To the Right Hon. Director-General and Council of New Netherland:—
The Schout and Schepens of the Court of Breuckelin respectfully represent: That they found it necessary, that a court messenger was required for the Schepens Chamber, to be occasionally employed in the Village of Breuckelin, and all around, where he may be needed, as well to serve summons, as also to conduct the service of the church, and to sing on Sunday; to take charge of the school, dig graves, etc.; ring the bell and perform what ever else may be required. Therefore, the petitioners, with your Honours' approbation, have thought proper to accept for so highly necessary office a suitable person who is now come before them, one Carel Van Beauvois, to whom they have appropriated the sum of fl. 150, beside a fine dwelling; and whereas the petitioners are apprehensive that the aforesaid C. V. Beauvois would not and cannot do the work for the sum aforesaid, and the petitioners are not able to promise him any more; therefore the petitioners, with all humble and proper reverence, request your Honours to be pleased to lend them a helping hand, in order thus to receive the needful assistance. Herewith awaiting your Honours' kind and favorable answer, and commending ourselves, Honorable, wise, prudent and most discreet gentlemen, to your favor, we pray for your Honours God's protection, together with a happy and prosperous administration, unto salvation. Your Honors' servants and subjects, the Schout and Schepens of the village aforesaid. By order of the same,
[Signed] Adriaen Hegeman, Secretary.
The Directors granted the petition and agreed to pay fifty guilders annually in wampum for the support of the precentor and schoolmaster.
The first school was set up in the little church, which stood near the present junction of Fulton and Bridge Streets. The second public school within the county was opened in the new village of Bushwick.
The area of the county represented by the town of Bushwick had, as we have seen, been purchased by the West India Company in 1638. In 1660 the Wallabout residents had built a block-house on the high point of land overlooking the East River, known as the "Kiekout,"[28] or "Lookout." At about the same time (in the month of February), "fourteen Frenchmen, with a Dutchman named Peter Janse Wit" and an interpreter, called upon the Director to lay out a town plot east of the Wallabout settlement. On February 19 the Director, with the Fiscal, Nicasius de Sille, Secretary Van Ruyven, and the sworn surveyor, Jaques Corteleau, came to a spot between "Mispat (Maspeth) Kill," Newtown Creek, and "Norman's Kill,"[29] Bushwick Creek, to "establish a village." Here a survey was made, and twenty house lots laid out. The first house was at once erected by Evert Hedeman, and others soon appeared.
In March of the following year "the Director-General visited the new village, when the inhabitants requested His Honour to give the place a name; whereupon he named the town Boswijck," the Town of the Woods. The people of the new village then selected six of their men, from which the governor chose three, to be magistrates, the town remaining subject to the schout of Breuckelen, Amersfoort, and Midwout.
Thus when the first public school was opened in Bushwick, the hamlet scarcely contained twenty houses, a fact which may illustrate the attitude of the Dutch and French in this part of the country toward the question of popular education. The first schoolmaster in Bushwick was Boudwyn Manout, who took charge on December 28, 1662.
The setting up of the third school within the county was effected in a new village called Bedford, lying southeast of the Wallabout and east of Breuckelen. The settlement of this village dates from 1662, in which year, in the month of March, Joris Jan. Rapalje, Teunis Gysbert (Bogaert), Cornelis Jacobsen, Hendrick Sweers, Michael Hans (Bergen), and Jan Hans (Bergen) asked the Director for a grant of unoccupied woodland "situated in the rear of Joris Rapalje, next to the old Bay Road." The Director made the grant, with the stipulation that the petitioners should not make "a new hamlet."
The little settlement thus formed was adjacent on the south to another known as Cripplebush[30] (variously spelt in the Dutch orthography of the early days), and lay at the intersection of the Jamaica highway, the Clove Road running to Flatbush, and the Cripplebush Road running to Newtown.
The Bedford school-house was placed in the heart of the village, at the cross-roads. This school, beginning in the year 1663, afterward, according to the records of Teunis G. Bergen, became the present Public School No. 3, and had an interesting history.
