The Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 by Jasper Danckaerts is the travel journal kept by Dutch Labadist missionary Jasper Danckaerts during his time in New Netherland (present day New York state).
This document of his journey in 1679 and 1680 gives wonderful descriptions of the country and the inhabitants' style of life. He also wrote quite extensively about specific individuals of the time, including my ancestor Jacques Van Slyke (1640-1690) and his sister Hilletie Van Olinda.
The original journal was discovered and purchased in 1864 and then translated from Dutch to English. It has undergone a few editions since then. The Project Gutenburg online e-book is the 1913 edition.
Credits: New York from Brooklyn Heights, 1679. From the original drawing by Jasper Danckaerts in the possession of the Long Island Historical Society
Fascinating! Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteYou can also download a pdf of the original book from Internet Archive. Here, for example:
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.org/details/journalofjasperd02danc
I have been finding more and more lately that Internet Archive has the old book I'm looking for. I use this search page:
http://archive.org/advancedsearch.php