Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/38

 Holland. When this plan became too dangerous the resourceful Herrman adopted other measures.

The Hacks had left Northampton County in 1659 and had gone to the extreme northeast corner of Maryland in what is now Cecil County where they bought extensive tracts of land. Their plantations were located on the upper headwaters of Chesapeake Bay some twenty miles from the Delaware River, one of the largest called Hackston on the Sassafracx River. What tobacco Herrman could not get through the blockade at St. Mary’s he had transported to Hackston by wagon road, thence to a port on the Delaware River and then to New Amsterdam by boat and wagon road. Although this must have been a troublesome and roundabout method, still the extra expense was not so great but what Herrman could give the southern planters cheaper rates to Amsterdam than were otherwise offered by the English traders. Herrman was able thereby to smuggle tobacco from the English colonies to New Amsterdam as long as he remained in the mercantile business. Finally in 1664, New Amsterdam, apparently not much to Herrman’s discomfort, passed from the hands of the Dutch to the British. Herrman became a loyal British subject; in fact he had become a subject of the British crown as early as 1660; and after the transfer of New Netherland to England he probably did some little export business directly from the ports of Jamestown and St. Mary’s.