Today, the Huguenot-Walloon Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin remembers the decisions of the Dutch colony to build a wall and incurred their colony’s first debt to do so 364 years ago.
Years later, the location of that wall is known as Wall Street in Manhattan.
From The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674 Anno Domini – New York (N.Y.), Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, published in 1897:
=====
At the City Hall, Saturday March 15, 1653, present Arent van Hat-tem, Wilh. Beeckman, Pieter Wolfersen and M. van Gheel.
Burgomasters and Schepens have by a plurality of votes nominated and elected Schepens Pieter Wolfersen and Wilh. Beeckman, whom they hereby authorize, to supervise with the Honorable Mr. la Montagne, appointed by Director General and Council, the work of fortifying this City, and to take care, that it is properly done, and Burgomaster Arent van Hattem shall pay out the funds, furnished as per list.
Done etc. March 15. 1653.
Notice: The Committee, appointed by Director General, Council and Magistrates of this City will receive proposals for a certain piece of work to set off the City with palisades, 12 to 13 feet long, by the rod.
Anyone, who wishes to undertake this work may come to the City Hall next Tuesday afternoon, hear the conditions and look over the work.
Done etc. March 15, 1653.
Let one tell it to the other!
=====
More details of the “wall” are found in New Amsterdam by Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, published in 1909:
=====
When the city magistrates began their sessions the danger of war was, of course, the pressing concern.
To the governors of the English colonies Stuyvesant wrote amicable letters informing them that their people might continue unmolested to trade at Manhattan.
In concert with the magistrates he proclaimed a day of fasting and prayer, ordered that all the inhabitants without exception should work on the fortifications, and at last mustered and drilled the burgher guard and detailed its members for constant guard-duty.
It included one hundred and fourteen men divided into four squads commanded by the captain and the lieutenant—who were a burgomaster and a schepen of the city, Arendt Van Hattem and Paulus Van der Grist, — an ensign and the senior sergeant.
The fort, it was ordered, should be repaired.
As it was impossible to protect the settlements where people lived at a distance from each other, it was decided ‘to concentrate the forces of New Netherland for the better protection of the place’; and as Fort Amsterdam could not hold all the inhabitants or defend all the houses in the city,
. . . to surround the greater part of the City with a high stockade and a small breastwork to draw in time of need all inhabitants behind it and defend as much as possible their persons and goods against attack.
This was the wall that gave its name to Wall Street.
About 180 rods in length, it ran for a short distance along the East River shore and crossed the island above the end of the ditch or canal, following the line of Kieft’s fence a little to the north of the present line of Wall Street and cutting through the southern part of the old Damen Farm.
The North River shore it left to the protection of a natural bluff which was leveled in much later times.
The committee appointed to supervise the works of defense, La Montagne of the council and the schepens William Beekman and Paulus Van der Grist, decided that the wall should be built of palisades twelve feet high, sharpened at the upper end, supported by posts, one to each rod of length, and reënforced on the inner side by a sloping breastwork of earth four feet high, behind which again should run a ditch.
From these specifications and a little explanatory sketch that accompanied them have usually been compiled the descriptions and the pictures of the wall in its original estate.
But the city records go on to say that the committee soon reported that, having asked for proposals for constructing the wall in this manner and finding nobody willing to do it except at a great price, they had therefore decided to ‘set off’ the wall with planks laid longitudinally and supported by three hundred or more oaken posts, the planks to be fifteen feet long and three or four inches thick and nine of them to form the height of the wall.
A notice asking for proposals to furnish the lumber, to be paid for in ‘good wampum,’ was then ‘publicly cried out through the city’; and the contract was taken by Thomas Baxter, an Englishman who had been living on Manhattan since the time of Governor Kieft.
The wall was soon defended at its East River end, now the corner of Wall and Pearl streets, by a blockhouse with a gate called the Water Poort, and at the intersection of the path which is now Broadway by another called the Landt Poort.
While the building of the wall was under discussion, in March, the magistrates asked the government whether it was not advisable to dispatch, in addition to the letters already sent, some delegates to the New England colonies whose commissioners were to meet on April 1, to learn how they were affected by the war in Europe and to offer ‘good and binding conditions’ for the continuance of ‘former intercourse and commerce.’
To this suggestion the governor and council agreed, saying that when they had drawn up proper credentials and instructions they would so notify the magistrates; and a few days later the magistrates elected two of their own number as ‘delegates to New England.’
It does not appear that the proposed mission was actually sent; but the incident is interesting as showing how prominent a part the city magistrates were at the very outset permitted to play even in those inter-colonial affairs with which, according to modern ideas, a municipality could have no concern.
At once the city incurred its first public debt.
As there was no money to meet the cost of the wall, the richest citizens, forty-three in number, lent the new corporation at ten per cent interest 5050 guilders in sums varying from 50 to 200 guilders.
The list of them — the earliest extant list of residents of New Amsterdam — begins with the Honorable Cornelis Van Werckhoven who had recently brought out a number of settlers, obtained the rights of a patroon, and established colonies at Tappaen and at Navesink behind Sandy Hook, and whom Stuyvesant had placed at his council board.
Another newcomer, also of good birth and worldly substance, who figured on the list was Johannes De Paistre or De Peyster. A native of Haerlem of French or Flem ish descent, who had come to New Amsterdam in 1645, he founded a family which has always been prominent and influential in New York.
Among the other names are those of all the city magistrates, of Jacobus Van Couwenhoven, Hendrick Kip, Govert Lockermans, and Oloff Stevensen, of Jacob Steendam, remembered for his poems in praise of New Netherland, and of the eldest son of Manhattan, Jan Winje.
=====
The Huguenot-Walloon Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin shows with an image of a tile in the Wall Street subway station illustrating the early wall.
