138 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

manus Blom, a candidate for the ministry, was induced to come out to New Amsterdam. Arriving here about the last of April, he shortly after received a call from the prosperous village of Esopus (now Kingston); and having accepted it, returned to Holland to pass his examination before the Classis, and receive ordination. Meanwhile the people of Breuckelen, in view of the badness of the roads to Flatbush, and the inability of the Rev. Mr. Polhemus, on account of his age and infirmity, to bestow any considerable portion of his labor upon them, had petitioned the Governor and Council for permission to have a minister resident in their town. The application was favorably regarded1 and when (March 1) Blom left Holland on his return to New Netherland, he was accompanied by the Rev. Henricus Selyns, under appointment to preach at Breuckelen.2

Mr. Selyns was the son of Jan Selyns and Agneta Kock, of Amsterdam, where he was born in the year 1636. Having been regalarly educated for the ministry, he became, in due time, a proponent or candidate for full orders. “Tracing his ancestry, both on the father's and mother’s side, clearly back, through a regular line of elders, deacons, and deaconesses, to the first institution of the Dutch Reformed Church as an independent establishment, and connected by blood and marriage with distinguished ministers of that church, he could not fail to imbibe its tenets and principles, and enter with confidence and honorable ambition upon the studies which were to fit him for its services.”3 Such were the antecedents of the man who, having accepted the call from Breuckelen, made through the Dutch West India Company to the Classis at Amster-

1 Nicasius de Sille, the Fiscal, and Martin Kreiger, one of the Burgomasters, were appointed as a committee of inquiry by the Governor, upon whose favorable report the required permission was granted.

2 The call of the Breuckelen church to Dominie Selyns was by him accepted, and approved by the Classis of Amsterdam, February 16, 1660 (-61).—Brooklyn Church Records.

3 His paternal grandfather, Hendrick Selyns, was a deacon of the Amsterdam church in 1598; his father, an elder from 1639 to 1663; his maternal great-grandfather, Hendrick Kock, a deacon from 1584 to 1595 ; his grandfather, Hans Verlocken, in 1587-90; while his grandmother, Agneta Selyns, was a deaconess for several years in the same church. Triglandius, Lantsman, and J. Nieuwenhuysen, celebrated ministers of the Netherland church, were also his cousins.