fanatical scheme of reforms for the Church.[10] During the lifetime of Cardinal Richelieu, who befriended him, he was safe from attack, but upon the succession of Cardinal Mazarin the Jesuits obtained an order of the court for his arrest, the execution of which was prevented by the death of the king. In the year 1645 he was cited to appear at court along with his friend, the Bishop of Amiens, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, which sentence was modified on an appeal made by the assembly of the clergy of France then in session. He was, however, ordered to renounce his opinions and to refrain from preaching for a period of years. In one of his treatises he states that during a second forced retirement he obtained and read a copy of Calvin's Institutes. This had a determining influence upon his after career.[11] He summed up the result of his solitary reflections in the words, "This is the last time that Rome shall persecute me in her communion. Up to the present I have endeavored to help and to heal her, remaining within her jurisdiction; but now it is full time for me to denounce her and to testify against her."