his best friends during his merchant days. Van der Donck, New Amsterdam’s first and only historian, describes Herrman as “a curious man and a lover of the country”.[1] It is also in this connection that Van der Donck speaks of Herrman cultivating a superior variety of indigo on Manhattan Island.
No sooner did Herrman become an English subject and subsequently the lord of a manor than he adopted the habits and daily life of a British nobleman. He constructed a deer park south of the Manor House, about which we have already spoken. Always a skilled horseman, he took to foxhunting and eventually was convinced that a country gentleman should spend much of his time at this sport. Consequently he became as hard-riding a squire as one could find in the English domains of two continents. When Herrmann was asked one day why he was going to will the whole of Bohemia Manor to one son, he replied to the effect that by making a number of heirs he would also be making just as many foxhunters. Herrman was also very fond of shooting. Judging from the entry in the Labadist journal about being kept awake by the wild fowl, one would judge that duck hunting was excellent on the Bohemia River in those days. On one occasion it is related that his son Ephraim, upon bringing down only four wild fowl with one shot, complained about his bad luck and declared that a dozen was his usual number.
Judging from Herrman’s financial difficulties from time to time, one would infer that he was not the most careful person about matters pertaining to money; not that he was by any means a spendthrift. He was a generous man and doubtless
- ↑ Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant, Amsterdam, 1656. (Description of New Netherland.) The full text of the translation is given in the New York Historical Collections, Vol. I, 2nd Series (1841). This is, of course, the earliest history of New York and the original edition is of the greatest importance to the student of seventeenth century America.
