Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 | Page 9

which, at the rise of
Labadism, was formal and pedantic in its modes of worship and given
to theological disputation. Labadie has importance in the history of that
church, and is accorded honor in its records. The futility of the sect in
the New World was due not wholly to its communal form of
organization, but is to be attributed as well to the fact that the Labadists
migrated in obedience to no high and lofty impulse, but because in their
nomadic passage from place to place, under the pressure of religious

and civil proscription, due in most cases to acts of insubordination,
there seemed no place remaining for them except the shores of the New
World. No history of communism can be complete that does not
include the experiment entered upon by Jean de Labadie and his
followers in the Old World, and by the Labadist colonists in America.
It is unfortunate that more complete information with regard to the
actual economic value of the Labadist community cannot be had, but
such information could not greatly differ from the facts that are well
known as to the economic and industrial character of the Maryland
population in general.
BARTLETT B. JAMES.

NOTE B
Since Dr. James's introduction was written, I have come upon some
facts of interest respecting the two Labadist travellers which were not
known to Mr. Murphy, who indeed had practically nothing to say
regarding their previous life.
Jasper Danckaerts was born at Flushing in Zeeland May 7, 1639, the
son of Pieter Danckaerts and Janneke Schilders--which explains his
using Schilders as a pseudonym during his American expedition. He
became a cooper in the service of the East India Company at
Middelburg.[17] A curious book in which Pierre Yvon, pastor of the
Labadist church after Labadie's death, describes the death-bed conduct
and speeches of members of the sect, gives us glimpses of the diarist's
family life.[18] They may enable us to look more kindly upon that
censorious writer. Under date of May, 1676, the pastor commemorates
the death of "our sister Susanna Spykershof, wife of our brother
Dankers. She came to us at Zonderen" (Sonderen, a temporary
stopping-place near Herford) "with her husband, leaving without
difficulty her birth-place and dwelling-place Middelburg and all her
acquaintances.... The trials and dangers they underwent were common
to the two.... Both were at the same time, at Altona, accepted as
members of the body of Christ [the Labadist church].... She loved her

husband tenderly, but when God called him elsewhere, to the service of
His work and children, she embraced His will therein with much love;
which was especially edifying in her, since before this, when she was
living in the world, she was wont to be in great anxiety whenever he
was away from home on their own concerns. At Bremen, when a
portion of our community was there, then at Altona, and here in
Friesland, God visited her with great sufferings," and she died at the
age of thirty-three, soon after the death of their youngest child.[19]
[Footnote 17: F. Nagtglas, Levensberichten van Zeeuwen (Middelburg,
1890), I. 146.]
[Footnote 18: Getrouw Verhael van den Staet en de laetste Woorden en
Dispositien sommiger Personen die God tot sich genomen heeft, uyt de
Gereformeerde en van de Werelt afgesonderde Gemeynte, voor desen
gegadert tot Herfort en Altena, en tegenwoordig tot Wiewert Vrieslant
(second ed., in New York Public Library, Amsterdam, 1683), pp. 30-32.
The original French, Fidelle Narré des États et des Dernières Paroles
(Amsterdam, 1681), and an English version (ibid., 1685), are in the
British Museum.]
[Footnote 19: See p. 130, note 1, infra.]
When Cornelis van Sommelsdyk went out to Surinam as governor in
1683, a body of Labadists sought an asylum there. A little later
Danckaerts, after his second voyage to New York, went out with
reinforcements to their settlement of La Providence in Dutch Guiana,
which soon proved a failure.[20] In 1684 he was naturalized by a
Maryland act,[21] but this does not prove that he was then in the
province or long remained there. Thereafter he seems to have lived
mostly at Wieuwerd, but he died at Middelburg between 1702 and 1704.
He left behind him an elaborate manuscript, which he was just about to
publish at the time of his death, entitled "Triumf des Hebreeuwsche
Bibels" (triumph of the Hebrew Bible over secular chronology) in
which he styles himself "Jasper Danckaerts, lover of wisdom, of sacred
emblems, history, and theology, at Middelburg in Zeeland." The
antiquary from whose book this fact is derived says also, "In 1874 I
bought at a book-stall in Middelburg a very neatly written translation of

the Psalms, with musical notes, prepared by Danckaerts mostly during
his American journey, dated at Wieuwerd, and perhaps revised by
Anna Maria van Schurman."[22] This manuscript is now