| Notes |
- Jesse, son of Jean and Anne (Maillard) De Forest, was born about 1575. There is no important information concerning him after December 1, 1623, when in a tax list of Leyden, Holland, opposite his name is the entry "gone to the West Indies," which may have meant anywhere in North or Central America. Up to 1606 he appears as a merchant residing at Sedan, France, and in 1615 he appears in the Walloon registers of Leyden, where he was residing in 1620, the time of the departure of the Pilgrim fathers for America. He conceived the design of planting a colony of his own people in the New World, and this design he carried from year to year and from state to state until he had brought it to execution. He gathered a colony of fifty or sixty Walloon and French families, "all of the Reformed faith," and prayed the King of England to grant them a settlement in Virginia and "to maintain them in their religion" by undertaking their protection and defence. The petition or demand was signed by fifty-six men, mostly heads of families, the first of whom was Jesse De Forest. They prayed the King that he would grant them a territory of sixteen miles in diameter where they might cultivate fields, meadows, vineyards, etc., and article seventh of the petition reads:
"Whether they would be permitted to hunt all game, whether furred or feathered; to fish in the sea and rivers, and to cut heavy and small timber, as well for navigation as for other purposes, according to their desire; in a word, whether they might make use of everything above and below ground, according to their will and pleasure, saving the royal rights and trade in everything with such persons as should be there to privilege."
The petition was not acted upon favorably. He continued his enrolling, and looked for aid from Holland in getting the colony to America. Here Jesse De Forest disappears from distinct sight. It seems clear, however, that his first and perhaps only colonizing venture, was to that part of South America which the Dutch called the "wild coast," or Guinea. To this region two successive bands of settlers were despatched from Leyden in 1623. The fleet which Jesse De Forest accompanied sailed out of the Neuse, twenty miles south of Leyden, December 23, 1623. Nothing further is known of him. He was a man of fixed purpose, which he carried into execution, but whether he sleeps beside the Oaypok or beside the Hudson is not known. He had aroused and directed the emigrants who founded New York as well as those who established a dwelling place in Guinea and among the Carribean Islands. He married Marie du Cloux, and their seventh recorded child, Isaac, is the founder in America of the De Forests of Schenectady. - Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 447
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Abt 1575 - Aft 1623 (~ 49 years)
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