Cornelis Melyn
Encyclopedia
Cornelis Melyn was an early Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 settler in New Netherland
New Netherland
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...

 and Patroon
Patroon
In the United States, a patroon was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland in North America...

 of Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...

. He was the chairman of the council of eight men
Council of eight men
The Council of eight men was an early representational democracy in New Netherland. It replaced the previous council of twelve men.-Council:In 1643 Abraham Pietersen Van Deusen who had served on the council of twelve men was appointed to a new council of eight men...

, which was a part of early steps toward representative democracy
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...

 in the Dutch colony.

Early life

Cornelis Melyn was born in Antwerp, then a part of the Spanish Netherlands, where he was baptised at St. Walburga's church September 17, 1600, the son of Andries and Maria (Gheudinx-Botens) Melyn, and grandson of Lambrecht Melyn, of the same place. Both of Cornelis' parents died in 1606. Two guardians, Jacques Melyn and Hans Salomons, were appointed for him and he was taken into the family of his half-brother Abraham Melyn to be raised. When he was about twelve years of age, Cornelis was apprenticed as a tailor.

When Melyn was about 18 years old, the priest of St. Walburga's church issued him a baptismal certificate and a certificate of good conduct. It is possible he left Antwerp at this time for Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, where he married Janneken Adriaens in 1627. Their marriage certificate lists them both as residing in Amsterdam. By this time, Melyn had changed his occupation, being listed in this certificate as a seemtouwer, a "dresser of the finer and softer leathers".

Migration to New Amsterdam

Cornelis Melyn made at least one voyage to the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

 before deciding to settle there, aboard the Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...

's ship Het Wapen van Noorwegen (The Arms of Norway) in 1638. After returning to the Netherlands, he applied for the Patroonship of Staten Island, which he was granted July 3, 1640. Soon afterwards, he sailed, possibly in the Engel Gabriel (Angel Gabriel), for New Netherland. But the vessel was captured by a Dunkirk raider August 13, 1640, and Melyn was forced to return to the Netherlands.

Melyn sailed once again to New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....

 May 17, 1641, aboard the vessel Den Eyckenboom (The Oak Tree) with a new party of colonists, including his wife and children. Also on board was Adriaen van der Donck
Adriaen van der Donck
Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific Jonkheer the city of Yonkers, New York is named...

 who would one day be a political ally of Melyn and a fellow victim of Director-General
Director-general
The term director-general is a title given the highest executive officer within a governmental, statutory, NGO, third sector or not-for-profit institution.-European Union:...

 Peter Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant , served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York...

's persecution. Soon after The Oak Tree's arrival in New Amsterdam, Cornelis Melyn and his party of 41 persons were at work establishing a new colony on Staten Island. June 19, 1642, Melyn received from Director-General Willem Kieft
Willem Kieft
Willem Kieft was a Dutch merchant and director-general of New Netherland , from 1638 until 1647. He formed the council of twelve men, the first representative body in New Netherland, but ignored its advice...

 his patent to all of Staten Island except for a farm which had already been allocated to David Pietersen de Vries
David Pietersen de Vries
Captain David Pieterszoon de Vries was a Dutch navigator from Hoorn, Holland.In 1617 de Vries went on a whaling voyage to Jan Mayen. In 1620 he sailed to Newfoundland and sold the dried fish in Italy. In Toulon he joined Charles, Duke of Guise. In 1624 he went to Canada again, still in French...

.

Leadership

In November 1643, during the bloody conflict with the neighboring Lenape
Lenape
The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...

 tribes which became known as Kieft's War
Kieft's War
Kieft's War, also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between settlers of the nascent colony of New Netherland and the native Lenape population in what would later become the New York metropolitan area of the United States...

, Melyn and his colonists were forced to abandon Staten Island. According to his own statement, "I was obliged to flee for the sake of saving my life, and to sojourn with wife and children at the Menatans till the year 1647."

In 1644, his plantation having been destroyed, Cornelis Melyn purchased three adjacent lots near the Dutch fort
Fort Amsterdam
For the historic fort on the island of Saint Martin, see Fort Amsterdam Fort Amsterdam was a fort on the southern tip of Manhattan that was the administrative headquarters for the Dutch and then British rule of New York from...

 on lower Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, along the East River
East River
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx on the North American mainland...

 near the intersection of the present Broad
Broad Street (Manhattan)
Broad Street is located in the Financial District in the New York City borough of Manhattan, stretching from South Street to Wall Street.- History :...

 and Pearl Street
Pearl Street (Manhattan)
Pearl Street is a street in the Lower section of the New York City borough of Manhattan, running northeast from Battery Park to the Brooklyn Bridge, then turning west and terminating at Centre Street...

s. He settled there with his family for the next three years. As the Dutch colony drifted into chaos and some colonists expressed outrage at what they considered Kieft's ineptitude, the Director-General sought to placate his critics by appointing a council of eight men, with Cornelis Melyn as chairman, to assist him in governing the colony. This body, which was supposed to represent the people of New Amsterdam, was one of the earliest steps toward representative democracy in that colony. The colonists' opposition to Kieft continued, however, and the council demanded his removal in a letter transmitted to the States-General of the Netherlands
States-General of the Netherlands
The States-General of the Netherlands is the bicameral legislature of the Netherlands, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The parliament meets in at the Binnenhof in The Hague. The archaic Dutch word "staten" originally related to the feudal classes in which medieval...

 in October 1644.

Conflict With Stuyvesant

In 1647, when Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to replace Kieft as Director-General, Melyn and Jochem Kuyter, acting in name of the citizens of New Amsterdam, brought charges against the outgoing governor, demanding an investigation of his conduct while in office. Recognizing the danger of such actions to his own administration, Stuyvesant refused to consider Melyn and Kuyter's demands and caused them to be tried for lèse majesté
Lèse majesté
Lese-majesty is the crime of violating majesty, an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or against a state.This behavior was first classified as a criminal offence against the dignity of the Roman republic in Ancient Rome...

. The case was quickly decided against the defendants, who were sentenced to banishment from the colony.

August 16, 1647, Kuyter and Melyn sailed aboard the Princess Amelia
Princess Amelia (shipwreck)
The Princess Amelia was a Dutch merchant ship in the service of the Dutch West India Company that carried 600 tons and was ringed with thirty-eight guns....

to appeal their convictions to the States-General. Their vessel ran aground off the coast of Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, but both survived and were able to present their cases in early 1648. The States-General acted favorably upon their appeal and issued a writ of mandamus dated April 28 ordering Director-General Stuyvesant to appear in person, or through his representative, to sustain his judgment against them.

Cornelis Melyn returned once again to New Amsterdam and caused the writ to be presented to Stuyvesant March 8, 1649, at a dramatic meeting in the New Amsterdam church
Middle Dutch Church (New York City)
The Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church refers to a Dutch Reformed congregation in Manhattan, New York City, which has had a variety of church buildings and now exists in the form of four component bodies: the Marble, Middle, West End and Fort Washington Collegiate Churches, all part of the...

. As Burton describes the confrontation:

Melyn returned to the Netherlands in August 1649. Stuyvesant's representative, Cornelis van Tienhoven
Cornelis van Tienhoven
Cornelis van Tienhoven was secretary of the New Netherlands from 1638 to 1656 and as such one of the most influential people in New Amsterdam....

, the Secretary of the Colony, also proceeded aboard a different vessel. The case was apparently never brought to a hearing.

Melyn returned in 1650 aboard the Nieuw Nederlandsche Fortuyn (New Netherland's Fortune) to resume his attempt to colonize Staten Island, along with a group of about 70 persons. His feud continued with Director-General Stuyvesant, who had him arrested and imprisoned without trial or hearing in 1655. During Melyn's imprisonment, there was another Indian uprising known as the Peach Tree War
Peach Tree War
The Peach Tree War, also known as the "Peach War," is the name given to a large scale attack on the New Netherland colony of Pavonia, across from New Amsterdam, and surrounding settlements along the North River by the Susquehannock Nation and allied Native Americans on September 15,...

 which destroyed the Staten Island colony. It was soon after this disaster that Cornelis Melyn and family left for the English New Haven Colony
New Haven Colony
The New Haven Colony was an English colonial venture in present-day Connecticut in North America from 1637 to 1662.- Quinnipiac Colony :A Puritan minister named John Davenport led his flock from exile in the Netherlands back to England and finally to America in the spring of 1637...

, where he took an oath of allegiance to the English crown April 7, 1657. In 1659, he agreed with the West India Company to relinquish his right of Patroonship of Staten Island.

Death

There is no record of Cornelis Melyn's death, but his name ceases to appear in the records of the New Haven colony after 1663 and is not mentioned in the records of the marriages of his two daughters in New Haven August 25, 1664. Melyn's role in history is recognized in a mural at Staten Island's Borough Hall by Frederick Charles Stahr.

External links

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