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Map of land on the Saramacca River surveyed for the Moravian Brothers

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Map of land on the Saramacca River surveyed for the Moravian Brothers

Spiering, Johan Hendrik Carel

Title Leupe: Kaart van een gedeelte van de rivier Saramacca, waarvan afgestoken het land voor de Unitas fratrum of Vereynigte Broeders (Hernhutters).

This map by (or at least signed by) the military engineer Johan Hendrik Carel Spiering dates from 1757, and shows the survey of the land on the upper course of the Saramacca assigned that year to the Hernhutters to set up their mission post Saron together with a village for their Christianized Arowak Indians from the post of Pilgerhut in Berbice. At the beginning of 1761 it went up in flames during a Marron attack. A few months later the village was rebuilt a little farther upstream, in the vicinity of the military post that the government had established there in the same year. As time passed it seems that Saron turned out to be just as unsuitable as a viable project as their Pilgershut settlement; in 1778 it was abandoned completely.

North is left.

Scale-bar of 200 Surinamese chains jeede of 66 Rhineland feet = [approximately 1 : 23,000].

Please contact Nationaal Archief for reuse and copyrights.

Sources and literature

Heijer, H. den, Grote Atlas van de West-Indische Compagnie = Comprehensive Atlas of the Dutch West India Company, II, de nieuwe WIC 1674-1791 = the new WIC 1674-1791 (2012)