John Romeyn Brodhead, 1814-1873by Dr. Adriaan J. Barnouw, Queen Wilhelmina Professor Emeritus at Columbia University "Details related of distinguished career of lawyer-historian
whose investigations documented record of New Netherland era. John Romeyn had not inherited Captain Daniel's martial spirit.
He was a religious man and a faithful believer in the tenets of
the Dutch Reformed Church of which his father was a prominent
minister, first in Philadelphia and from 1826 on in New York.
The son graduated with honors from Rutgers College at the youthful
age of seventeen. He did not follow in his father's footsteps
but was admitted to the New York Bar in 1835. However, a lawyer's
career was as little to his liking as the pastoral care of a church
community. The study of early New York history was his all-absorbing
passion, and from 1839 on he devoted laborious hours to rescuing
from oblivion the records of the old Dutch colony that his Yorkshire
ancestor had helped to annihilate. He was fortunate in being offered a position at The Hague where
he could indulge his hobby. On May 15, 1839, the State Department
in Washington, D. D., announced the appointment as Charge d'Affaires
in the Netherlands of Mr. Harmanus Bleecker, a resident of Albany,
N. Y. Mr. Bleecker was traveling in England at the time, and as
soon as the news of his appointment reached him he abandoned his
plan to spend the summer in Scotland and went to The Hague. Holland
was not known territory to him. He had spent the early months
of 1839 on a sightseeing tour through his ancestral country and
had made many friends among the Dutch thanks to his ability to
speak their language fluently, which was still in use among the
old families in Albany. They were glad to see him return as the
representative of his country and gave him a cordial welcome. The United States did not maintain an official residence for
the Charge d'Affaires at The Hague. Mr. Bleecker had to find one
himself and pay the rent out of his own pocket. Neither did the
State Department provide him with a secretary who could aid him
with his correspondence and his various social duties. Finding
himself greatly handicapped Mr. Bleecker wrote to his Albany friend
J. V. F. Pruyn: "Do you know a very fine young man in Albany
who would like to come to this place and serve as a clerk to me,
which would 'occupy hardly any of his time, with the opportunity
of learning German, Dutch, and French very cheaply and general
law and jurisprudence? I am not allowed anything for a Secretary
or Clerk's hire; and what such a young man as I speak of could
earn of me would, of course, not amount to much. I would instruct
him in jurisprudence, and by being an attaché of the legation
he would be in society, in which he would hear English, French,
German, and Dutch….Of course, I wish a person who has a right
ambition to improve himself." Romeyn Brodhead was the very "fine young man" who fully
answered Mr. Bleecker's requirements. He sailed immediately to
offer his services as Clerk to the Charge d'Affairs at The Hague.
He did "improve" himself in the one year that he stayed
with Mr. Bleecker. He used the free time that was granted him
liberally to investigate what records were hidden in the Dutch
archives, and he found to his delight that they were rich in material
on the early history of New York. When he heard that the Legislature
of New York State, by action of May 2, 1839, had authorized the
appointment of an agent to procure from the archives of Europe
materials to fill the gaps in the State's archives, he applied
for the post and was appointed by Governor William H. Seward. He spent the next four years in Holland, France, and England
collecting many valuable date in transcription. The official custodians
of these historical treasures were not always very helpful. Some
of them were inclined to treat this investigator from the young
Republic across the Atlantic as an impertinent intruder and liked
to impress him with their importance as keepers of diplomatic
secrets that were not destined for his inquisitive eyes, but in
such cases he could always count on the baking of the United States
representative, Mr. Bleecker at The Hague, General Lewis Cass
in Paris, and Edward Everett in London. In Amsterdam he met with a rebuff that neither the man who administered
it nor Mr. Bleecker's intervention could help. He wrote to the
latter from there: "Upon calling on Mr. Demunnick I found
to my deep sorrow that in 1818 all the old documents of the West
India Company previous to 1700 had been sold under an order from
The Hague for some 3 or 4000 guildres to paper mills." So
little did the Dutch authorities care for the historical records
of a since long defunct commercial company. Their thoughtless
action was in glaring contrast to Brodhead's zealous endeavor
to preserve such material. Conservative men are apt to be critical of a new invention, and
Mr. Brodhead who lived with his thoughts in the past was by temperament
and training a conservative. And he could always quote from his
own experience a stiking instance of the peril of steamship travel.
When he decided in 1839 to go to The Hague he booked a passage
on the steamer President but was prevented by unforseen circumstances
from boarding the ship in time. She sailed without him and was
never heard of again. So you see, he would say, a sailing ship
is safer. The eighty volumes reached New York without damage or loss. Broadhead
did not undertake to edit the copied documents himself. That became
the task of two other men. Edmund O'Callaghan was the editor of
the first elevem quatro volumes, and these were followed by four
others which were edited by Berthold Fernow. The entire series
of fifteen tomes was issued under the title "Documents Relating
to the Colonial History of New York". Their publication covered
a period of thirty years fron 1853 to 1883. Brodhead himself intended to use the material he had collected
for the writing of a history of the State of New York. But other
work postponed the execution of that plan. For three yeard (1846-49)
he served as secretary of legation under George Bancroft in London,
a man of kindred spirit who brought together at great pains and
expense copies of public documents, family papers, and private
journals kept by historic personages, a valuable collection now
deposited in the New York Public Library. The two men returned
to America in 1849, and Brodhead settled down at last to write
his "History of the State of New York." The first volume
dealing with the period of New Netherland, (1609-1664) appeared
in 1853. The writer's appointment as naval officer of the port
of New York was accountable for the slow progress of his work
on the second volume. This did not see the light until 1871. It
covered the period from Stuyvesant's capitulation to the execution
of Leisler (1664-1691). He was at work on the third when death
took the pen from his hand. He died not yet sixty yeard old and
was buried in Trinity cemetery. (REPRINTED from the October, 1964, issue of de Halve Maen, quarterly magazine of The Holland Society of New York, 122 East 58th Street, New York, N. Y. 10022)
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