Author: Jasper Danckaerts

Jasper Danckaerts (1639 to about 1703) was a Dutchman from Zeeland who worked as a cooper for the East India Company at Middelburg and joined the Labadists, a strict Protestant communal sect founded by Jean de Labadie and settled at Wieuwerd in Friesland. In 1679 the community sent him and Peter Sluyter across the Atlantic to scout ground for a colony, a search that ended at Bohemia Manor in Maryland. He is remembered almost entirely for the journal of that voyage, which also carries his pen sketch of New York seen from Brooklyn, among the earliest surviving views of the city drawn on the spot.