Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/12



Few more picturesque or romantic figures have appeared in the early annals of American history than Augustine Herrman, first lord of Bohemia Manor. It is not because of his picturesqueness or of the romantic glamor of his career that a detailed biography of Herrman is thought advisable. Little more than fifty years ago few had heard of his name. One day in the North Library of the British Museum his map of Virginia and Maryland was discovered. So accurately had it been plotted and so artistically had it been drawn and engraved that soon scholars wanted to know more about the man who had made it. The colonial archives of Maryland and Virginia revealed Herrman to be a man past the middle age of life seated in state at his baronial manor house in the extreme northeast corner of Maryland. But few who had learned even this much about him were aware that he had had a previous career-the career of the first great American merchant and man of business.

Not alone as the beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, but also for his developing trade in general in New Amsterdam and elsewhere is his career worthy of serious study. The name of Peter Stuyvesant is known to every English-speaking school boy the world over; but the doughty old governor’s satellite, “lesser but greater” remains relatively unknown to the public at large. Few men did Stuyvesant hate more than Herrman—a hatred that burned to white heat at times with all the consuming energy of the tempestuous Dutchman's fiery nature; but there was none for whom he had more respect and none whom he could better trust in difficult matters: it is proper that we say this in memory of Peter Stuyvesant. For every difficult and delicate situation that required tact and ability, Herrman in