Map of the settlement of Nieuw-Amsterdam at the Berbice River
Pijpen, Leonard van der
Title Leupe: Plan van de Platte grond van alle de wooningen en erven, staande tusschen het fort Nassauw tot aan het huys de Dageraad in Rio de Berbice.
From 1720, but mainly after the opening up of Berbice in 1733, almost a kilometre upstream from Fort Nassau a small settlement gradually emerged, which shortly before or in the early 1760’s came to be known as Nieuw-Amsterdam.
This is the earliest extant map of the entire settlement and was created in 1743 by the land surveyor Leonard van der Pijpen.
The available details on the early developmental history are extremely scarse but from this map it may be deduced that the settlement then comprised two sections, a district with a number of dwellings from former years, each with a sizeable piece of land immediately on the Berbice (I to Q) and, a shorter distance from the fort and without direct access to the river, a newly projected extension with smaller plots of land, the granting of which was evidently not yet completed in 1743 (1 to 23).
At point (L) Van der Pijpen had drawn in his own house, and in the new housing area he also indicated the dwelling (11) of his colleague Jan Daniel Knapp (incidentally, in the following year, the two men were to battle out a financial dispute at the Court of Civil Justice) and at (19) that of the planter Lodewijk Abbensetz (also: Abbensets).
The latter was the owner of the plantation La Solitude and was conceivably a forefather of Lodewijk Christoffel Abbensetz, who some 60 years later owned the plantation Voorburg (see Dutch National Archive 2.01.28.02 inv. nr. 174D map 1).
North is lower left.
Taken from: the documents of the ship Alida Gally steered by captain Frederik Enkes which arrived in Texel on 22 June 1743.
Scale-bar of 50 Rhineland Rods = [approximately 1 : 1,260].
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