Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/28



We are not sure of the exact year Augustine Herrman came to the New World; nor are we certain of the precise part of America he first visited. This much seems certain, however. He saw a strange weed called tobacco growing in the rich soil of the southern lowlands and was aware that it was cultivated, cured and sent back to the European cities where people bought and smoked it. Inasmuch as he later referred to himself as the beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade we might assume that he stopped on one of these early voyages at the port of Jamestown where he took some time to study about the cultivation and shipment of tobacco. By beginning the Virginia tobacco trade it is possible that what Herrman meant by the statement was that he took some of the tobacco with him back to Amsterdam where he sold it. Certainly he was not an independent merchant at this time.

In 1633 he was with Arendt Corssen on the present site of Philadelphia when the land in that vicinity was bought from the Indians. There is some little evidence to believe that he came over in that year with Wouter Van Twiller, as an officer of the Dutch West India Company. At any rate Van Twiller, before assuming the governorship of New Amsterdam, had been a clerk in the home office of the Dutch West India Company and undoubtedly he knew of Herrman.

In 1633 Arendt Corssen was a commissary of Fort Nassau