Samuel Blommaert
He was the son of Margaretha Hoefnagel (-1585)[a] and the wealthy goldsmith/merchant Lodewijk Blommaert (1537–1591),[4] who in 1581 was schepen of Antwerp and in 1583 captain at Fort Lillo on the eastern border of the Scheldt; he knew the area very well as his ancestors came from Bergen-op-Zoom.
His mother died when Samuel was young and his father moved the family to London when Antwerp was occupied in 1585 by the Duke of Parma.
He was sent by the board (Jacques l'Hermite) to Sukadana West Kalimantan to free merchant Hans Roeff, who had died or left when Blommaert arrived.
Blommaert was investigated in Amsterdam by the board of the East-India Company on January 30, 1616 [13] about a vessel, named Mauritius de Nassau, sailed from a Dutch port, under the command of Jan Remmertszoon from Purmerend.
[17] Louis de Geer received the official monopoly on the copper and iron trade in Sweden and decided to settle there.
[20] Gilles Housset and Jacob Jansz Cuyper bargained with the natives for a tract of land reaching from Cape Henlopen to the mouth of the Delaware River.
A ship of eighteen guns was fitted out to bring over the colonists and subsequently defend the coast, with incidental whale-fishing to help defray expenses.
A colony of more than thirty souls was planted on Lewes creek, a little north of Cape Henlopen, and its governorship was entrusted to Gilles Housset.
This settlement antedated by several years any in Pennsylvania, and the colony at Lewes practically laid the foundation and defined the singularly limited area of the state of Delaware, the major part of which was included in the purchase.
A palisaded fort was built, with the "red lion, rampant," of Holland affixed to its gate, and the country was named "Swaanendael" or Zwaanendael Colony, while the water was called Godyn's Bay.
The estate was further extended, on May 5, 1630, by the purchase of a tract twelve miles square on the coast of Cape May opposite, and the transaction was duly attested at Fort Amsterdam.
The existence of the little colony was short, for the Indians came down upon it in revenge for an arbitrary act on the part of Housset, and it was destroyed, not a soul escaping to tell the tale.
According to acknowledged precedent, occupancy of the wilderness served to perfect title; but before the Dutch could reoccupy the desolated site at Lewes, the English were practically in possession.
[b] Blommaert suggested to Oxenstierna to take part in the WIC, and organize from Gothenburg and trade on Spanish and Portuguese ports.
[c] Blommaert was interested in seizing Spanish ships, which sailed from the East or West-Indies to Cadiz or Seville, to make his expeditions and colonization more profitable.
Minuit left the colony mid-June, 1638 and sailed to the Caribbean island of St. Christopher where he arrived in early July to barter salt, a ship's cargo of wine and liquor for tobacco.
[32][33][34] (Meanwhile Cornelis Jol attempted to capture the Spanish treasure fleet near Cuba with four ships but didn't succeed to the disappointment of Blommaert.)
They mention Willem Usselincx one of the founders of the WIC, who had moved to Gothenburg in 1624 and founded the Swedish South Company; sv:Peter Spiring dealt with the Dutch merchants.
[44] These letters were published in Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum 1870–1879 of the Utrecht Historical Society and in Bijdragen en Mededeelingen (1908).
