Document: Ordinance against breaking or stealing clapboards, fences, firewood or other articles

It is known to everyone that the honorable director-general and high council of New Netherland have enacted and posted several ordinances[1] concerning the robbing and stealing from orchards, farms and gardens, whether it be fruit, fences or other articles. Until recently, such good order and regulation has been observed that there have been few complaints heard on the subject, except for the last few days when townspeople and farmers have been daily robbed of clapboards, palisades, posts, rails and other woodwork, which the owners have set up for the protection of their farms, orchards and gardens, and for the security of the produce of the same. Therefore, the gentlemen of the high council, wishing to provide herein as much as is in their power, hereby prohibit and forbid each and everyone to break, take away or damage any person's farm, orchard, garden, clapboards, palisades, posts, rails, firewood or any other like thing, on pain of corporeal punishment to be inflicted, without mercy or favor according to the circumstances of the case, upon such persons who, after this date, are found doing this, so that a stop may be put to the complaints of and damages to the citizens once and for all, and everyone may be secure in his property. Thus done at the session of the honorable gentlemen of the high council of New Netherland held in Fort Amsterdam the 31st of December 1654; published on this date.[2]