HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 45

Indians were dispossessed.1 As soon as, and even before, hostilities ceased) the choicest portions of this tract were taken up by the white settlers under patents from the Dutch West India Company. Thus, in July, 1645, Jan Evertse Bou followed in 1646 by Huyck Aertsen (van Rossum), Jacob Stoffelsen, Pieter Cornelissen, and Joris Dircksen and by Gerrit Wolphertsen Van Couwenhoven and others in 1647, established themselves in this vicinity, on either side of the road that led from Flatbush to “The Ferry” The village thus formed, and which was located on the present Fulton Avenue, in the vicinity of the junction of Hoyt and Smith streets with said avenue, and southeast of the present City Hall, was called Breuckelen, after the ancient village of the same name in Holland, some eighteen miles from Amsterdam.2 Its founders were the first to avail themselves of the policy recommended by the West India Company's Chamber of Accounts, in the “Code of General Instructions” which they had prepared for the Provincial Council in the preceding autumn, viz.: “to do all in their power to induce the colonists to establish themselves on some of the most suitable places, with a certain number of inhabitants, in the manner of towns, villages, and hamlets, as the English are in the habit of doing.” And their expressed wish and intention to “found a town at their own expense”3 was promptly responded to (June, 1646) by the Colonial Council, with the following brief or commission:

“We, William Kieft, Director General, and the Council residing in New Netherland, on behalf of the High and Mighty Lords StatesGeneral of the United Netherlands, His Highness of Orange and the Honorable Directors of the General Incorporated West India Company. To all those who shall see these presents or hear them read, Greeting:

“Whereas, Jan Eversen Bout and Huyek Aertsen from Rossum, were on the 21st May last unanimously chosen by those interested

1. See the discussion of the Lubbertse patent in chapter on “Early Settlers and Patents.”

2. For a most interesting account of a visit to the original Breuckelen, made by the Hon. Henry C. Murphy. of Brooklyn, while Minister to the Hague, the reader is referred to Appendix No. 4.

3. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 332, and note.