“Fort Amsterdam, which had become dilapidated, was repaired, and a guard-house and a barrack for the newly arrived soldiers were constructed within the ramparts, at a cost of several thousand guilders.

“Three expensive windmills were also erected.  But they were injudiciously placed so near the fort that the buildings, within its walls, frequently intercepted and turned off the south wind.

“Several brick and frame houses were built for the Director and his officers.  On the Company’s farm, north of the fort, a dwelling-house, brewery, boat-house and barn were erected.  Other smaller houses were built for the corporal, the smith, the cooper.  The loft, in which the people had worshipped since 1626, was now replaced by a plain wooden building, like a barn, situated on the East River, in what is now Broad street, between Pearl and Bridge streets.  Near this old church a dwelling-house and stable were erected for the use of the Domine.  In the Fatherland the title of Domine was familiarly given to clergymen.  The phrase crossed the Atlantic with Bogardus, and it has survived to the present day among the descendants of the Dutch colonists of New Netherland.”

The little settlement at Manhattan was entitled to the feudal right of levying a tax upon all the merchandise passing up or down the river.  The English were, at this time, so ignorant of this region of the North American coast that a sloop was dispatched to Delaware Bay “to see if there were any river there.”  As the Dutch had vacated the Delaware, the English decided to attempt to obtain a foothold on those waters.  Accordingly, in the year 1635, they sent a party of fourteen or fifteen Englishmen, under George Holmes, to seize the vacant Dutch fort.

Van Twiller, informed of this fact, with much energy sent an armed vessel, by which the whole company was arrested and brought to Manhattan, whence they were sent, “pack and sack,” to an English settlement on the Chesapeake.

The Plymouth people had now been two years in undisturbed possession of their post at Windsor, on the Connecticut.  Stimulated by their example, the General Court of Massachusetts encouraged emigration to the Connecticut valley, urging, as a consideration, their need of pasturage for their increasing flocks and herds; the great beauty and fruitfulness of the Connecticut valley, and the danger that the Dutch, or other English colonies, might get possession of it.  “Like the banks of the Hudson,” it was said, “the Connecticut had been first explored and even occupied by the Dutch.  But should a log hut and a few straggling soldiers seal a territory against other emigrants?"[5]

Thus solicited, families from Watertown and Roxbury commenced a settlement at Wethersfield in the year 1635.  Some emigrants, from Dorchester, established themselves just below the colony of the Plymouth people at Windsor.  This led to a stern remonstrance on the part of Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, denouncing their unrighteous intrusion.