C. Local Histories.—The Editor is not aware of any considerable bibliography of New York local histories, except as they are included in F. B. Perkins’s Check List of American Local History. Some help may be derived from the Brinley and Alofsen Catalogues, and others of a classified character. We have indicated in another Note the labors of Mr. Munsell for the Albany region. An edition of G. Furman’s Antiquities of Long Island, edited by F. Moore in 1875, includes a bibliography of Long Island by Henry Onderdonk, Jr. The most considerable of all the local histories is Stiles’s History of Brooklyn, 1867-1870, which gives a map of the Breuckelen settlements in 1646. The Faust Club in 1865 issued (125 copies) an older book, G. Furman’s Notes of Brooklyn, which had originally appeared in 1824. Benj. F. Thompson’s History of Long Island, 2d ed., 1843, is the most comprehensive of the accounts of that island, while N. S. Prime’s History of Long Island is more particularly concerned with its ecclesiastical history. There are various lesser monographs on the island towns, like Riker’s Newton (1852), Onderdonk’s Hempstead (1878), etc. Cf. also Historical Magazine, viii. 89; and in the same, vi. 145, Mr. G. P. Disosway recounts the early history of Staten Island.
Mr. Fernow translated and edited in the Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, vol. xiii., the papers in the State archives upon the history and settlements on the Hudson and the Mohawk (1630-1684), as he has said in the text, which must stand as the basis for much which is given in the special treatises of Bolton on West Chester County (or such thorough monographs as that of C. W. Baird on the History of Rye, 1781 in this county), P. H. Smith on Duchess County, 1877, not to name others. The more remote parts of the State have little or no connection with the Dutch period.
D. The Dutch Governors.—Mr. George Folsom has a paper on the governors in 2 N. Y. Hist. Coll., vol. i. On Peter Minuit, the first governor, there is a paper by J. B. Moore in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1849, p. 73, and another in Historical Magazine, xiii. 205. An autograph of Kieft is given herewith. Of Stuyvesant, the last governor, who survived the surrender, and died in 1672 (Brodhead, ii. 183), we have various memorials. His portrait is preserved, belonging to Mr. Robert Van Rensselaer Stuyvesant, and has been engraved several times,—Dunlap’s New York, vol. i.; O’Callaghan’s New Netherland, vol. ii.; Lamb’s New York, i. 127; Gay’s Popular History of the United States, vol. ii. (Cf. Catalogue of the N. Y. Hist. Soc. Gallery, no. 67.) Two reminders of him long remained to New Yorkers,—his house in the Bowery, which is shown as it existed at the time of his death in Valentine’s New York, p. 53, and in his Manual, 1852, p. 407; and in Watson’s Annals of New York, p. 196, as it stood later perched upon so much of the original knoll as improvements had not removed. The old pear-tree associated with his name is depicted in Valentine’s Manual, 1861, p. 533, and in Lossing’s Hudson River, p. 416.
Mr. Fernow contributed to the Magazine of American History, ii. 540, a monograph on Stuyvesant’s journey to Esopus in 1658. See also 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 533.
E. Levinus Hulsius’s Collection of Voyages.—The twenty-six parts of this work were originally issued between 1598 and 1650, and this long interval, as well as their German text finding more popular use than the Latin of De Bry, has conduced to make sets much rarer of Hulsius than of De Bry. Scholars also award Hulsius the possession of more judgment in compiling and translating than is claimed for De Bry. Asher printed in 1833 a Short Bibliographical Memoir of Hulsius, which became, when extended, his Bibliographical Essay on the Voyages and Travels of Hulsius and his Successors, in 1839; and in this he doubts if a perfect set of all the editions of all the parts had ever been got together. An approximate completeness, however, pertains to the sets in the Carter-Brown and Lenox libraries, as described in the Catalogue of the former, vol. i. p. 467, and in the Contributions to a Catalogue of the Lenox Library, no. i, New York, 1877. The set described in this shows all the first editions of the twenty-six parts, with second issues of three of them, Latin as well as German of two of them; two parts successively issued of one of them (part xi.) and other copies with variations of three of them. There are eighteen second editions, counting variations (one is lacking); nine third editions or variations; six fourth editions (with one lacking); two fifth editions (with one lacking). This would indicate that an absolutely complete set, to include every part, edition, and variety, would increase the twenty-six parts to seventy-three. The Carter-Brown copy seems to be less perfect. The Huth Catalogue shows a complete series of first editions only.
Tiele’s Mémoire Bibliographique pertains to such voyages in this collection as were made by Dutch navigators. Sabin’s Dictionary, viii. 526, gives fuller collations for the parts relating to America. Quaritch printed a collation in 1860.
Bohn published a collation of Lord Lyndsay’s copy.
The Lenox Library possesses MS. Collations of the Grenville and other sets in the British Museum, of those in the Royal Library, Berlin, and the City Library of Hamburg.
Sets of such completeness as collectors may hope to attain have been quoted at £335 (Crowninshield sale, 1860,—all first editions but one), and 6,700 and 4,500 marks.