author
Jasper Danckaerts
b. 1639
A 17th-century Dutch traveler and religious writer, he is best remembered for the vivid journal he kept while exploring New Netherland and several other American colonies in 1679–1680. His account remains a valuable firsthand glimpse of early colonial life and landscape.
1 Audiobook
Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680
by Jasper Danckaerts
About the author
Born in Vlissingen on May 7, 1639, Jasper Danckaerts was a Dutch Labadist and writer. He became known for traveling with Peter Sluyter to North America in 1679 to look for land where their religious community might settle.
During that journey, he kept the journal that made his name endure. The record describes places, people, and everyday conditions in New Netherland and neighboring colonies, and it is still used as an important firsthand source for the history of early America.
Danckaerts later helped found a Labadist colony along the Bohemia River in what is now Maryland. Sources commonly place his death in Middelburg in the early 1700s, though the exact year is sometimes given uncertainly.