Jan Rodrigues

Juan "Jan" Rodrigues (born in Santo Domingo) was the first black man to live in New York City. He was among the first settlers that established a Dutch fur trading post in Lower Manhattan in 1613 founded by Christiaan Hendricksen. This is considered the beginning of New York as a city.

Though it was a private enterprise the Dutch Republic took over in 1621 and incorporated the little town in 1624 when settlers established one year earlier in Governor Island together with a contingent of colonizers coming from the Netherlands that same year joined the traders established in the tiny 11 years old settlement of Lower Manhattan.

In the early spring of 1613, fur trader Adriaan Block complained bitterly that a competitor, Thijs Volckenz Mossel, commander of the Jonge Tobias, had tried to “spoil the trade” by offering three times more for a beaver than Block did.

In his report against Mossel, which he submitted to the Amsterdam Notary upon his return to Holland, Block topped off his list of accusations against Mossel with his outrage that crewman Rodrigues had become a permanent fixture in the Manhattan frontier, trading and living alone among the natives.

When the said Mossel sailed away from the river with his ship, [Rodrigues] born in St. Domingo, who had arrived there with the ship of said Mossel, stayed ashore at the same place. They had given [Rodrigues] eighty hatchets, some knives, a musket and a sword.

According to Block, Mossel denied that Rodrigues was working on his behalf. Rodrigues had taken it upon himself to gain friendship with the natives, set up a trading post, and live comfortably on Manhattan Island.

[Mossel] declared that this Spaniard [Rodrigues] had run away from the ship and gone ashore against his intent and will and that he had given him the said goods in payment of his wages and therefore had nothing more to do with him.

Block closed his report by writing that he knew of no other crewman who stayed behind but Rodrigues. This means that a native of San Domingo, now the Dominican Republic and Haiti, was the first documented non-Native American to remain on Manhattan without the support of a ship in the harbor. And the natives, who preferred the goods and ironware sold by Rodrigues over their own, seem to have accepted him as the island’s first merchant.

By the autumn of 1613, three Dutch ships had arrived: De Tijer, captained by Block, the Fortuyn, captained by Hendrick Christiaensen, and the Nachtegaal, captained by Mossel. This time it was Christiaensen who wrote about Rodrigues. His log states that Rodrigues came aboard the Nachtegaal, presented himself as a freeman, and offered to work for Christiaensen trading furs. Despite the short, exciting narrative, the historical record leaves us with few details about the remainder of the life of Juan “Jan” Rodrigues. What does remains is an intriguing episode of early New York City history.

So despite officially Christiaensen is considered the founder of New York City in late 1613 actually the real founder of the city is Jan Rodrigues having established himself in Manhattan around a year before in late 1612 (being this the real year of settlement of the city by non-natives).

Nowadays a plaque stands in Riverside Park in recognition of Jan Rodrigues, whom history records as the first merchant and non-Native American inhabitant of Manhattan.