Daniel Denton

Daniel Denton (* around 1626 in Yorkshire , England , † 1703 in New York ) was an English settler in the English colonies in North America. In 1670 he published A Brief Description of New York in London , a description of the New York colony .

Life

Denton was the son of Pastor Richard Denton , who emigrated to New England with his family around 1639 and who was one of the founders of Hempstead on Long Island in 1644 . In 1659 Richard Denton returned to England, his sons Daniel, Nathaniel, Richard and Samuel stayed in America.

Daniel Denton took an active part in the politics, administration and expansion of the English colonies. From 1650 he was town clerk of Hempstead. This English settlement was on the territory of the Dutch colony Nieuw Nederland and so remained neutral in the first Anglo-Dutch war . In 1656 Denton took part in the settlement of Jamaica (now part of Queens ), also located on Dutch territory, and was appointed its first town clerk in 1657. Around 1657 he married Abigail Stevenson; the marriage had three children. As New Netherland was in 1664 completely annexed by England, took advantage of Denton political circumstances and acquired with two other shareholders at Richard Nicolls , the first governor of the now New York-called English colony, an agricultural and settlement patent for a tract of land in what is now New Jersey , the so called Elizabethtown Tract . The Lenape Indians residing in the area had previously been decimated by diseases brought in by the Europeans and sold the land of Denton and his four associates (John Bayley, Luke Watson and John Ogden ) for goods and wampums worth £ 154; Denton sold its stake a little later at a profit. In 1665 he represented Jamaica in the first general assembly of the New York colony; Governor Richard Nicolls also appointed him Justice of the Peace of the Northern District ( North Riding ) of Yorkshire County on Long Island.

In 1670 he traveled to London, where he published his A Brief Description of New York . Upon his return he found that his wife had become adulterous and obtained a divorce in court - an unusual process for the time. Denton first settled in Piscataway, New Jersey, and became a teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1674 . In 1676 he married again; from this second marriage there were six more children. In 1684 he returned to Long Island and was again town clerk of Jamaica, in 1689 he was appointed county clerk of Queens County. Denton probably died on Long Island around 1703.

A Brief Description of New York

In 1670, during Denton's stay in England, the 25-page pamphlet A Brief Description of New-York: Formerly Called New-Netherlands was published , one of the first English-language descriptions of the geography, inhabitants, flora and fauna of the new English colony of New York. The work can be attributed to the promotion literature ("advertising literature"), so the writings with which English settlers should be lured into the colonies in North America. Since the different colonies were in competition with each other for willing emigrants, it was important to emphasize the advantages of their own colony; Denton's writing is the first and most famous of those to promote New York.

Much of the text deals with the advantages of the already populated regions of New York, i.e. the islands of Manhattan , Staten Island and Long Island . Unlike further west ( e.g. in Virginia), the climate here is comparable to that in England, so the emigrant does not have to fear any weather-related change in his mood ( seasoning ), and fever-causing soil exhalations ( miasma ), as it is in other colonies displaced by a steady fresh breeze, so that the colonists in New York enjoyed robust health. New York is also richly blessed with fertile soils, abundant forests, abundant game, birds and fish, and the conditions on the coast offer local ships good harbors, but also natural protection against any attackers at sea.

The middle part of the text deals with the Indians of New York and gives a description of their religion and customs that is in part quite modern and anthropological - this is how Denton describes their name taboo in detail . In general, the Indians are peaceful in dealing both with one another and with the English. Although there have been armed conflicts in the past, this is more due to the inability of the Dutch to deal with the Indians. Moreover, according to Denton, it seems that Divine Providence is on the side of the English, for “it was generally observed that when the English settlers arrived, God's hand cleared the way for them by taking the Indians away, either through wars among themselves or through devastating fatal diseases "( To say something of the Indians, there is now but few upon the Island, and those few no ways hurtful but rather serviceable to the English, and it is to be admired, how strangely they have decreast by the Hand of God, since the English first setling of those parts; for since my time, where there were six towns, they are reduced to two small Villages, and it hath been generally observed, that where the English come to setle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians, either by Wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal disease. ).

The last pages of the Brief Description are aimed directly at English people who are willing to emigrate, also and especially destitute ones. Denton elaborately paints the possibilities that settlers in the New World await, and he also tries a biblical trope , which is also often found in the puritan literature of New England and still shapes American exceptionalism today, the idea of ​​America as the New Promised Land : " If there is an earthly Canaan, it is surely here, a land in which milk and honey flow ”( That I must needs say, that if there be any terrestrial Canaan, 'tis surely here, where the land floweth with milk and honey . ).

Web links

• Facsimile of the Brief Description of New-York: Formerly Called New-Netherlands as .pdf
• Article on Daniel Denton in the Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XIV.