First of all, Herrman was an adventurer, as that term was applied to men of rank during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who undertook to form new colonies in the New World. In the eighteenth century the term “cavalier” was used and during the nineteenth century the word “pioneer” denoted much of what the adventurer was like two or three hundred years earlier. To Herrman, life was one long series of adventures, noble and honorable. By birth and education Herrman was an aristocrat in the best meaning of the word and ever remained one both as a merchant and trader of New Amsterdam and later as lord of Bohemia Manor. He seemed to be above the small and petty things of life, and one can think of no incident that better illustrates his nature than his willingness to overlook the triviality of Peter Stuyvesant in the matter of the absurd letter given him on his mission to Governor Coddington of Rhode Island. There appears never to have been an active resentment or even an attempt of retaliation against Stuyvesant on Herrman’s part. This was not because Herrman was without temper and passion. Far from it; for on occasions he could become quite angry, but he punished his enemies openly and fairly. Herrman, if we are to judge by his many
cannons had been withdrawn. Swimming the North River the horse carried Herrman as far as New Castle where it died. There is an interesting metrical version of the story in George Alfred Townsend’s “Tales from the Chesepeake”. One-half of a horse bit was recovered from the ruins of the first manor house of exactly the same pattern as the bit in the portrait of Herrman and his horse. The original portrait is said to be lost. A reproduction appears in Elroy McKendree Avery’s History of the United States (1910), Vol. III. p. 51. A copy is also in the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. March 20, 1941, the Maryland State Legislature appropriated the sum of $200.00 for a portrait of Herrman to be hung in the Capitol at Annapolis. Former U. S. Senator Thomas F. Bayard of Wilmington, Del., has a copy of a painting of Herrman and his horse, that is more pleasing than the one owned by the Md. Hist. Soc. The original copy is in the possession of Senator Bayard’s cousin, Mrs. Melville.
