Daniel Denton’s A Brief Description of New-York: A Pre-Industrial American Dream

Year 2004, Issue: 19, 9 - 19, 01.04.2004

Leo J. Mahoney

Abstract

Daniel Denton’s eyewitness account of the Duke of York’s proprietary colony was the first such description of New York by an Englishman. Allegedly a new contribution to his countrymen’s knowledge of America, it was also a candid appeal to immigrate to New York by a public official of Jamaica, New York, only a few years after the colony was forcibly taken from the Dutch. As an early English advertisement for America, Denton’s tract was an ostensibly factual presentation of the advantages to immigrants of settling in New York.

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