Cornelius Melyn

About the Book

(There are rumors of a number of mistakes in the book. If you look carefully, they´re in DIRECT QUOTES. If all or part of the original source, was quoted, and also has mistakes, the mistakes will also be in quotes. If these mistakes were corrected, the meaning of that history would be changed, assuming I knew what the correction was supposed to be in the first place.) It was during the 17th Century, many of the Dutch and Belgium settlers who immigrated to New Amsterdam, New York began to lay claims in the new lands of Staten Island and Manhattan. During this time of establishing a life for themselves and their families, there were many encounters with the local Indians that resulted in having some of their establishments destroyed and some of their families killed. It would be one of the original patroons of Staten Island, David Petersen De Vries, who would instigate this destruction by the Indians. One of these settlers who would feel this wrath would be Cornelius Melyn. After feeling the affects of these Indian attacks perpetrated by De Vries, Melyn began organizing a campaign to lay a case against De Vries, to instigate the causes of these attacks. But as De Vries’ commission as governor was being replaced by Peter Stuyvesant, Melyn and some of his associates began attesting against De Vries demanding for an immediate investigation to these attacks. Stuyvesant soon caught glimpse of this attack and immediately began formulating a plan to protect himself. Now that he was the new governor of New Sweden, Stuyvesant refused to have these settlers treat him as they did with De Vries. Since Melyn wasn’t satisfied with the outcomes of the case against De Vries, Melyn began demanding Stuyvesant to investigate these claims. When it came to handling the Indian attacks, Stuyvesant basically had no interest in this and shrugged it off by stating that he had done all he felt he could in getting rid of the problem. But this of course angered Melyn even more and caused him to slash out more in his campaign against Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant, feeling Melyn’s antagonism, felt that the only way to resolve this matter was to rid of Melyn by whatever means. It is this rebellious time that is the subject of this book, in explaining what was happening in the history of Staten Island and Manhattan.

About the Author

About the author: Richard Scott Baskas is currently an Ed.D. candidate with Walden University in the beginning stages of his dissertation, entitled "An Embedded Study to Identify What Barriers Discourage Military Veterans from Taking Full Advantage of the G.I. Bill". The author is a USAF disabled veteran and became curious as to why some veterans never took advantage of their education benefit while having used his benefits towards his education.