HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 89

direction, probably as far as the head of Newtown Creek, in the neighborhood of Vandervoort avenue and Montrose street. This patent, therefore, was situated partly in Brooklyn and partly in Bushwick, comprising lands designated on Butt's map as belonging to General Jeremiah Johnson, James Scholes, Abraham Remsen, Abraham Boerum, Abraham Meserole, McKibbin, and Nichols, Powers, Schenck, Mills, and others, including the settlement known as “Bushwick Cross Roads,”1 and the meadows adjoining Newtown.

Hans Hansen Bergen, the common ancestor of the Bergen family of Long Island and New Jersey, was a native of Bergen, in Norway, from whence he emigrated to Holland. From thence, in 1633, he came, probably with Van Twiller, the second Director-General, to Nieuw Netherland. For several years he was a resident of Nieuw Amsterdam, where he owned a lot on the present Pearl street, abutting on the fort, and adjoining that of Joris Jansen de Rapalje, his future father-in-law. In 1638 he appears to have been engaged in a tobacco plantation, either on Andries Hudde's or the West India Company's land; and in 1639 he married Sarah, the daughter of Joris Janse de Rapalje, born, according to the family record, on the 9th of June, 1625, and who was reputed to be the first white child born in the colony of Nieuw Netherland.2 From the tenor of a

1 Riker also says, in his Hist. of Newtown, 18: “The farm of Hans Hansen has been already noticed as lying near Cripplebush. It comprised 400 acres, or nearly two. thirds of a square mile ; and from a careful examination of the patent and those adjoining, I think it must have covered a part, and perhaps the whole, of the present settle. ment at the Bushwick Cross-roads.”

2 The recently discovered journal of the Labadists, who visited this country in the year 1679 (translated by Hon. Henry C. Murphy, and forming the first volume of the Collections of the Long Island Historical Society), brings forward a statement which, if true, limits the historic honor hitherto enjoyed by Sarah Rapalie to that of simply being the first white female born in the colony. These travellers (pp, 114 and 115 of the volume above mentioned) speak of conversing with the first male born of Euro. peans in New Netherland, named Jean Vigne. “His parents were from Valenciennes, and he was now about sixty-five years of age. He was a brewer, and a neighbor of our old people.” To this Mr. Murphy adds the following note: “This is an interesting statement, which may riot only be compared with that hitherto received, attributing to Sarah do RapaIje, who was born on the 9th of June, 1625, the honor of having been the first-born Christian child in New Netherland, but is to be considered in other respects. According to the data given by our travellers, who, writing in 1679, make Jean Vigne sixty-sive years old at that time, he must have been born in the year 1614, eleven years before Sarah de Rapalje, and at the very earliest period compatible with the sojourn of any Hollanders upon our territory. Jean Vigne belonged to the class of