[5][6][7][8][9][2][10] The area was formerly known as Noortwyck, where the ousted Dutch governor Wouter van Twiller had owned a large tobacco farm, Bossen Bouwerie, built on the earlier Lenape settlement of Sapokanikan.
In 1644, eleven African men who had been under the WIC for "18 or 19 years" that likely included military experience, pressed their rights in the courts in a predecessor to freedom suits, and became recognized as part of a new half-free social class of the colony, being granted lands at about the same time.
[2] Africans had largely built the fortifications of New Netherland, including Fort Amsterdam and the northern palisade, and combat veterans among them may have been given preferential treatment in the assignment of lands.
[14] Enslaved Africans are also depicted on the 1639 Manatus Map as living in quarters farther north at the mouth of the Sawkill, though this is not recorded elsewhere, and may have been either an error or a temporary measure due to military efforts.
Although their freedom was only partial, it is sometimes considered the first free African settlement in North America, that status being more commonly given to Fort Mose founded a century later in Spanish Florida, also as a military measure.
It has been argued by historians that Atlantic Creole populations in both places came from communities in Africa with pre-existing European ties such as the Kingdom of Kongo, that helped them to negotiate improved living conditions.