Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/48

 we have previously pointed out, bought vast tracts of land in the latter half of the year 1651, but much of this was apparently purchased for his friend Govert Loockermans, a wealthy New Amsterdam merchant and trader whom Stuyvesant had succeeded in ruining financially. Herrman tried to bear the entire burden of the debt and a year later found himself a ruined man. Added to these misfortunes, Herrman lost heavily in tobacco in 1652, compelled to sell below cost price. Herrman turned to Stuyvesant for aid but the vindictive old Dutchman not only refused to aid him but determined to make his plight all the more desperate. Herrman bore his misfortunes with coolness and manly fortitude. “In fine matters are so situated, that God’s help will only avail, there is no trust to be placed in man.” So he wrote to Anna Hack in Virginia. Mrs. Hack, upon hearing of the misfortunes of her brother-in-law, made preparations to go to New Amsterdam at once. The fortunes of the two families seemed so interwoven that a change in the financial affairs of one would naturally affect that of the other. Mrs. Hack appears to have had a successful business year in 1651 regardless of the First Navigation Act, possibly because Dr. Hack had courted favor with Cromwell by signing the Engagement of Northampton; and she was now in a position to be of help to Herrman. While Anna Hack was making preparations to make the trip to New Amsterdam, Herrman had made an assignment, putting his affairs in the hands of Paulus Leendersten and Albert Anthony. When Anna Hack arrived in New Amsterdam, Stuyvesant made a serious effort to ruin her financially—the governor apparently being on a veritable rampage at the time, determining to wreck the fortunes of every one who crossed his path. But Mrs. Hack was a Dutch woman, apparently with much of the fiery