Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Steendam, Jacob

STEENDAM, Jacob, Dutch poet, b.in Holland in 1616. It is uncertain when or where he died. He came to the colony of New Amsterdam about 1632, and stayed there till 1662, when he returned to Holland. During his residence in the Dutch settlement he owned farms at Amersfort and Mespath, a house and lot on what is now Pearl street, and another on Broadway. He left Holland several years after his return, and made a voyage to Batavia, where he may possibly have died. The little that is known of him is due to the researches of Henry C. Murphy, who, when he was U. S. minister to the Hague, discovered some poems written by Steendam on New Amsterdam, and had them printed with an English version in the same metre. The work is entitled “Jacob Steendam noch vaster. A Memoir of the First Poet in New Netherlands, with his Poems descriptive of the Colony” (The Hague, 1861). The poems are “Complaint of New Amsterdam, in New Netherlands, to her Mother, of her Beginning, Growth, and Present Condition,” and “The Praise of New Netherlands: Spurring Verses to the Lovers of the Colony and Brothership to be established on the South River of New Netherland. Peter Cornelison Plockhoy, of Ziereckzee.”