lawsuits, both in New Amsterdam and Maryland, was as quarrelsome and sometimes unreasonable as any of his highspirited contemporaries; but he did manage to keep his temper under control for the most part. A good cultural education in his youth had taught him the advisability of moderation.
There is very little contemporary information by which we might judge Herrman’s family life. That his home life with his first wife was happy and satisfactory seems conclusive, for she seems to have been a lady of no little culture and refinement as judged by the standards of early seventeenth century America. Unfortunately she did not live long to enjoy her title as wife of the first lord of Bohemia Manor; but Herrman and his first wife were highly regarded by the third Lord Baltimore for their grace and hospitality. Jannetje Herrman died about the year 1664, having born to her husband two sons and three daughters.[1]
In 1666 Herrman married Catherine Ward of Upper Baltimore County. She was probably the daughter of his neighbor, Henry Ward.[2] Very little is known of the second Lady Herrman beyond the description given by the Labadist diarists. Yet she could not have been the most amiable and affable of women to be described even by a bigoted fanatic as “miserable, doubly miserable and too miserable to describe.” There most certainly was something about Catherine Ward Herrman that was not altogether to her credit, even though she may have merited only a one-hundredth part of the severe criticism of Sluyter and Dankaerts. She most likely was not the type of woman of Jannetje in point of amiability, grace and charm; and for this reason the Manor House was not the center of social life as
