Jasper Danckaerts was a Dutch Labadist missionary who traveled through the American colonies in 1679 and 1680 in search of land for a religious community, leaving behind one of the most detailed and candid firsthand accounts of colonial life in the late seventeenth century. His journal covers New York, Maryland, and New England, describing the landscape, settlements, inhabitants, and religious practices he encountered with the sharp and sometimes critical eye of an outsider.
As one of the richest primary sources for colonial America in this period, the journal is invaluable for historians of early American society. Download this free EPUB for a rare and vivid observer’s account of the American colonies before the eighteenth century.