Jessé de Forest: Forefather of New York

In 1620, Jessé acutely felt the weight of expectations and a pang of jealousy in his heart as he watched the Mayflower depart. He and his fellow Walloon refugees attended the same church as the Pilgrims in Leiden, the Vroukerk, where their leaders grew as restless as he did. Both groups of religious refugees were integrating into Dutch society and culture far too easily. Both he and Pilgrim leader, John Robinson, felt threatened that the next generations would forget their own particular culture and the suffering of religious persecution that led them to Leiden. Both groups desperately wanted to establish new lands for their people.

Debt loomed over Jessé. The Spanish fettered his ability to run his father's wool merchant business from his hometown of Avesnes. The dyer-merchant business he had pivoted to after moving to Leiden in 1608 was in the red. He had to pawn a caldron for dying fabrics to pay his rent. His wife, Marie du Cloux, born to a prosperous merchant family from Sedan, was worried sick. They had 10 children to care for.

Hardship often but breeds dauntlessness; and it may be noted that great adventurers have most often been men with broken fortunes to mend. - Lucy Garrison Green, The De Forests and The Walloon Founding of New Amsterdam

He had been a soldier—a Lieutenant and Captain—under Prince Maurice of Nassau during the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish. He knew he didn't have that kind of fight left in him, but he still longed for glory, and escape. It gave him the tenacity to appeal to the English ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, for the Walloons to have a cut in the New World land that needed settlers. He gathered a round-robin of signatures from his fellow Walloons who would join him in emigrating.

England accepted his proposal, but alas, the terms were unconscionable. They would not permit the Walloons to dwell as a community but peppered throughout the vast English territory. He refused their terms.

Eight months later, Jessé became aware of the private venture capitalists who recently convened as the Dutch West Indies Company. The Twelve Year Truce with Spain expired in April 1621, ending the suspension of Dutch trade in the West Indies. Two months later, the Company received its charter from the States-General. They were granted a 24 year monopoly on trade from West Africa to the Americas. The States General granted permission for the Company ships to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants.

Jessé heard that the Pilgrims had not arrived at their intended destination of the fertile estuary described by Henry Hudson (which the Dutch and English both claimed, as the Dutch East Indies Company funded Hudson's expenditure but the English asserted claim because Hudson was an Englishman). Due to poor timing, with winter approaching, the Pilgrims instead planted themselves some 200 miles north.

Jessé turned to the businessmen of the West India Company, proposing to settle Walloons where the Pilgrims failed to settle. They would defend the Dutch claim in North America and facilitate the fur and tobacco trade. He appeared to Company co-founder, Willem Usselincx, as the perfect candidate showing up for a yet unlisted job. Here was a knowledgeable merchant willing to put boots to the ground and even had families ready and willing to be the first to settle the land.

On August 27, 1622, Willem Usselincx and Jessé de Forest delivered their proposal to the nineteen Company board members in the Hague. They received authorization to emigrate families. However, the Company was more interested in the alluring possibility of riches (sugar, gold, exotic woods used in furniture and dying fabric) in South America's Brazil/Guiana area. Usselincx saw how well suited Jessé was to lead the proposed Brazil expedition to scout resources and land for settlement and pushed him toward that expenditure.

Being in the dyer-merchant trade, Jessé was naturally very interested in what could be procured in South America. He held the distinction of being a "dyer of colors" under the sanction of the Drapers’ Guild, whereas most dyers without permit of color only dealt in black.

Jessé still advocated to settle a Walloon colony though. The Company objected to transporting families at once to Brazil/Guiana. Instead, they offered that ten heads of families would accompany Jessé to scout an advantageous site and to prepare it for settlement. The remaining sixty Walloon families would be sent to North America, with women and children. The difference: in South America, they wanted to claim territory, whereas in North America they wanted to defend territory. Jessé planned the expenditures of the two colonies, although he would personally accompany the South American voyage.

It took another year to raise sufficient funding. The vessels for the Company's multipronged ambitions for the Americas left the port of Amsterdam between December 1623 and March 1624.

1. The Pigeon set sail in December 1623 with ten heads of family (including Jessé De Forest) to South America.

2. The Endracht set sail January 1624 with families (including Joris Rapalje and Catalyna Trico) to North America.

3. The Nieuw Netherlandt set sail in March 1624 with families, also to North America.

Jessé's children tearfully bid adieu to their father. Hendrick, 16, Rachel, 14, and Issac, 7, were greatly affected by their father's commitment to his vision for a Walloon colony, a better life for his family, and their displaced Walloon brethren. It would be years until his children had word of their father. Centuries later, a journal attributed to Jessé revealed a fuller picture of his journey.

The Pigeon's journey was long and winding, often driven to distraction, stopping here and there. It wasn't until October 16th that they found the mouth of the Amazon. The Pigeon spent about six weeks along the river, exploring and trading. It was already crowded. Six English and Irish colonies were already established there.

On December 4th, The Pigeon headed for the Oyapek River. After exploring for ten days, Jessé finally found a place to his liking. But to the Wallon's surprise, the Master of the Pigeon said there he would leave them, with no definite return. Some of the heads of families balked at these conditions of abrupt abandonment. Jessé offered that those who wanted to return with the Pigeon should do so and that their number should be traded for in sailors and provisions.

Jessé was an indefatigable explorer. He was constantly on the watch for dyewoods and suitable places for growing and dyeing cotton. He bought and laid out sites for settlement, fortifications, sugar, cotton, and tobacco fields. He made friends with the Natives and even made peace between tribes.

One incident is given at some length, showing considerable courage, tact, and leadership on the part of our Captain [De Forest]. A large party of Caribs had come on a visit to the Yaos, the tribe among which De Forest and his little party were living on amicable terms. The next day appeared, in canoes, a third tribe, the Aricoures, in deadly pursuit of the Caribs. The clash was imminent when "as they were preparing to fight, peace was made between them by the intervention of our Captain." The ceremony ingeniously suggested by him is described to the point at which, "This done, the Caribs, throwing down their arms, rushed into the canoes of the others and embraced them. On the occasion of this peace, the Yaos entertained them together for eight days; peace having never been known between them before." - Lucy Garrison Green, The De Forests and The Walloon Founding of New Amsterdam

He made long excursions and took many notes. He collected mineral specimens and recognized on sight the small Oreillan tree from the seeds of which the valuable dye called ''arnotto" or "bastard scarlet'' was made. One of the most valuable products collected for trade was the ''letter-wood" or "leopard-wood." This was of a rich dark brown color with odd markings resembling letters in black. It was hard as ebony and heavier than teak. The colonists, from the outset, spoke with vivid interest in going "higher up in the country, along this river, where no Christian has ever been ... in the hope of finding something

curious."

A year passed since the Walloons arrived in South America. Still, no ships returned for them or came with their families. Jessé, undaunted, continued to explore.

Here, the journal is taken up by a different hand, likely that of Johannes de la Montagne. He was a young Walloon who had been in medical training at the University of Leiden before joining the Pidgeon's expedition as Company Surgeon.

"On October 13, while on an expedition by canoe, De Forest suffered a severe sunstroke, and was brought home unconscious, with a high fever... On the 15th of October, by the advice of those who had lived in this country before us, we had him bled, which gave him relief; but being impatient of keeping quiet, he wished to go on [expedition] again, returning from which he again had a sunstroke, which redoubled his fever... On the 22nd of October, our said Captain died, much regretted by the Christians and Indians, who had taken a great liking to him. This day we carried him to be buried as honorably as was possible for us, accompanying the body with our arms, which we each discharged three times over his grave, and our cannon as well."

With the loss of Jessé, there were only two Walloons left in their Oyapek settlement. Rudderless without their leader and concerned over dwindling provisions, they resolved to build a sea craft to take them to the Carribean. Seven months after Jessé died, a boat appeared to fetch the colonists home. After a circuitous return journey, they arrived in Leiden in November 1625 to share the sorrowful news with the De Forest family.

Jessé was a tenacious, entrepreneurial leader with a convincing nature that inspired people. What if Jessé had gone to the New Netherland settlement instead? How would he have affected history? His legacy continued through his children—Hendrick, Rachel, and Issac— and Johannes de la Montagne. Their stories continue in my novel.

In 1923, 300 years later, the Walloon Settlers Memorial was dedicated in Battery Park. Designed by Henry Bacon, who also designed the Lincoln Memorial, the monument was a gift from the Conseil Provincial du Hainaut and is made of Hainaut granite, a Belgian stone. That year Governor Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944) and the New York State Senate issued an official proclamation recognizing the Walloons’ place in New York history. The inscription includes one man's name: Jessé De Forest.