Was the first clergyman in New Netherland; born in
Holland.
He and
Adam Roelandson, school-master, came to
America with
Governor Van Twiller in 1633.
Bogardus was a bold, outspoken man, and did not shrink from giving “a piece of his mind” to men in authority.
Provoked by what he considered maladministration of public affairs, he wrote a letter to
Governor Van Twiller, in which he called him “a child of the devil,” and threatened to give him “such a shake from the pulpit” the next
Sunday as would “make him shudder.”
About 1638
Bogardus married Annetje.
widow of
Roeloff Jansen, to whose hushand
Van Twiller had granted 62 acres of land on
Manhattan Island, now in possession of Trinity Church, New York.
This is the estate which the “heirs of
Annetje Jansen Bogardus” have been seeking for many years to recover.
Being charged before the Classis of
Amsterdam with conduct unbecoming a clergyman.
Bogardus was about to go thither to defend himself on the arrival of
Kieft, but the governor and council determined to retain him for the “good of souls.”
A daughter of
Mr. Bogardus by his first wife was married in 1642; and it was on that occasion that
Governor Kieft procured generous subscriptions for building a new church.
At the wedding feast, “after the fourth or fifth round of drinking,” he made a liberal subscription himself to the church find.
and requested the other guests, to do the same.
All the company, with “light heads and glad hearts,” vied with each other in “subscribing richly” : and some of them, after they returned home, “well repented it,” but were not excused.
John and
Richard Ogden.
of
Stamford, Conn., were employed to build the church, in which
Bogardus officiated about four years. When
Kieft, in 1643.
was about to make war on the Indians,
Bogardus, who had been invited to the council, warned him in warm words against his rashness.
Two years later he shared with the people in disgust of the governor; and he boldly denounced him, as he had
Van Twiller, from the pulpit, charging him with drunkenness and rapacity, and said, “What are the great men of the country but vessels of wrath and fountains of woe and trouble?
They think of nothing but to plunder the property of others, to dismiss, to banish, to transport to
Holland.”
Kieft and some of the provincial officers absented themselves from church to avoid further clerical lashings.
Kieft encouraged unruly fellows to keep up a noise around the church during the preaching.
On one occasion a drum was beaten, a cannon was fired several times during the service, and the communicants were insulted.
The plucky dominie denounced the authorities more fiercely than ever, and the governor brought the contumacious clergyman to trial.
The excitement ran high, but mutual friends finally brought about a cessation of hostilities, if not peace.
There were then two other clergymen in the province —
Samuel Megapolensis and
Francis Doughty — the latter preaching to the
English residents there.
The conduct of
Bogardus had become a subject of remark in the Classis of
Amsterdam, and after the arrival of
Stuyvesant (1647) he resigned, and sailed for holland in the same vessel with
Kieft.
He, too, was drowned when the vessel was wrecked in
Bristol Channel, Sept. 27, 1647.
