Where there’s beaver, there’s beaver crime

Munsell’s fourth volume of the “Annals of Albany” begins with various records from the Courts of Assize, generally a criminal court. In the early days of Beverwijck, when the fur-bearing mammal was the main item of trade, there was a considerable amount of beaver theft, unfair beaver trading, and sundry other beaver-related crimes, as these entries from the 1640s indicate:

• “Decreed that Van Der Donck has no longer any further claim on the beavers. . . . “
• “Symon Volckertsen, old 20 years declares and confesses voluntarily that Anthony Peters some time past assisted him in stealing four beavers from the shallop of Egbert Van Borssum, which he enveloped in a blanket, carried on shore and offeed for sale to Martin Crieger . . . .”
• “By Bastiaen Jansen Crol was at Fort Orange arrested 16 beavers, of which the proprietor could not be discovered. . . “
• “I undersigned declare to owe on sight of this, forty three and a half beaver. . . .”